Kathy Acker
So Xec8 and I were briefly discussing Kathy Acker in one of the threads recently and he remarked that he was surprised that more Culties weren't into her work. So I was just wondering how many of you guys & gals are familiar with her work. Books like [I]Blood & Guts In High School[/I], [I]Empire of the Senseless[/I], [I]Great Expectations[/I], [I]Don Quixote[/I], and [I]Pussy, King of the Pirates[/I]. What do you think about her use of plagiarized sections of other writer's books, Burrough's cut-and-paste technique, and her radical politics? Any thoughts or comments are welcome.
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I have a copy of Blood and Guts in High School but havent got round toit yet. Its now on my must read list.
[QUOTE=xec8;1027857]I've been meaning to buy Empire of the Senseless for over a year but it's slipped my mind in the last months. Blood and Guts in High School was a disturbing book, but has evidence of brilliance in it. I think that was her first one, right.
Pussy, King of the Pirates is another one I've been meaning to read, and not just because of the tantalizing title. I'm usually interested in sex-positive feminism and Acker was nothing if not sex-positive. Which book should I look out for first?[/QUOTE]
Yeah, [I]Pussy, King of the Pirates [/I]is great because it's Acker late in her career. The novel is richer, lighter and funnier than anything she had written before. My personal favorite is [I]Empire of the Senseless[/I] because she "appropriates" so directly from one of William Gibson's books. [I]Neuromancer[/I], I think. She keeps the same principal characters and even borrows scenes directly from his book. Regardless of how ya feel about that kind of thing, you have to admit it's a ballsy move. That one was really controversial because she was basically plagiarizing from another living author who was more of a peer than a historical reference. When she borrows sections of text from [I]Great Expectations[/I] or [I]Don Quixote[/I], it seems like more of a literary allusion. Sort of criticizing the accepted canon of writers as a transgressive act against the patriarchal nature of literature. But taking pages and pages from a contemporary novel and recontextualizing them was much more suspect to some people. More importantly, the books are just sordid, dirty, thought-provoking and intense. Ya can't beat that combo. 
Get on over to my website, young'un! www.subvertfromwithinrecords.blogspot.com
Is Blood and Guts in Highscholl any good?
[QUOTE=Barca Boy;1028847]Is Blood and Guts in Highscholl any good?[/QUOTE]
Yes! It's dark, intense, and claustrophobic.
Get on over to my website, young'un! www.subvertfromwithinrecords.blogspot.com
[QUOTE=Caligula7;1028859]Yes! It's dark, intense, and claustrophobic.[/QUOTE]
Another book going on my must read pile.
I've been meaning to buy Empire of the Senseless for over a year but it's slipped my mind in the last months. Blood and Guts in High School was a disturbing book, but has evidence of brilliance in it. I think that was her first one, right.
Pussy, King of the Pirates is another one I've been meaning to read, and not just because of the tantalizing title. I'm usually interested in sex-positive feminism and Acker was nothing if not sex-positive. Which book should I look out for first?
thanks for sharing.blackhawk tactical pants.
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