Cookie Mueller: Fan Mail, Frank Letters and Crank Calls

Hanuman Editions is a publishing project reimagining the legacy of Hanuman Books, the legendary and cult series of chapbooks that were printed in southern India and published out of the storied Chelsea Hotel in New York City between 1986 and 1993.

“Hello?”
“Yeah, hi Georgia!”
“This isn’t Georgia. Who’s
calling please?”
“John Huston.”
“From the grave ?”

Fan Mail, Frank Letters, and Crank Calls, an epistolary portrait of the absurdity of human connection. Her book also doubles as a shrine to channels of analogue communication between private and public personas that have since metastasized in our climate of microcelebrity ideation. Sexy and hilarious, Mueller’s text embraces the discomfiting nature of desire with empathy and trademark wit.

Cookie Mueller (1949–1989) was an American writer, actress, and advice columnist, best remembered as a regular cast member of some of the director John Waters’s groundbreaking films, including Multiple Maniacs, Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, and Desperate Living. She died from AIDS-related complications in 1989.