Kathy Acker

[Otto]

I've started "Pussy, King of the Pirates" -- heavy stuff!

2007/9/22, John Bailey <johnbonbailey at hotmail.com>:
>
>
> Acker is great; I think a lot of P fans would appreciate her work. Her key
> aesthetic strategy is plagiarism - stealing from other works (themes,
> characters but also entire sections lifted almost verbatim from other
> novels) and either subverting them through minor variation or giving them
> new meaning by mashing them up with other texts.
>
>  Great Expectations is the best place to start. It jumbles Dickens' novel
> with a bunch of other stuff: The Princess of Cleves, the Story of O, her own
> autobiography, descriptions of war crimes (murder, rape), etc.
>
>  It's very extreme. Lots of violence, porn, sadism, masochism, philosophy.
>
>  But she uses plagiarism (and the recurring figure of the pirate) as a way
> to critique (patriarchal) language from the inside, as it were; the canon of
> western literature didn't speak to her but it was the language that was
> forced upon her, so she decided to use it against itself.
>
>  Visceral, unforgettable stuff.
>
> > Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2007 15:09:19 -0400 (EDT)
> > From: kelber at mindspring.com
> > Subject: Re: Lit Crit 2007 [Postmodern Blowback]
> >
> > Has anyone read anything by Kathy Acker, and, if so, what do you
> recommend?
> >
> > Laura
> >
>
>
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