Heartways: The Exploits of Genny O

Edited by Rita McBride and Erin Cosgrove

Heartways, a collaboration between the Whitney Museum of American Art, Printed Matter Inc, and Arsenal Pulp Press, is an extraordinary faux romance compilation that deconstructs art, literature, sex, and desire in one fell swoop. Constructed as a "novel," each chapter is written by a different contributor, all of whom create romantic tableaux that simultaneously work within and outside literary conventions.

Heartways is the turgid, winsome tale of Genny O, a youthful innocent who is saving herself for her one true love. Like Osiris's fate of perpetual death and renewal, Genny is fated to everlasting virginity. Despite all efforts to the contrary, each deflowering is her "first time." Her steamy adventures are chronicled in eleven stories written by artists, writers, the romance novel cover god Fabio, and curators, who embrace this heroine in purpled prose.

With both drama and humour, we encounter Genny O as she slips through an international art world wrought with demons, desire, and bodice-busting drama. Can Genny O find what she is lacking in the arms of her artist object of desire, or is she doomed to wander the pages of life unloved?

Heartways is the brainchild of internationally-acclaimed artist Rita McBride. Rebellious in conceit and execution, it will take you down the road of love and romance to a place in your heart that you always knew was there. . . .

This book is the first of the four-volume Ways series, each book steeped in a particular genre and making use of a collective structure. Subsequent titles include Crimeways,Futureways, and My Ways and include more than fifty different contributions by artists, architects, writers, journalists, curators, and critics.

Contributors include John Baldessari & Erin Cosgrove, Douglas Coupland, Fabio, Michele Hierholzer, Jennifer Nelson, Cate Rimmer, Joe Scanlan, Kimberly Sexton, Kathy Slade, and Michael Turner.