Cat Power: A Good Woman

Elizabeth Goodman - 295 pps.

Elizabeth Goodman draws inferences left and right, confuses schizophrenia with multiple personality disorder, and occasionally insults her subject, but Cat Power is nothing if not interesting. The only existing biography on Chan Marshall, a.k.a. Cat Power, is well-researched, addictive, and even challenging -- especially for those who really like Cat Power, a.k.a. everyone who will read this book (and book review).

Though psychological analysis is generally frowned upon in the biography world, I enjoy it, so long as it is done tastefully. Many, fervent Cat Power fans in particular, will argue that in Cat Power the line of tastefulness is crossed many times -- particularly in later chapters where Goodman portrays Cat Power more as a savvy businesswoman and less as an artist -- but I would not (except for where Goodman's aforementioned confusion of mental illnesses occurs). Cat Power is less of a factual biography and more of a speculative one. In Cat Power, Goodman advances an argument based on the available evidence, not unlike the many critical essays I'm sure our readers (just kidding) have had to write for English class. Whether her argument is valid or not is up to you, but I don't think it is distasteful so much as surprising.

Not surprising so much as distasteful

So what's all the fuss about? Cat Power was apparently a huge deal to indie kids in the 90s. In the same way that 60s dissidents viewed Bob Dylan as the voice of their generation, the disaffected youth of the 90s seemed to have seen Cat Power as a voice for their loneliness and alienation. Cat Power filled that role for good reason: her early songs are disturbingly personal, and her lonely and difficult childhood seems to pervade them. But, like Dylan, Marshall's personal life has not remained consistent with the music she recorded over ten years ago. Marshall is no longer the woman of constant sorrow that her fans want her to be, and Goodman's exposure of that fact has upset Cat Power fans.

If you believe the usual Cat Power story, then you see Marshall as a drug abuser and heavy drinker since 18, a smoker since 2nd grade, and general troublemaker since the womb, and as someone whom, in their mid-30s and after a stint in a mental ward, finally found salvation in soul music. This is a good story, but as Cat Power makes clear, Marshall's life has not been quite so mythic in scope. Her early life was terrible, and that was likely the inspiration for much of her early music, and she did try to drink herself to death after a bad break-up, but besides that, things were pretty normal, even for a quasi-rock star. She gave out popsicles to neighborhood kids while living in Cabbagetown, Georgia, worked "three or four jobs" while living in the Lower East Side, and, when she returns to her home in Atlanta, she throws parties to which friends are encouraged to bring their whole families. She has also remained relatively healthy for most of her life, though that thing about smoking since the 2nd grade is true. She has also been in a movie, been a Chanel model, and had her music appear in several commercials. So much for being the Crown Princess of Sadness.

She feels your pain

That Marshall is not a total wreck, and is in many ways normal, is, to me at least, more amazing than the mythic story that is usually told about her life, and it should not detract from whatever fans may feel about her music. Her successes, however, should not be seen as the end of her story. Cat Power emphasizes the contradictions in Marshall's life. Her shyness and her career choice. Her desire to start a family and her inability to stay in one spot. Her tendency to waver between mental stability and insanity. As Goodman mentions, the current arc of Marshall's career -- partial sobriety, work as a model, and concerts that resemble concerts instead of drunken meltdowns -- will probably not last (according to Goodman, Chan's recently been drinking again). In other words, the Cat Power story is not over. When it is, however, I hope Goodman, with her ability to cut through the bullshit, will go through the effort of writing a second edition.

-Heathcliff