Book dossier

I shock myself

by Beatrice Wood

"Beatrice Wood's Life has been extraordinary in every way, from earliest childhood, when her dominating Victorian mother realized she "wasn't like the rest of them," to her productive life at ninety-five in California's Ojiai Valley. Rebellious, radical and romantic, Beatrice Wood was determined to be an artist. She fled to Paris for several bohemian seasons as a painter and actress, then returned to New York where she fell into the loving clutches of two Frenchmen: Henri-Pierre Roche, the author of Jules and Jim, and Marcel Duchamp, the iconoclastic Dadaist. Her promising youth was followed by a disastrous marriage, financial woes and a debilitating physical affliction; but in 1933, at the age of forty, she discovered the passion that would change her life: pottery. Now one of America's acclaimed ceramicists, Beatrice Wood shares the intriguing details of her unconventional life in I Shock Myself. With candor and insight, she recollects nearly ten decades of world shaking events, heart breaking romances, and artistic achievement."--Publisher description.