Reena Spaulings

A novel set in post-9/11 New York City about a supermodel and the ultimate Broadway blockbuster.

Set in post-9/11 New York City, Reena Spaulings was written by a large collective of writers and artists that bills itself as The Bernadette Corporation. Like most contemporary fiction, Reena Spaulings is about a female twenty-something. Reena is discovered while working as a museum guard and becomes a rich international supermodel. Meanwhile, a bout of terrible weather seizes New York, leaving in its wake a strange form of civil disobedience that stirs its citizens to mount a musical song-and-dance riot called “Battle on Broadway.” Fashioned in the old Hollywood manner by a legion of professional and amateur writers striving to achieve the ultimate blockbuster, the musical ends up being about a nobody who could be anybody becoming a somebody for everybody. The result is generic and perfect—not unlike Reena Spaulings itself, whose many authors create a story in which New York itself strives to become the ultimate collective experiment in which the only thing shared is the lack of uniqueness.


"Dear New York,

Here's your novel. If I could have held myself together longer I would have. I wanted to. I feel like I prostituted myself for you. I went all the way with a lot of people and for what? It was our time, I guess. Everybody was fucking everybody. I don't blame you for anything that happened, nor do I particularly give you credit for it. I fell apart somewhere around the time the war began... was that the idea? If so, fuck you too, loads of love, loads of novel, and it's been real. Meanwhile the buildings are still changing all the time and you're thinking that the city isn't what it used to be. Well it never was. I do love you."

Reena