RaveBookforumA fixture of certain literary crowds, she occasionally got work writing for magazines like Bomb and Details. In that way, she’s more easily compared to the \'party girl\' writer Eve Babitz ... The title, chosen by Semiotext(e)’s founder Sylvère Lotringer, came from a line in the story \'Route 95 South–Baltimore to Orlando\': \'The sky was like black cotton batting that enveloped us in a way that felt like walking through clear water in a pool painted black.\' The double simile and repetition of \'black\' is exemplary; much of the writing is this poignant and unlabored, reading like an extension of (or inspiration for) the drawled poetics in an early Waters film ... The material offers a more developed picture of Mueller’s short life. Her signature smirking asides, pressed between rape scenes and overdoses, are always summed up with a smiling shrug ... Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black is a cult classic for writers, though, and the reissue’s new (to us) pieces demonstrate Mueller’s artistic process.
