Lebenskünstler

‘Cyndi Lauper: A Memoir’ – David Hajdu

There seems little doubt that Lauper would be held in higher esteem if she spoke so directly not to girls and the women they become but to the men who dominate the critical establishment in pop and rock — or if she hung out with artists and writers like Robert Mapplethorpe and William Burroughs instead of the pro wrestlers Captain Lou Albano and Hulk Hogan, or if her music weren’t so catchy and pleasurable, or if she wore plain black clothes instead of the Day-Glo outfits she concocted from the racks of Screaming Mimi’s in the East Village. That is, if she acted more like a radical instead of being one, by exulting in the value of juvenile pleasure.