Nonbinary – A Memoir

★★★ Genesis P-Orridge

ABRAMS. £19.99

Memories of late Throbbing Gristle founder and ‘occultural engineer’.

Working to the dictum “See a cliff: jump off”, Genesis P-Orridge’s refusal to be neatly boxed was a constant – whether staging student sitins or updating Burroughs’ cut-ups to challenge received wisdom in numerous dolefunded creative pursuits. While covering their daily mission to subvert powered-up hippy collective COUM Transmissions, noise pioneers Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV and magick cult Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth, Nonbinary rides roughshod over the allegations of gaslighting and abuse in Cosey Fanni Tutti’s frank 2017 memoir, Art Sex Music, dismissing her as a “party girl” while claiming TG’s musical victories as P-Orridge’s alone. A ceaseless namedropper, prone to grandeur and self-aggrandisement (early on P-Orridge calls the Queen Moriarty to their Holmes), the book may be low on levity – it was written while dying of myelomonocytic leukaemia – but it’s still a compelling read, the body-altered ‘Pandrogyne’ submitting their revisions as the lights slowly dim.