Kathy Acker (1947–1997)

Blood and guts in high school is quite a little, disgusting novel, but still recognizable as outstanding. It irritates and shocks like the novels of William Burroughs.

Kathy Acker (1947 - 1997) is not exactly a new kid on the block, and while she did not belong to the Beat Generation, she was influenced by them. Her style is raucious, she writes about incest, drugs and free sexuality. Blood and guts in high school is an experimental novel that includes maps, pornographic drawings, a handwritten Persian dictionary, and irregular typography and layout.

Taken at face value, Blood and guts in high school (1984) is a novel about a girl's life at high school. Whether the novel is realistic or visionary, there are plenty of movies, books and music, such as Pink Floyd's 1979 rock opera The Wall, that depict the ugly inside of schools, and while Janey may not be the average high school kid, regretfully, there probably are kids like her, or worse. The fact that "bourgeois" readers may not like it, does not mean that Janey is a quite possible, not even very extraordinary student. Although fring, or unusual, her interests, obsessions and irritations (with teachers) is just the stuff of adolescence and life at high school. We just barely miss a white rat on her shoulder.

Although the mid-1980s are now nearly half a century behind us, no clear recognizable literary movement has been identified as typical for that period. Generally, much writing of that period is characterised as "postmodern", and so is the work of Kathy Acker.

Blood and guts in high school was banned in Germany.… (más)

I'm very into you. Correspondence 1995-1996 is a lousy book. The introduction relates how a reader for a publisher turned the manuscript down on the grounds that it is too personal. While this may not be true, that evaluation may have been a euphemistic statement for overall lack of quality.

Nonetheless, the author(s) have pushed on to publication. The book consists of the email correspondance between two postmodernist writers. It is hard to say (see) whether all emails are included, but as some are very short, it could well be.

It seems so far no one has dared to evaluate or comment on the relative value of email correspondence. Computer writing has made novel writing longer. Many of these emails seem to have been dashed off.

Although the authors claim that this was a love affair, they were literally worlds apart. The phrase included in the title: I am very into you does not seem very passionate. As for an exchange of ideas, it seems there is quite a lot of namesdropping, but no very clear acknowledgement that both writers have thoroughly read or understood these thinkers, although Acker seems the more thoughtful, while Wark (Mckenzie Wark) seems the more infatuated and less knoledgeable.

While reading, I have also thought whether this book could give clues to the origin or the rise of the Queer movement. The authors are clearly very versatile. So, even while the correspondence it itself seems of little value, it could be that it is of interest on a different plain, especially when read in a wider context.

This was my first book to read anything by Kathy Acker of whom I had previously not even heard, but it has sparked my interest.… (más)

Often disgusting, often desolate. I appreciate just how defiant of convention this book is. Defiance is perhaps its deepest, most pervasive quality—the fast curtness and defiance of the narration, contrasted with Janey’s hopeless straits, her captivity.
Just what is this book out to prove? What do we gain from having read it? A disfiguring, faithless vision of society, men and women. There is some reality in it, something chimes with recognition despite the crazed intensity and bleakness of the plot. We gain the edge of daring insight, is it, the edge of an insight that does not look away.
The pictorial sections are refreshing and creative. I am grateful for them.… (más)