7 Tattoos

Each section in this innovative book is the story of one of Trachtenberg's tattoos, as well as an intellectually freewheeling exploration of the themes that the tattoo evokes: death, sacrilege, primitivism, rebellion, atonement, sado-masochism, and downfall. In Trachtenberg's travelogue of the body, a search for Dayak tattoos takes him to deepest Borneo, to a funerary ritual that ends in demonic possession. His youthful infatuation with Catholicism leads him on a drug-addled pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Teresa of Avila that is movingly juxtaposed with a brutal narrative of his addiction. A failed love affair generates the screenplay for an imaginary film noir and a breathtaking and subversive reading of noir's S/M subtext. Trachtenberg summons up the scalding shame of being cursed by his dying father, the grief and tenderness of singing to his dying mother.