What do you think?
Rate this book
I'm Very Into You: Correspondence, 1995-1996
The tempestuous email correspondence between Kathy Acker and McKenzie Wark, shimmering with insight, gossip, sex, and cultural commentary. “Why am I telling you all this? Partly 'cause the whole queerness/identity thing for me stretches through everything, absolutely everything. Slipping between straight/gay is child's play compared to slipping between writer/teacher/influence-peddler whatever. I forget who I am. You reminded me of who I prefer to be.” [M.W.] “It's two in the morning... I know what you mean about slipping I love it, going high low, power helpless even captive, male female, all over the place, space totally together and brain-sharp, if it wasn't for play I'd be bored stiff and I think boredom is the emotion I find most unbearable... ” [KA]
—from I'm Very into You After Kathy Acker met McKenzie Wark on a trip to Australia in 1995, they had a brief fling and immediately began a heated two-week email correspondence. Their emails shimmer with insight, gossip, sex, and cultural commentary. They write in a frenzy, several times a day; their emails cross somewhere over the International Date Line, and themselves become a site of analysis. What results is an index of how two brilliant and idiosyncratic writers might go about a courtship across 7,500 miles of airspace—by pulling in Alfred Hitchcock, stuffed animals, Georges Bataille, Elvis Presley, phenomenology, Marxism, The X-files , psychoanalysis, and the I Ching . Their corresepondence is a Plato's Symposium for the twenty-first century, but written for queers, transsexuals, nerds, and book geeks. I'm Very Into You is a text of incipience, a text of beginnings, and a set of notes on the short, shared passage of two iconic individuals of our time.
—from I'm Very into You After Kathy Acker met McKenzie Wark on a trip to Australia in 1995, they had a brief fling and immediately began a heated two-week email correspondence. Their emails shimmer with insight, gossip, sex, and cultural commentary. They write in a frenzy, several times a day; their emails cross somewhere over the International Date Line, and themselves become a site of analysis. What results is an index of how two brilliant and idiosyncratic writers might go about a courtship across 7,500 miles of airspace—by pulling in Alfred Hitchcock, stuffed animals, Georges Bataille, Elvis Presley, phenomenology, Marxism, The X-files , psychoanalysis, and the I Ching . Their corresepondence is a Plato's Symposium for the twenty-first century, but written for queers, transsexuals, nerds, and book geeks. I'm Very Into You is a text of incipience, a text of beginnings, and a set of notes on the short, shared passage of two iconic individuals of our time.
152 pages, Paperback
First published March 6, 2015
49 people are currently reading
2050 people want to read
About the author
Kathy Acker
84 books1,197 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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 128 reviews
September 14, 2015
not sure wark understands simpsons or beavis and butthead
May 2, 2016
This was really fun, though you have to go in with the right mindset. It *is* just a lift of a couple week's emails between two authors romantically circling one another, so you have to be willing to be patient when the text is not so sparkling or, shall we say, revelatory. The messages are occasionally painfully posturing and grad-school cool (I mean, you have two experimental writers thrusting their plumage at each other... what do you expect?), and there are probably too many references to literary theorists that I don't have the patience to actually read anymore (except for Judith Butler, who I will read any day of the week, still).
But it's lovely when you get a peek at the scared little humanity of them: "But now I imagine I can sense you hiding, a perpetual motion machine in my hands, between the lines."
"It's the lying half awake, in the morning with someone, that I like best. Like happy mammals."
"It's interesting how the value of the past with someone depends on how much they keep faith with that shared past."
And this description of why Acker felt she couldn't go to political functions makes me laugh: "My earrings would make too much noise."
But it's lovely when you get a peek at the scared little humanity of them: "But now I imagine I can sense you hiding, a perpetual motion machine in my hands, between the lines."
"It's the lying half awake, in the morning with someone, that I like best. Like happy mammals."
"It's interesting how the value of the past with someone depends on how much they keep faith with that shared past."
And this description of why Acker felt she couldn't go to political functions makes me laugh: "My earrings would make too much noise."
Read
February 20, 2015Cari Luna (author of "The Revolution of Every Day") and I had an email correspondence about this book of collected emails between Kathy Akcer and Ken Wark. We talked about privacy, literary persona, and posthumous publication. It's a fascinating book that I personally found somewhat problematic. You can read the full email review at Electric Literature: http://electricliterature.com/im-very...
Read
January 3, 2023This book sucks.
Kathy Acker is the best of all time, but Mackenzie Wark is just the worst. She's so self-satisfied with her limp critiques and theatre scrim-thin engagement with queerness and otherness, and at one point she starts talking about "racism" against (white!) Australians (vis a vis Rupert Murdoch!) Jesus.
Can we all just admit how lame and boring Semiotext(e) is at this point?
2023 Update: Wark has transitioned so I edited my use of pronouns but left my embarrassing misapprehension of her queerness for posterity. This book still sucks, though!
Kathy Acker is the best of all time, but Mackenzie Wark is just the worst. She's so self-satisfied with her limp critiques and theatre scrim-thin engagement with queerness and otherness, and at one point she starts talking about "racism" against (white!) Australians (vis a vis Rupert Murdoch!) Jesus.
Can we all just admit how lame and boring Semiotext(e) is at this point?
2023 Update: Wark has transitioned so I edited my use of pronouns but left my embarrassing misapprehension of her queerness for posterity. This book still sucks, though!
April 25, 2015
Creeping on a couple's love letters? Yes please.
It's even more interesting when the two participants are no modern Heloise and Abelard but much more complex, and well modern in the sense that their discussions of gender, culture, and their relationship are something that at least I haven't seen published as letters before. I'm even more impressed that this was published when one of the correspondents was still alive, since these are also deeply personal.
It's even more interesting when the two participants are no modern Heloise and Abelard but much more complex, and well modern in the sense that their discussions of gender, culture, and their relationship are something that at least I haven't seen published as letters before. I'm even more impressed that this was published when one of the correspondents was still alive, since these are also deeply personal.
January 7, 2018
The book--more accurately an archive of email correspondence between the late Kathy Acker and Mckenzie Wark--opens with a letter from Wark, stamped 8 August 1995, to which Acker replies the day before, 7 August. This isn't science fiction but a trans-romance, a courtship across 10,000 miles of land and sea, and 15 hours of time difference. Acker and Wark's long distance relationship is unapologetic for its virtuality; in fact, it flourishes in ideas and imagination. Notwithstanding pornography, polyamory, and constant digressions into fist fucking, at the heart of the exchange is an unadulterated curiosity the writers have for one another that is quite childlike. Acker pleads, "do be my friend"; Wark: "Of course I'll be your friend." There is something pure about the hook-up. From brutally honest truth questions, "What turns you on in women when you're in bed with one?" "What do you like best sexually?" to "explain Blanchot to me," there is not enough distance between them for shyness. Both are eager to admit confusion, that they are sorry when they do not understand, that they are lonely.
A decade before Claudia Rankine's Don't Let Me Be Lonely, Wark and Acker were already well versed on the matter: Loneliness is what we can't do for each other. So they talk at length about themselves through anecdotes and theories. That way, any doubt between the lovers is mitigated by intellectual sparring, and, conversely, any disagreement in theoretical understanding is hushed by an "I miss you" of sort. (Note: the email thread with the subject title "the important stuff" ends with the eponymous line, I'm very into you.)
What is evident is the refusal of both parties tocommit converge. For there is no need to get to the specific. No need to put a label to the state of their affairs. This extends to the way in which the writers view the world and the queer politics of the day. For them, there is no sense of distinctions--be they man/woman, top/bottom, straight/gay. The clearer the lines, the more exclusive a group becomes. Difference is well respected, but differentiation leads to demarcation leads to distinction. One is set apart from another and therein is the genesis of hierarchy.
Zero faith in differentiation does not stop Acker and Wark from flirting with categories. To Wark, Acker beseeches, "How to give the best blow-jobs? Guys are good at that." The response is a "not often very dick-centred" one, but it reminisces the couple's sexual encounters. They weave in and out of strongholds and dance on the lines between separates. Beginnings and ends are unimportant; salutes and sex aren't too. As Wark puts it, "Sometimes the flirting is as good as it gets. The sheer unlimited possibility of it..."
At the end of the two-week correspondence, virtuality gives way to tactility in a copy of Acker's drawing to Wark inserted just before the last email. The doodles are clumsy and the scribblings fall short of her lengthy ruminations. The childishness is consistent, though too real and confronting for the reader. It almost makes one want to nosedive into the virtual world again, never mind what happened to the relationship afterwards. The desire to be swept up by the emails is not nostalgic, neither is the virtual world one of memory. It was Acker who wrote that memory is redundant. I'm Very Into You does not chase or revive the memory of love. It is interested in the medium of love.
A decade before Claudia Rankine's Don't Let Me Be Lonely, Wark and Acker were already well versed on the matter: Loneliness is what we can't do for each other. So they talk at length about themselves through anecdotes and theories. That way, any doubt between the lovers is mitigated by intellectual sparring, and, conversely, any disagreement in theoretical understanding is hushed by an "I miss you" of sort. (Note: the email thread with the subject title "the important stuff" ends with the eponymous line, I'm very into you.)
What is evident is the refusal of both parties to
Zero faith in differentiation does not stop Acker and Wark from flirting with categories. To Wark, Acker beseeches, "How to give the best blow-jobs? Guys are good at that." The response is a "not often very dick-centred" one, but it reminisces the couple's sexual encounters. They weave in and out of strongholds and dance on the lines between separates. Beginnings and ends are unimportant; salutes and sex aren't too. As Wark puts it, "Sometimes the flirting is as good as it gets. The sheer unlimited possibility of it..."
At the end of the two-week correspondence, virtuality gives way to tactility in a copy of Acker's drawing to Wark inserted just before the last email. The doodles are clumsy and the scribblings fall short of her lengthy ruminations. The childishness is consistent, though too real and confronting for the reader. It almost makes one want to nosedive into the virtual world again, never mind what happened to the relationship afterwards. The desire to be swept up by the emails is not nostalgic, neither is the virtual world one of memory. It was Acker who wrote that memory is redundant. I'm Very Into You does not chase or revive the memory of love. It is interested in the medium of love.
December 23, 2015
MIT Press describes this publication of e-mail correspondence between Kathy Acker and MacKenzie Wark as "a Plato’s Symposium for the twenty-first century, but written for queers, transsexuals, nerds, and book geeks. I’m Very Into You is a text of incipience, a text of beginnings, and a set of notes on the short, shared passage of two iconic individuals of our time." Quite frankly, it wasn't this. Anyone reading this short text with such elevated expectations is bound to be profoundly disappointed. These e-mails contain a lot of academic and sexual posturing that comes across like a performance or a forced gymnastic--theoretical name-dropping without relevant attachment to real ideas. (And yeah, I use the word "real" with some Platonic trepidation.) Acker's repeated protestations of tiredness, of drunkeness seem... less than iconic after a while. Yet, despite these complaints, I did find this interesting at times-- and felt that John Kinsella's afterward definitely integrated and advanced this problematic text for me in a way that made this book "seem" much more than its rather meager epistolary parts.
May 25, 2015
I hadn't heard of Kathy Acker or McKenzie Wark, but how could I not want to read an intimate romantic/sexual/platonic, philosophical, cultural email exchange between two writers?
Being not well versed in philosophy or gender theory, most of what wasn't directly about Acker and Wark gingerly figuring out and expressing their feelings towards each other went over my head. But voyeuristically following the more personal parts of their exchanges was very addictive - like 84 Charing Cross road, only with more talk about fisting and trying to piss and come at the same time.
Being not well versed in philosophy or gender theory, most of what wasn't directly about Acker and Wark gingerly figuring out and expressing their feelings towards each other went over my head. But voyeuristically following the more personal parts of their exchanges was very addictive - like 84 Charing Cross road, only with more talk about fisting and trying to piss and come at the same time.
January 27, 2023
I love email
December 13, 2025
McKenzie Wark mandando isto ao día seguinte de pasar unha noite con Kathy Acker... Amamos as intensas. Basada. Pilla a fucking vibra. Así sí.
“But I certainly won't forget that I enjoyed being with you. The shared intimacies of body, mind and spirit: it's such a fleering thing, so singular. I think we're probably both pretty solitary in our own ways, but for a slice our of time we were singular together. There are no words. I just want to say there are no words. I'm glad you came; and I'm glad you came”.
Son tan graciosas, tan intensas e ligan tan ben. Hai moita conversa sobre filosofía e libros, pero non é tan interesante o que propoñen como filosofía —non deixa de ser unha correspondencia casual, íntima, ordinaria; nada semellante a un congreso—, pero é fascinante como podes sentir a atracción na súa maneira de falar de cultura. Pasa, polo menos a min pásame demasiado, que namoro fácil e son conquistada rapidamente pola forma na que as persoas falan do mundo e demostran un coñecemento sincero sobre el.
Pasei un rato espectacular.
“It's very simple really: if I'm in SF, I want to see *you*, I want to sleep with *you*. I want a little more of that intimacy, and the *possibility* of sex. If I was sounding evasive or something, I'm sorry about that. [...] I want to know you. I want to find a territory with you. I'm not sure what it is, but I want to find ft”.
(Cando Wak envíalle unha letra de Portishead tamén peguei un grito.)
“But I certainly won't forget that I enjoyed being with you. The shared intimacies of body, mind and spirit: it's such a fleering thing, so singular. I think we're probably both pretty solitary in our own ways, but for a slice our of time we were singular together. There are no words. I just want to say there are no words. I'm glad you came; and I'm glad you came”.
Son tan graciosas, tan intensas e ligan tan ben. Hai moita conversa sobre filosofía e libros, pero non é tan interesante o que propoñen como filosofía —non deixa de ser unha correspondencia casual, íntima, ordinaria; nada semellante a un congreso—, pero é fascinante como podes sentir a atracción na súa maneira de falar de cultura. Pasa, polo menos a min pásame demasiado, que namoro fácil e son conquistada rapidamente pola forma na que as persoas falan do mundo e demostran un coñecemento sincero sobre el.
Pasei un rato espectacular.
“It's very simple really: if I'm in SF, I want to see *you*, I want to sleep with *you*. I want a little more of that intimacy, and the *possibility* of sex. If I was sounding evasive or something, I'm sorry about that. [...] I want to know you. I want to find a territory with you. I'm not sure what it is, but I want to find ft”.
(Cando Wak envíalle unha letra de Portishead tamén peguei un grito.)
October 31, 2024
very enjoyable in a voyeuristic way
July 20, 2017
Two writers have a three-night stand in Australia and go back to their relative countries; one gets in touch with the other and thus begins a hectic fortnight of back-and-forth emails in which two people who obviously like each other talk about anything but their feelings. This book prints those emails, and the result in one of the most engrossing, messy, romantic, modern love stories I've ever read. Actual novels have a lot to learn from this book.
Read
April 16, 2025i feel like it's immoral to give a star rating to people's emails so i won't - anyway loved this. felt like a freak for reading it even though it's mostly theory lol
March 29, 2019
wow wow wow. This blew me away. If you like reading about gender, or pop culture, or postmodern theory, or political theory; if you want to hear the 90s through the perspective of people who lived it and saw our current political climate with prescient clarity, this is the book for you. I loved it and I want everyone I know to read it. One word of warning: it’s a little slow to start - stick with it, it’s so rewarding.
February 17, 2023
"Про гетеродерьмо. Игры. Верхний/нижний — это постельные игры. Кто кого фистит. За пределами постели у меня своя жизнь, а у тебя своя. И я ненавижу блядские игры власти за пределами постели, мне не интересно в этом участвовать."
January 14, 2021
"If you wanted to know how brainy nerds of a certain period fall into courtship, this is your book."
January 20, 2025
I love email
Very enjoyable in a voyeuristic way, and I understood 1 in every 250 literary references
Very enjoyable in a voyeuristic way, and I understood 1 in every 250 literary references
July 27, 2024
ich will auch kluge mails schreiben und sex haben :(
January 9, 2025
so so fascinating and a little bit scary to read these two typing at each other, a little shy of 30 years ago now. augh. so many different ways to take it all.
the easiest and perhaps most boring…the politics of it all, america vs australia, the new left and the neo cons and all that. im not one for political history and certainly know nothing about australia, so i suppose it was kind of interesting to see how the politics were politiking 30 years ago.
somewhat related, sliding more into the personal — the queer politics, or i suppose general understanding and verbiage of identity and queerness and especially the part about “bi”, that was super interesting to see how much is the same and how much has changed. to slide more into the personal (and now i’m talking about slipping and doing the parentheses too, acker is such a stylistic delight) it’s also so so interesting to see the way the two of them grapple (grapple!) with identity and all the dualities. just, so fascinating to see how they see themselves but through my modern lens of how i understand gender discourse today.
okay, and i guess that slides (or slips) directly into the main event, which is the whole choreography between the two of them. i really liked the afterword as a summary of this whole orbit. its just, so fascinating how the two of them hold their own against each other, and how acker reads so forwardly, and wark reads so polite and held back, and all the tension and pushing and pulling and negotiating. negotiating. negotiating the territory, that’s what it is. and how messy and vulnerable acker is about it, and how awkward but trying wark is about it. that’s the scary part, i guess, that it feels so much more Real and True because of how messy and humiliating and awkward and back and forth and vulnerable and imperfect it all is. the scary part is i see so much of myself in both of them, or i guess i recognize parts of myself in them both, in acker’s insecure impulses and the desire to be upfront and in wark’s awkwardness and fronting despite (seemingly) wanting to move past it. and i suppose i read into it all what i will.
and its so lovely to see them writing so freely (or at least, with the pretense of freeness) and then to just get these gems of prose out of nowhere. it’s so interesting how they talk theory and books and writers as they circle around talking about themselves, and i guess i was primed for this in the intro but it is so very interesting to see how they cant stop self analyzing even when they’re trying to get to know each other. makes me wonder how much of that is just a medium thing, the train of thought speed of typing and its immediacy on the screen and its one-sidedness i guess lends itself to self analysis much more than in person conversation.
anyways, so much i could say. the other side is my intense curiosity at how these two “successful” people, in my eyes, conduct themselves and professionalize themselves and i guess its funny that acker seems so wild and unrestrained and brash and wark is so relatively buttoned up and doing the politic circuits, and both of them “made it”, in my book, and both of them have these moments of dissatisfaction, or at least acker does I guess and wark is sort of looking at everything as interesting creative fodder. idk. i guess what i mean is that i’m looking as much (or maybe just, as well) for evidence and precedent of how people make a life out of creativity as i am looking for evidence and precedent of how people build relationships.
ANYWAYS. fascinating stuff. i have an acker to read, and i’ve read a wark, but probably should reread that now that i’m in my nonfiction era.
the easiest and perhaps most boring…the politics of it all, america vs australia, the new left and the neo cons and all that. im not one for political history and certainly know nothing about australia, so i suppose it was kind of interesting to see how the politics were politiking 30 years ago.
somewhat related, sliding more into the personal — the queer politics, or i suppose general understanding and verbiage of identity and queerness and especially the part about “bi”, that was super interesting to see how much is the same and how much has changed. to slide more into the personal (and now i’m talking about slipping and doing the parentheses too, acker is such a stylistic delight) it’s also so so interesting to see the way the two of them grapple (grapple!) with identity and all the dualities. just, so fascinating to see how they see themselves but through my modern lens of how i understand gender discourse today.
okay, and i guess that slides (or slips) directly into the main event, which is the whole choreography between the two of them. i really liked the afterword as a summary of this whole orbit. its just, so fascinating how the two of them hold their own against each other, and how acker reads so forwardly, and wark reads so polite and held back, and all the tension and pushing and pulling and negotiating. negotiating. negotiating the territory, that’s what it is. and how messy and vulnerable acker is about it, and how awkward but trying wark is about it. that’s the scary part, i guess, that it feels so much more Real and True because of how messy and humiliating and awkward and back and forth and vulnerable and imperfect it all is. the scary part is i see so much of myself in both of them, or i guess i recognize parts of myself in them both, in acker’s insecure impulses and the desire to be upfront and in wark’s awkwardness and fronting despite (seemingly) wanting to move past it. and i suppose i read into it all what i will.
and its so lovely to see them writing so freely (or at least, with the pretense of freeness) and then to just get these gems of prose out of nowhere. it’s so interesting how they talk theory and books and writers as they circle around talking about themselves, and i guess i was primed for this in the intro but it is so very interesting to see how they cant stop self analyzing even when they’re trying to get to know each other. makes me wonder how much of that is just a medium thing, the train of thought speed of typing and its immediacy on the screen and its one-sidedness i guess lends itself to self analysis much more than in person conversation.
anyways, so much i could say. the other side is my intense curiosity at how these two “successful” people, in my eyes, conduct themselves and professionalize themselves and i guess its funny that acker seems so wild and unrestrained and brash and wark is so relatively buttoned up and doing the politic circuits, and both of them “made it”, in my book, and both of them have these moments of dissatisfaction, or at least acker does I guess and wark is sort of looking at everything as interesting creative fodder. idk. i guess what i mean is that i’m looking as much (or maybe just, as well) for evidence and precedent of how people make a life out of creativity as i am looking for evidence and precedent of how people build relationships.
ANYWAYS. fascinating stuff. i have an acker to read, and i’ve read a wark, but probably should reread that now that i’m in my nonfiction era.
August 9, 2020
это очень хорошо – особенно если читать в период, когда вы в очередной раз вкрашились в прекрасную леди из тиндера и переживаете весь ад отвратительной страсти (так мне не нравится это слово but whatevs)/влюбленности и непоняток.
пьяные сообщения Акер – это моя новая религия. Уорк мне не понравился, потому что это как читать сообщения из тиндера от человека, который сразу хочет обсуждать слишком умные вещи. Акер тоже любит их обсуждать но lowkey и с самоиронией. в философии и около я даже не пыталась разобраться. моменты реальной уязвимости (мне показалось) – те, где они пытаются проговорить, что между ними происходит. боже это настолько интимно, что дискомфортно и хочется закрыть книжку и сказать "ой ой ой кажется я не должна была это видеть".
короче, супер
пьяные сообщения Акер – это моя новая религия. Уорк мне не понравился, потому что это как читать сообщения из тиндера от человека, который сразу хочет обсуждать слишком умные вещи. Акер тоже любит их обсуждать но lowkey и с самоиронией. в философии и около я даже не пыталась разобраться. моменты реальной уязвимости (мне показалось) – те, где они пытаются проговорить, что между ними происходит. боже это настолько интимно, что дискомфортно и хочется закрыть книжку и сказать "ой ой ой кажется я не должна была это видеть".
короче, супер
October 15, 2021
Some serious cringe moments, of not just the cultural variety. I’m certain my 90s email threads would be worse. But I loved it for Acker, who changed my life/mind at the time these emails were written, and I later traced over some of the same spaces, which made it just so meaningful to read.
January 15, 2022
portisheadspace
June 18, 2021
“A deep desire to connect: aerially, rhizomically, physically, textually.”
February 5, 2024
ok... so who wants to write smart and sexy emails with me?
December 16, 2022
"how friends who have just become friends position themselves for love."
Beautiful epistolary exchange between two icons. From Bataille and Blanchot to Beavis and Butthead, Kathy Acker and McKenzie Wark blaze through the academic (despite Acker's protests of, 'this isn't a very academic email') and the gossip of everyday. It is fascinating to read this testament to a recently defunct time; the era of email, an actualised postal service, still foreign to the world of instant messaging. The form yields itself to easy reading regardless of the heady topics the two thinkers take on at times.
Ultimately throughout these emails we have two queers talking queerness and their discomfort with labels: gay, bi, boy, girl. Acker veers towards the masculine ('sometimes I fetishise the masculine... spreading legs and drinking beer and grunting...and sweating and being stupid and rubbing your crotch...it turns me on. Must be sort of a mirror...(Am I being clear?) I've got to get over my fears around the feminine...oh all this shitty past...the sexist society past'), Wark, is uncomfortable with the masculine (Wark says of himself - 'I'm not often dick-cenetred these days when I get horny').
As these two try to draw out their three-night fling they talk about their sexual history, past relationships and attempt to bridge the gap of space and time that separates them. They try to forge a common (although community is a concept discussed at length through Bataille and Blanchot) language.
Beautiful epistolary exchange between two icons. From Bataille and Blanchot to Beavis and Butthead, Kathy Acker and McKenzie Wark blaze through the academic (despite Acker's protests of, 'this isn't a very academic email') and the gossip of everyday. It is fascinating to read this testament to a recently defunct time; the era of email, an actualised postal service, still foreign to the world of instant messaging. The form yields itself to easy reading regardless of the heady topics the two thinkers take on at times.
Ultimately throughout these emails we have two queers talking queerness and their discomfort with labels: gay, bi, boy, girl. Acker veers towards the masculine ('sometimes I fetishise the masculine... spreading legs and drinking beer and grunting...and sweating and being stupid and rubbing your crotch...it turns me on. Must be sort of a mirror...(Am I being clear?) I've got to get over my fears around the feminine...oh all this shitty past...the sexist society past'), Wark, is uncomfortable with the masculine (Wark says of himself - 'I'm not often dick-cenetred these days when I get horny').
As these two try to draw out their three-night fling they talk about their sexual history, past relationships and attempt to bridge the gap of space and time that separates them. They try to forge a common (although community is a concept discussed at length through Bataille and Blanchot) language.
December 12, 2021
pure, lurid gossip. deliciously voyeristic and compelling to read two very intellectual creative egos in the careful but romantically and sexually intense process of getting to know each other via text, as one would imagine. so many layers of emotional and intellectual negotiation, of posturing and vulnerability. delivered on its premise heartily.
something unfortunate is that i'm now reading mckenzie wark's "reverse cowgirl", and honestly, the form of her writing here, trying to woo kathy acker, is more engaging and evocative than in the new book. both flit in a similar way from personal exposition to theory to reference, but here more is left to the enquiring mind, the juxtaposition feels alive. i guess this is a premature double book review, but serves perhaps as a reminder that trying to seduce your reader is a reliable starting point, at least, for engaging prose
something unfortunate is that i'm now reading mckenzie wark's "reverse cowgirl", and honestly, the form of her writing here, trying to woo kathy acker, is more engaging and evocative than in the new book. both flit in a similar way from personal exposition to theory to reference, but here more is left to the enquiring mind, the juxtaposition feels alive. i guess this is a premature double book review, but serves perhaps as a reminder that trying to seduce your reader is a reliable starting point, at least, for engaging prose
Read
September 9, 2018Good for fans, mostly throwing names and talking half-assedly about this and that. It feels like overhearing a routine conversation between two intelligent person. good for picking up the clues and go for more reading.
October 5, 2019
Enthralling at times, nice to be so deep into a relationship like that. Theory is exhausting. Gender discussion good but also exhausting. Favorite passage was the bit about the coordinates, circling around. How much can you like this book so much as appreciate it?????
May 30, 2025
Interesting, definitely have to go into this taking everything as it comes. A window into the short lived email exchanges between two reference filled writers. I would say that I’m into it, but probably not very.
April 29, 2020
Intimate conversation about everything that matters for those two – and you are an occasional bystander who is allowed to quietly listen for a minute.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 128 reviews