Screen buffs consider the “Hitchcock Blonde” as the touchstone of the suspense director’s immensely influential oeuvre. Both femme fatale and malleable naïf, by turns serene and sophisticated, duplicitous and daring, she’s a heroine whose intricate relationships lead to psychological, if not physical, harm. Award-winning poet Dolin uses Hitchcock’s filmography as the framework for kindred memories of her chaotic childhood in Brooklyn as the daughter of a schizophrenic mother and absentee father, her tumultuous teenage years, and adulthood. Through such classics as Psycho, Spellbound, and Vertigo, Hitchcock, that master of horror, turns out to be the perfect auteur to curate Dolin’s life. Nuanced, deceptive, and manipulative, his films reflect the emotional scars left by Dolin’s family and lovers. Writing one’s memoir is a tricky business, and Dolin grapples with the ethics of “her” truth as opposed to “the” truth, which may not be one and the same. In this acutely analytical and searingly personal reckoning, Dolin’s use of Hitchcock to exorcise past demons is an inspired mélange of cinematic critique and private confession.
Hitchcock Blonde: A Cinemative Memoir is published by Terra Nova Press.
Sharon Dolin is the author of six poetry collections, most recently Manual for Living and Whirlwind. Her fourth book, Burn and Dodge won the AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry. A Fulbright Scholar, Pushcart Prize Winner, and recipient of a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress, she has been a fellow at the Corporation of Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has taught at Eugene Lang College, The New School, Adelphi University, NYU, Rutgers University, The Cooper Union, and was on the poetry faculty at the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y for twenty years. Sharon Dolin lives in New York City where she is Associate Editor at Barrow Street Press and directs Writing About Art in Barcelona.