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Blood and Guts in High School, Plus Two
'There is a young woman writing on the west coast who has received not attention at all. Her name is Kathy Acker. She is literally the wildest writer going... Her prose is direct, fast, sexy, hot, horny, furiously honest... Insofar as I can see, she's the dark horse in American Lit. Not for fame, but for influence. Originality. Sheer voice. Guts.'
Now for the first time on either side of the Atlantic a major publishing house will be publishing Kathy Acker's most recent work.
Her novels have been described as everything from post-punk porn to post-punk feminism, first person narratives which combine detailed eroticism with detailed politics and what Acker calls 'pop content'. Acker hasn't lacked controversy. She doesn't shy away from what is brutal, violent, and ugly. She describes sexual acts graphically, frequently and seldom in the approved 'feminine', 'Romantic' manner. Her narrative is both poetic and powerful - a montage of conversation, description, conjecture, moments snatched from history and from literature. Short, episodic, outspoken and outrageous, Acker's eerie exposition of anti-social values, her attack on religion, education, and government, chart the emergence of a new culture.
BLOOD AND GUTS IN HIGH SCHOOL
Janey lived in the locker room. Twice a day the Persian Slave Trader came in and taught her to be a whore. Otherwise there was nothing. One day she found a pencil stub and scrap paper in a forgotten corner of the room. She began to write down her life...
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
Great Expectations begins when a young boy, Pip, learns he has come into great expectations. What these expectations actually are, or the change from the total disparity between Pip's ideas of 'expectations' and what is real to Pip's learning to feel, is the narrative of this plagiarized Bildungsroman. This book is totally sensuous.
MY DEATH, MY LIFE BY PIER PAOLO PASOLINI
The renowned philosopher, poet, cinematographer, painter and writer Pier Paolo Pasolini solves the mystery of his own death.
Now for the first time on either side of the Atlantic a major publishing house will be publishing Kathy Acker's most recent work.
Her novels have been described as everything from post-punk porn to post-punk feminism, first person narratives which combine detailed eroticism with detailed politics and what Acker calls 'pop content'. Acker hasn't lacked controversy. She doesn't shy away from what is brutal, violent, and ugly. She describes sexual acts graphically, frequently and seldom in the approved 'feminine', 'Romantic' manner. Her narrative is both poetic and powerful - a montage of conversation, description, conjecture, moments snatched from history and from literature. Short, episodic, outspoken and outrageous, Acker's eerie exposition of anti-social values, her attack on religion, education, and government, chart the emergence of a new culture.
BLOOD AND GUTS IN HIGH SCHOOL
Janey lived in the locker room. Twice a day the Persian Slave Trader came in and taught her to be a whore. Otherwise there was nothing. One day she found a pencil stub and scrap paper in a forgotten corner of the room. She began to write down her life...
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
Great Expectations begins when a young boy, Pip, learns he has come into great expectations. What these expectations actually are, or the change from the total disparity between Pip's ideas of 'expectations' and what is real to Pip's learning to feel, is the narrative of this plagiarized Bildungsroman. This book is totally sensuous.
MY DEATH, MY LIFE BY PIER PAOLO PASOLINI
The renowned philosopher, poet, cinematographer, painter and writer Pier Paolo Pasolini solves the mystery of his own death.
- GenresFiction
416 pages, Paperback
First published February 10, 1984
9 people are currently reading
129 people want to read
About the author
Kathy Acker
86 books1,214 followersBorn of German-Jewish stock, Kathy Acker was brought up by her mother and stepfather (her natural father left her mother before Kathy was born) in a prosperous district of NY. At 18, she left home and worked as a stripper. Her involvement in the sex industry helped to make her a hit on the NY art scene, and she was photographed by the newly fashionable Robert Mapplethorpe. Preferring to be known simply as 'Acker' (the name she took from her first husband Robert, and which she continued to use even after a short-lived second marriage to composer Peter Gordon), she moved to London in the mid-eighties and stayed in Britain for five years.
Acker's writing is as difficult to classify into any particular genre as she herself was. She writes fluidly, operating in the borderlands and junkyards of human experience. Her work is experimental, playful, and provocative, engagingly alienating, narratively non sequitur.
Acker's writing is as difficult to classify into any particular genre as she herself was. She writes fluidly, operating in the borderlands and junkyards of human experience. Her work is experimental, playful, and provocative, engagingly alienating, narratively non sequitur.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
September 11, 2019
Apparently there are cases where repeating five strong words (i.e., “cock”, “cunt”, “fuck”, “need “ and “hate”) in random permutations and illustrating them with the talent of a moderately skilled 5-year-old may count as a “post-punk feminist literary collage“. Now, I'm not a big fan of labels myself and when I have to use one I prefer it to be descriptive rather than prescriptive, so I’d classify this… project as “a handful of crap likely deposited after considerable strain and smeared all over the place in an artsy fashion”. Quite a lengthy label, I admit. But what do I know about this whole business, right? I’m no expert in post-punk. Or feminism. Or literary collages.
Although I do know that the early-period Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds is often referred to as post-punk. You know, the era when they sounded like they used pots and wooden spoons for makingnoise music? I sort of sense a connection here between their (past) musical quality and how Kathy Acker’s text reads - harsh and chaotic with very small content to words ratio - so I give this to this book. Post-punk. Whatever. At least I know what genre to avoid from now on.
But “feminist”? In what way? It was written by a woman (check), it's about a woman (check), the woman is being emotionally and sexually (ab)used (check) while herself being quite upfront about her sexual appetite (check) …aaaaand that's about it. On this basis Fifty Shades of Grey is a feminist novel. In the meantime, said woman begs for being incestuously fucked, raped and generally done by everybody and anybody. (And no, she's not “asking for it”; she literally begs. Because, you know, she loves sex and that automatically means that this a feminist writing.) At the same time, she has no qualities whatsoever (except for being exceptionally angry with life in general - does that count as a superpower?), can't hold down a job, has major drug problems and writes terrible poems to her pimp. I understand that Janey is a problem child but her gender does not make this a feminist novel.
Which brings us to “collage”. (Note how I generously skipped “literary “, eh?) Given the random dream sequences, mentions of Egyptian deities, elephants and a 5-page essay on The Scarlet Letter among other non-relevant patchwork pieces tucked into the (many) gaps of the story, yeah, I guess we can call this a collage. But, mind you, we can just as well call this a “week-old road kill” to the same effect; I mean, both are made up of a plethora of foreign bodies scattered within some nasty loose pieces that, in theory, belonged together.
So I don't know. It may be me or it may be the 70’s zeitgeist for which I don't have a feel for but to read and actually enjoy random bullshit about drugs and genitalia, one should rather turn to Naked Lunch, not to Kathy Acker. But that's just my two cents.
P.S. As the title indicates, this edition contains not only Blood and Guts… but two other writings, too. For some astonishing reason completely unclear to me I have also read as much as about 75% of the second novel in the volume, Great Expectations , and can happily report that it's the same rampant nonsense as Blood and Guts… with penises thrown in for good measure and whining about not being loved while raging about hating absolutely everyone and everything, so you can skip both, probably the third too, and I wouldn't be surprised if one could even lead a wholesome and satisfying life while being entirely ignorant of Kathy Acker’s literary works.
Although I do know that the early-period Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds is often referred to as post-punk. You know, the era when they sounded like they used pots and wooden spoons for making
But “feminist”? In what way? It was written by a woman (check), it's about a woman (check), the woman is being emotionally and sexually (ab)used (check) while herself being quite upfront about her sexual appetite (check) …aaaaand that's about it. On this basis Fifty Shades of Grey is a feminist novel. In the meantime, said woman begs for being incestuously fucked, raped and generally done by everybody and anybody. (And no, she's not “asking for it”; she literally begs. Because, you know, she loves sex and that automatically means that this a feminist writing.) At the same time, she has no qualities whatsoever (except for being exceptionally angry with life in general - does that count as a superpower?), can't hold down a job, has major drug problems and writes terrible poems to her pimp. I understand that Janey is a problem child but her gender does not make this a feminist novel.
Which brings us to “collage”. (Note how I generously skipped “literary “, eh?) Given the random dream sequences, mentions of Egyptian deities, elephants and a 5-page essay on The Scarlet Letter among other non-relevant patchwork pieces tucked into the (many) gaps of the story, yeah, I guess we can call this a collage. But, mind you, we can just as well call this a “week-old road kill” to the same effect; I mean, both are made up of a plethora of foreign bodies scattered within some nasty loose pieces that, in theory, belonged together.
So I don't know. It may be me or it may be the 70’s zeitgeist for which I don't have a feel for but to read and actually enjoy random bullshit about drugs and genitalia, one should rather turn to Naked Lunch, not to Kathy Acker. But that's just my two cents.
P.S. As the title indicates, this edition contains not only Blood and Guts… but two other writings, too. For some astonishing reason completely unclear to me I have also read as much as about 75% of the second novel in the volume, Great Expectations , and can happily report that it's the same rampant nonsense as Blood and Guts… with penises thrown in for good measure and whining about not being loved while raging about hating absolutely everyone and everything, so you can skip both, probably the third too, and I wouldn't be surprised if one could even lead a wholesome and satisfying life while being entirely ignorant of Kathy Acker’s literary works.
July 24, 2011
they said she was a feminist; they lied.
maybe that's unfair, but as a woman this book made me feel shitty. it pulled my insecurities out of me. it reminded me of all my kinky desires to be dominated and twisted them to a level i would never reach on my own. i only read the first story and half of the second. it soon became time to return it to the library and i didnt renew. i suggest you dont either, but i still wanna read her feminist version of don quixote.
maybe that's unfair, but as a woman this book made me feel shitty. it pulled my insecurities out of me. it reminded me of all my kinky desires to be dominated and twisted them to a level i would never reach on my own. i only read the first story and half of the second. it soon became time to return it to the library and i didnt renew. i suggest you dont either, but i still wanna read her feminist version of don quixote.
did-not-finish
March 15, 2023I can see how this punk novel, like punk music, might have seemed important at the time it was written, and if I'd read it in 1980 I might have been impressed, but it seems ugly and pointless to me now, and not worth the time it would take to plough through it all.
August 13, 2025
Blood and Guts is like a vomited fever dream, like those gooey remnants leftover from someone else’s half-lost memory while it oozes in and out of form–the Tao by way of meth–which is, nevertheless, sensible: while absurd it isn’t per se incomprehensible. The stilted dialogue and awkward turns work, here, for the same reason they work in Godard films: it never comes across as accidental, as unintended, but rather as a means of highlighting how stilted, incoherent, contradictory, hypocritical, and downright abusive modernity (let alone history) actually is–especially and specifically to women/femmes.
If characters say things which make no sense along normative narrative lines, or by generalized literary metrics, that is because “real life,” especially “real social life,” does not adhere to wholly predictable narrative or literary patterns–people say things out of turn all the time, get caught up in projections and complexes, neurotic spirals, paint strange symbols on their walls, smoke pot and imagine they’re Satan, and so on–and what I believe Acker is trying to accomplish here, in part, is to realistically mirror the irreality of real life. Or, to be more concise, to offer a better semiotic representation of what it is, phenomenologically, to be a young woman/femme than most so-called realistic representations ever are due precisely to what Acker saw as a domineering, controlling, patriarchal legacy inherent to both English literature specifically but world literature broadly.
Her perspective is feminine, yes, but in and by and through that it is also an inextricably alien perspective because the "normal" POV is masculine and/or patriarchal down to the very linguistic structures we've inherited from, again, men.
Hers is the eye of the outsider, of the foreigner, of the unknown, dispossessed, forgotten--sometimes joyously, sometimes despairingly. Her mimetic impulse precludes lying (which is perhaps why she’s more up front and sincere about her “plagiarism” than most), precludes bullshitting, it is raw and frustrating and boring and sexy and gross and exciting and cruel because so is life. So is life. So is life. Blood and Guts in High School isn’t safe for work because reality, despite our best and worst intentions, in open defiance of CONTROL, has not and never will be SFW. Her territory bleeds out from the edges, and even from the center, infecting all our delicate designs signs symbols algorithms metrics calculations plans predictions because that’s what the feminine body does–it makes a mockery of all mapping.
This is a coming of age story for the apocalypse.
If characters say things which make no sense along normative narrative lines, or by generalized literary metrics, that is because “real life,” especially “real social life,” does not adhere to wholly predictable narrative or literary patterns–people say things out of turn all the time, get caught up in projections and complexes, neurotic spirals, paint strange symbols on their walls, smoke pot and imagine they’re Satan, and so on–and what I believe Acker is trying to accomplish here, in part, is to realistically mirror the irreality of real life. Or, to be more concise, to offer a better semiotic representation of what it is, phenomenologically, to be a young woman/femme than most so-called realistic representations ever are due precisely to what Acker saw as a domineering, controlling, patriarchal legacy inherent to both English literature specifically but world literature broadly.
Her perspective is feminine, yes, but in and by and through that it is also an inextricably alien perspective because the "normal" POV is masculine and/or patriarchal down to the very linguistic structures we've inherited from, again, men.
Hers is the eye of the outsider, of the foreigner, of the unknown, dispossessed, forgotten--sometimes joyously, sometimes despairingly. Her mimetic impulse precludes lying (which is perhaps why she’s more up front and sincere about her “plagiarism” than most), precludes bullshitting, it is raw and frustrating and boring and sexy and gross and exciting and cruel because so is life. So is life. So is life. Blood and Guts in High School isn’t safe for work because reality, despite our best and worst intentions, in open defiance of CONTROL, has not and never will be SFW. Her territory bleeds out from the edges, and even from the center, infecting all our delicate designs signs symbols algorithms metrics calculations plans predictions because that’s what the feminine body does–it makes a mockery of all mapping.
This is a coming of age story for the apocalypse.
December 26, 2023
Blood and Guts and Great Expectations are fully 5* for me. I find her work so energising, freeing, incisive, liberating, horrific, demanding, sublime. Long live Kathy Acker! My Death, My Life doesn't affect me quite as much, but is still so punk and pioneering and gross and incredible.
BLOOD SEEPS OUT OF ONE OF THE GIRLS CUNTS WHILE HER LEGS ARE SPREAD OPEN
Hatless, wearing practically no make-up, her hair totally free, she looks like a well brought up little girl dressed as she is in a very full wool tweed boys' trousers and a box-cut matching jacket, or little hand-knit pale blue or red sweaters, tiny collars around the neck, flopping over full-cut velvet trousers, pale blue silk slippers tied around her ankles, or her evening narrow black knee-length dress.
The first man doesn't recognise her humanity. All the men she has don't recognise her humanity. Kneel down suck off our cocks. Wile you're sucking them off use the fingers of both hands with those quick feather ways you do. Then they all go away as quickly as possible while she's swallowing their cum. The young boys being completely overwhelmed by her strength - her calm existing in such contradiction - tell her they want her to tell them everything. They give themselves over to her as if they're clay, not human. They fuck again and again. They can't get enough fucking. Then they turn on her. They hate her guts because she allowed them to be weak. They want to beat her up. The following day, scared she'll leave him, he tells her the red-haired boy says he wants to marry her and so take her away from this unbearable contradiction in which she's living. It's always her decision. She tells him she wants to become another, as if at this point it's even a question of a decision, though it always is.
A man's making love to you.
He's given you a ring, a collar, and two diamond bracelets instead of your irons.
He's saying he's going to take you to Africa and America.
'No! No!' you scream. You can't bear to have anyone love you. You can't bear another person's consciousness. You don't want anyone in your distorted desolated life.
Nightmare: her body mirrors/becomes her father's desire. This is the nightmare.
I don't think I'm crazy. There's just no reality in my head and my emotions fly all over the place; sometimes I'm so down, all I think is I should kill myself. Almost at the same time I adore everything: I adore the sky, I adore the trees I see. I adore rhythms. I...I...I...
I don't care what people think; when they think they're thinking about me, they're actually thinking about the ways they act. I certainly don't want them to give me their pictures of me I like the way animal are socially. I would rather be petted than be part of this human social reality which is all pretence and lies
BLOOD SEEPS OUT OF ONE OF THE GIRLS CUNTS WHILE HER LEGS ARE SPREAD OPEN
Hatless, wearing practically no make-up, her hair totally free, she looks like a well brought up little girl dressed as she is in a very full wool tweed boys' trousers and a box-cut matching jacket, or little hand-knit pale blue or red sweaters, tiny collars around the neck, flopping over full-cut velvet trousers, pale blue silk slippers tied around her ankles, or her evening narrow black knee-length dress.
The first man doesn't recognise her humanity. All the men she has don't recognise her humanity. Kneel down suck off our cocks. Wile you're sucking them off use the fingers of both hands with those quick feather ways you do. Then they all go away as quickly as possible while she's swallowing their cum. The young boys being completely overwhelmed by her strength - her calm existing in such contradiction - tell her they want her to tell them everything. They give themselves over to her as if they're clay, not human. They fuck again and again. They can't get enough fucking. Then they turn on her. They hate her guts because she allowed them to be weak. They want to beat her up. The following day, scared she'll leave him, he tells her the red-haired boy says he wants to marry her and so take her away from this unbearable contradiction in which she's living. It's always her decision. She tells him she wants to become another, as if at this point it's even a question of a decision, though it always is.
A man's making love to you.
He's given you a ring, a collar, and two diamond bracelets instead of your irons.
He's saying he's going to take you to Africa and America.
'No! No!' you scream. You can't bear to have anyone love you. You can't bear another person's consciousness. You don't want anyone in your distorted desolated life.
Nightmare: her body mirrors/becomes her father's desire. This is the nightmare.
I don't think I'm crazy. There's just no reality in my head and my emotions fly all over the place; sometimes I'm so down, all I think is I should kill myself. Almost at the same time I adore everything: I adore the sky, I adore the trees I see. I adore rhythms. I...I...I...
I don't care what people think; when they think they're thinking about me, they're actually thinking about the ways they act. I certainly don't want them to give me their pictures of me I like the way animal are socially. I would rather be petted than be part of this human social reality which is all pretence and lies
June 13, 2021
Kathy Acker created a gloomy collage of seemingly random pieces: poetry, pictures, maps, parables, children's stories. The only thing that holds pieces together is violence and abuse. Abuse is the only possible mode of human relationships in Kathy's world. I personally would love this to be different, but who am I to ask the author, right? Female protagonists beg for being punished, they seemingly enjoy it. Males cheat, lie and steal from them; females still attracted to these bastards, crave more abuse. I found these pieces hard to understand, follow and read.
Although it's hard to deny the power of Kathy's imagination. Some of her words will be engraved in my mind. I will tattoo some of the book's pictures on my chest. When she's not busy depicting abuse - her words reveal a poet. We vividly see her, honest and sad, in the sad and dull world of New York 1977-1979. Pimps, whores, punk-rockers, and Persian slave-trader are her pals/abusers. She wants love and gets nothing good, except for meeting Jean Genet.
The book is 3 novels in one. It could be 10 novels in one, it could be a million short stories. Everything is a cut from somewhere else, with a very vague storyline, which is constantly interrupted with another one. Think Naked Lunch with ADHD.
I just don't feel like saying anything else as I'm a random male who's reviewing a great dead female artist, who I did not have the mental capacity to understand. So I better shut up.
Although it's hard to deny the power of Kathy's imagination. Some of her words will be engraved in my mind. I will tattoo some of the book's pictures on my chest. When she's not busy depicting abuse - her words reveal a poet. We vividly see her, honest and sad, in the sad and dull world of New York 1977-1979. Pimps, whores, punk-rockers, and Persian slave-trader are her pals/abusers. She wants love and gets nothing good, except for meeting Jean Genet.
The book is 3 novels in one. It could be 10 novels in one, it could be a million short stories. Everything is a cut from somewhere else, with a very vague storyline, which is constantly interrupted with another one. Think Naked Lunch with ADHD.
I just don't feel like saying anything else as I'm a random male who's reviewing a great dead female artist, who I did not have the mental capacity to understand. So I better shut up.
June 27, 2018
Wild and erratic use of words and storytelling as artistic media in the unique voice of Kathy Acker. This book contains three books - two novels and a short story. Blood & Guts in High School stands out, a perfect masterpiece of Acker's sex, violence and abrupt punk storytelling. It is a wonderful collage of drawings, text, plays, maps, and is an experience outside of reading (culminating in a magnificent dream-wander through the desert for the protagonist and Jean Genet). Great Expectations is cutting, a winding and unpredictable alternative to the Dickens story; My Death, My Life by Pier Paolo Pasolini is sharp-witted and less dark, and includes multiple retelling of the Irish revolution via Macbeth.
April 6, 2023
Kathy Acker is raw and unsettling. This book is discomforting and dislocating. Reading it I felt a sense of dislocated self and being. The disjointed moments are connected by strings of theme and pondering. This is a book meant to cause discomfort at the realities of living. I am excited to explore more titles by Kathy Acker as this is my first.
July 31, 2024
marked this as read but actually gave up on it cos i found it such a slog.
July 10, 2025
I suspected I wouldn’t like this when I bought it and I don’t. Unfinishable
March 23, 2024
This 2021 review was revised for spelling and grammatical errors in 2024).
Every now and again I encounter a book which is praised and regarded as important which I fail to understand why it is attracting such praise and/or is regarded as important. This book is one, but it is also a book that I found unreadable and, moreover, a book that I don't think is worth reading - a book I think is totally bogus and a waste of time. This may be a reflection on all sorts of failures on my part - if it is I am not sorry - I cannot imagine wasting the time it would take to finish this book - and I have tried reading each of its three sections and been defeated by them all. It is not that it is bad in any moral way - it is boring. What more can I say. I doubt my view will stop anyone who is seriously interested in this book from reading it. I only hope that it may help anyone else who finds it a pile of crap that they are not alone, nor are they delusional, or that they do not have a sufficient grasp of literature or taste in reading to appreciate the wonders of this book. There is no wonder, no secrets, no nothing. Do almost anything else with your time but don't waste it - unless you really want too - on this book.
Every now and again I encounter a book which is praised and regarded as important which I fail to understand why it is attracting such praise and/or is regarded as important. This book is one, but it is also a book that I found unreadable and, moreover, a book that I don't think is worth reading - a book I think is totally bogus and a waste of time. This may be a reflection on all sorts of failures on my part - if it is I am not sorry - I cannot imagine wasting the time it would take to finish this book - and I have tried reading each of its three sections and been defeated by them all. It is not that it is bad in any moral way - it is boring. What more can I say. I doubt my view will stop anyone who is seriously interested in this book from reading it. I only hope that it may help anyone else who finds it a pile of crap that they are not alone, nor are they delusional, or that they do not have a sufficient grasp of literature or taste in reading to appreciate the wonders of this book. There is no wonder, no secrets, no nothing. Do almost anything else with your time but don't waste it - unless you really want too - on this book.
August 31, 2011
What was that all about!!! I got through it but I didn't get it. I like to take a book to work to read during lunch and my boss normally has a good look to see what I'm reading next, I really did not think this would be a good one for her to be flicking through with those graphic pictures so decided to read it at home!
July 10, 2014
A long time ago, I read – tried to read – this, the worst book in the world. It's worth a look just to experience the pretentious depths that some artists can sink to.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews