Kathy Acker

[John Bailey]

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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