Kathy Acker

by Kathy Acker, Justin Gajoux (Editor)

This book is the first attempt to produce a critical edition of a large number of Kathy Acker’s unpublished early works. Apart from the posthumous publication, in 2002, of the early manuscript Rip-off Red, Girl Detective and The Burning Bombing of America: The Destruction of the U.S. by Amy Scholder and Grove Press in one volume, in 2002, as well as Gabrielle Kappes’ chapbook, no other important publication had been attempted in this field.

These – mostly unpublished – texts were all composed between 1969 and 1976. Yet they are representative of Acker’s published output only for the period running from 1971 to early 1974. These texts all exist as “clean” typewritten copies, probably intended to be kept, shown, maybe even published. The editor chose not to include Acker’s manuscripts. The transcriptions in this volume were made directly from the original typescripts. Original pagination, manuscript addenda, missing pages and other idiosyncrasies of each file have been preserved; our editorial notes at the end of the texts all feature a material description of the source version used.

The organization of this volume is chronological. The texts’ respective date of composition is often the result of an estimate based on their content and form (an estimate that is then justified and defended).

Such a collection shows how prolific, diverse and always in-progress Acker’s production was in those years. It isn’t, however, Acker’s complete early works. More typescripts exist at the Fales Library which aren’t featured or alluded to in this book. Their publication and analysis may in the future suggest a whole new set of interpretations that will, or might not, contradict the present editor’s exegesis. Moreover, the comparison of the typescripts with manuscript versions will undoubtedly inspire new perspectives on Acker’s creative process and intentions during those years.

656 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2019

About the author

Born 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.

Reviews

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Largely impenetrable and archival scrap writing. The text here would translate better in a format similar to ‘Kathy Acker: Get Rid of Meaning’, where her notebooks are visually reproduced alongside relatively straightforward biographical material. To have these writings transcribed on the page, paired with needlessly dense supplementary material, divorces them from their context and they fall flat.

However, four stars because this is a beautifully hand-bound, independently published book and certainly of interest for the Acker fan/student/collector. I’m remaining hopeful for a future published anthology of these early writings that is a bit more accessible in both price and content. But, I’m just grateful to have her early writings in hand.