“The threat of the femme fatale lingering through modernist texts. All the dark ladies of "The Waste Land," wounding the impotent Fisher King. She is an excessive, castrating presence, threatening to sweep the subject up into sudden hysteria. Fitzgerald's baby vamps and society vampires, the fast girl who kisses (the real danger is her mouth, Zelda's mouth was selected in her high school composite of prettiest girl). Mythologizing the lives (wives) that catalyzed them. A DeKooning horror: FEMME. He who immortalized her in leatherbound.”
Book:Heroines
