Fan Mail, Frank Letters and Crank Calls

In Cookie Mueller’s Fan Mail, Frank Letters and Crank Calls, one man’s obsession with a Hollywood starlet kicks off a chain of international correspondence that sends his extended family into a fantastical tailspin. Transpiring across then-emerging channels of networked communication, Mueller’s prescient story, from 1988, rides the chemtrails of microcelebrity ideation with sensitivity and wit.

Writer, actress, underground It Girl and overall cult figure Cookie Mueller (1949–1989) is among the most beloved authors originally published by Hanuman Books. Radical in spirit and exactingly composed, Mueller’s work has had a significant cultural comeback in recent years through new collections and literary portraits. Mueller was famously immortalized on screen as a member of the film director John Waters' Dreamlanders, whose poignant oral histories suffuse her texts with sensitivity and gravitas.