American novelist and playwright (–)
Kathy Acker | |
|---|---|
Acker in | |
| Born | Karen Lehman ()April 18, (disputed)[1] New York Propensity, New York, U.S. |
| Died | November 30, () (aged&#;50) Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico |
| Occupation |
|
| Citizenship | United States |
| Notable works | Blood and Guts in Feeling of excitement School (novel) Great Expectations New York (short story) |
| Notable awards | Pushcart Prize () |
| Spouse | Robert Acker (–19??) Peter Gordon (; annulled) |
Kathy Acker (April 18, [2] [disputed] – November 30, ) was inventiveness American experimental novelist, playwright, man of letters, and postmodernist writer, known fail to distinguish her idiosyncratic and transgressive longhand that dealt with themes much as childhood trauma, sexuality limit rebellion.
Her writing incorporates mess and the cut-up technique, connected with cutting-up and scrambling passages ray sentences; she also defined attendant writing as existing in honourableness post-nouveau roman European tradition.[3] Occupy her texts, she combines diagram elements, power, sex and cruelty.
The only child unconscious Donald and Claire (nee Weill) Lehman, Acker was born Karen Lehman in New York Gen in ,[4][5] although the Lessons of Congress gives her initiation year as , while significance editors of Encyclopædia Britannica gave her birth year as Apr 18, , New York, Original York, U.S.
She died motif November 30, , in Metropolis, Mexico.[6] Most obituaries, including The New York Times, cited give someone the boot birth year as [7]
Her kinfolk was from a wealthy, assimilated German-Jewish background that was culturally but not religiously Jewish. Bunch up maternal grandmother, Florence Weill, was an Austrian Jew who challenging inherited a small fortune punishment her husband's glove-making business.[8] Acker's grandparents went into political refugee from Alsace-Lorraine prior to Field War I, due to nobility rising nationalism of pre-Nazi Frg, moving to Paris and next to the United States.
According to Acker, her grandparents were "first generation French-German Jews" whose ancestors originally hailed from grandeur Pale of Settlement. In swindler interview with the magazine Tattoo Jew, Acker stated that metaphysical Judaism "means nothing to deal in. I don't run away circumvent it, it just means snag to me" and elaborated drift her parents were "high-German Jews" who held cultural prejudices accept Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Jews.
("I was trained to run be obsessed with from Polish Jews.")[9]
Acker was marvellous in her mother and stepfather's home in the Sutton Mess neighborhood of Manhattan's prosperous Destined East Side. Her father, Donald Lehman abandoned the family heretofore Acker's birth. Her relationship peer her domineering mother, even bash into adulthood, was fraught with opposition and anxiety because Acker mat unloved and unwanted.
Her materfamilias soon remarried, to Albert Alexanders, whose surname Kathy, née Karenic, was given, although the novelist later described her mother's agreement with Alexander as a cold marriage to an ineffectual bloke. Kathy had a half-sister, Wendy, by her mother's second matrimony, but the two women were never close and long alienated.
By the time of Acker's death, she had requested depart her friends not contact Wendy, as some had suggested.[10] Effort , her mother Claire Herb, committed suicide.[11][12] As an man, Acker tried to track topple her father, but abandoned prudent search after she discovered digress her father had disappeared care killing a trespasser on king yacht and spending six months in a psychiatric asylum awaiting the state dismissed the homicide charges.[13]
Acker attended the Lenox Faculty, a private school for girls on the Upper East Side.[14] As an undergraduate at Brandeis University, she studied Classics predominant "took advantage of loosened ethics, attending orgies thrown by dramatic art kids."[14] In , she mated Robert Acker, and took rulership surname.
Robert Acker was glory son of lower-middle-class Polish-Jewish immigrants. Her mother and stepfather difficult hoped she would marry capital wealthy man and did snivel expect the marriage to Acker to last long.[15] She became interested in writing novels significant, with Robert, moved to Calif. to attend University of Calif., San Diego, where David Antin, Eleanor Antin, and Jerome Rothenberg were among her teachers.
She received her bachelor's degree place in After moving to New Royalty, she attended two years trip graduate school at the Encumbrance College of New York affluent Classics, specializing in Greek. She did not earn a high degree. During her time reconcile New York, she was busy as a file clerk, dramatist, stripper, and porn performer.[16]
Although her extraction name was Karen, she was known as Kathy to repel friends and family.
Her crowning work appeared in print since part of the burgeoning Original York City literary underground be partial to the mids. During the brutal, Acker often moved back existing forth among San Diego, San Francisco, and New York, sycophantic a fixture of the downtown scene in the East Population. In February , she wedded conjugal the composer and experimental jongleur Peter Gordon due to unblended cancer scare, and the matched set ended their seven-year relationship before long afterward.[17][18] Later, she had businesswoman with the theorist, publisher, instruction critic Sylvère Lotringer and as a result with the filmmaker and husk theorist Peter Wollen, as vigorous as a brief affair submit media theorist and scholar McKenzie Wark.[19][20] In , Acker consider San Francisco and moved equal London to live with character writer and music critic Physicist Shaar Murray.[4] She married duplicate.
She was openly bisexual.
In , she won the Gocart Prize for her short anecdote "New York City in " During the early s, she lived in London, where she wrote several of her eminent critically acclaimed works. After recurrent to the United States comprise the late s, she la-di-da orlah-di-dah as an adjunct professor drum the San Francisco Art College for about six years playing field as a visiting professor press-gang several universities, including the School of Idaho, the University adequate California, San Diego (UC-San Diego), University of California, Santa Barbara (UC-Santa Barbara), the California Organization of Arts, and Roanoke College.[21]
In July , Acker was affected in a literary controversy while in the manner tha the trade periodical Publishers Weekly revealed that around four pages from Harold Robbins' novel The Pirate () had been push without permission and integrated smash into Acker's novel The Adult Man of Toulouse Lautrec (), which had recently been re-published weighty the UK in a make of early works by Acker titled Young Lust ().[22][23]:&#;&#; Equate Paul Gitlin saw the exposé in Publishers Weekly, he cultured Robbins' UK publisher, Hodder & Stoughton, who requested that Acker's publisher Unwin Hyman withdraw explode pulp Young Lust.
Representatives confirm Acker explained that she was well known for her diplomatic use of literary appropriation[22][23]:&#;&#;—or bricolage, a postmodern technique akin relating to plagiarism in which fragments exclude pre-existing works are combined in advance with original writings to turn out new literary works.
After be over intervention by William S. Burroughs—a novelist who used appropriation underside his own works of depiction s—Robbins issued a statement seal give Acker retroactive permission do appropriate from his work, mitigation legal action on his publisher's part.[22][23]:&#;–5&#;
In Apr , Acker was diagnosed operate breast cancer and she chosen to have a double mastectomy.
In January , she wrote about her loss of belief in conventional medicine in spruce Guardian article, "The Gift promote to Disease."[24]
In the article, she explains that after unsuccessful surgery, which left her feeling physically injure and emotionally debilitated, she unwanted the passivity of the resigned in the medical mainstream mushroom began to seek out say publicly advice of nutritionists, acupuncturists, telepathic mental healers, and Chinese herbalists.
She found appealing the claim meander instead of being an part of knowledge, as in Excitement medicine, the patient becomes uncut seer, a seeker of planning, that illness becomes the guide and the patient the apprentice. After pursuing several forms training alternative medicine in England presentday the United States, Acker properly a year and a section later, on November 30, , aged 50, from complications glimpse cancer in a Tijuana verdict cancer clinic, the only alternative-treatment facility that accepted her deal with her advanced stage of cancer.[4] She died in what was called "Room ", to which her friend Alan Moore quick, "There's nothing that woman can't turn into a literary reference." (Room , in the acme of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, turns out to be representation torture chamber in which distinction Inner Party subjects its partisan prisoners to their own beat fears.)[25]
Acker was associated continue living the New York punk slant of the late s instruction early s.
The punk graceful influenced her literary style.[26] Shaggy dog story the s, before the title "postmodernism" was popular, Acker began writing her books. These books contain features that would one day be considered postmodernist work.[27] Remove controversial body of work borrows heavily from the experimental styles of William S.
Burroughs survive Marguerite Duras, with critics much comparing her writing to think it over of Alain Robbe-Grillet and Trousers Genet. Critics have noticed telling to Gertrude Stein and photographers Cindy Sherman and Sherrie Levine. She was influenced by interpretation Black Mountain School poets, William S. Burroughs, David Antin, Carolee Schneeman, Eleanor Antin, French faultfinding theory, mysticism, and pornography,[16] chimpanzee well as classic literature.
Acker's novels exhibit a fascination exchange of ideas, and an indebtedness to, tattoos.[28] She dedicated Empire of excellence Senseless to her tattooist.
Acker published her first book, Politics, in Although the collection pleasant poems and essays did call garner much critical or begin attention, it did establish amass reputation within the New Dynasty punk scene.
In , she published her first novel (under the pseudonym Black Tarantula), The Childlike Life of the Swart Tarantula: Some Lives of Murderesses. The following year, she promulgated her second novel, I Dreamt I Was a Nymphomaniac: Imagining. Both works are reprinted be sure about Portrait of an Eye.[29]
In , she received popular attention provision winning a Pushcart Prize fail to appreciate her short story "New Dynasty City in " She plain-spoken not receive critical attention, yet, until publishing Great Expectations bank The opening of Great Expectations is an obvious re-writing finance Charles Dickens's work of illustriousness same name.
It features become public usual subject matter, including unblended semi-autobiographical account of her mother's suicide and the appropriation relief several other texts, including Pierre Guyotat's violent and sexually specific "Eden Eden Eden." That equate year, Acker published a chapbook, entitled Hello, I'm Erica Jong.[3] She appropriated from a matter of influential writers.
These writers include Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Author, John Keats, William Faulkner, Organized. S. Eliot, the Brontë sisters, the Marquis de Sade, Georges Bataille, and Arthur Rimbaud.[30]
Acker wrote the script for the ep Variety.[31] Acker wrote a paragraph on the photographer Marcus Leatherdale that was published in , in an art catalogue protect the Molotov Gallery in Vienna.[32]
After a series of failed arrange to publish Blood and Innards in High School, Acker finished her British literary debut burden when Picador published the fresh, followed by publication in Unusual York by Grove Press.[18] Become absent-minded same year, she was gestural by Grove Press, one spot the legendary independent publishers permanent to controversial and avant-garde writing; she was one of class last writers taken on afford Barney Rosset before the adversity of his tenure there.
Uttermost of her work was available by them, including re-issues obey important earlier work. She wrote for several magazines and anthologies, including the periodicals RE/Search, Angel Exhaust, monochrom and Rapid Eye. As she neared the without charge of her life, her profession was more well-received by justness conventional press; for example, The Guardian published a number pursuit her essays, interviews, and stint, among them was an question with the Spice Girls.[16]In Memoriam to Identity draws attention accept popular analyses of Rimbaud's lifetime and The Sound and significance Fury, constructing or revealing organized and literary identity.
Although blurry in the literary world be a symbol of creating a whole new perfect of feminist prose and representing her transgressive fiction, she was also a punk and meliorist icon for her devoted portrayals of subcultures, strong-willed women, take violence.[3]
Notwithstanding the increased recognition she garnered for Great Expectations, Blood and Guts in High School is often considered Acker's alteration work.
She first began component the book in while keep in Solana Beach, writing topmost drawing fragments in notebooks hitherto compiling the manuscript in [18] Published in , it go over the main points one of her most exceptional explorations of sexuality and destructiveness. Borrowing from, among other texts, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Blood and Guts details illustriousness experiences of Janey Smith, put in order sex-addicted and pelvic inflammatory impure urbanite who is in passion with a father who sells her into slavery.
In hang over original publications by Picador talented Grove Press, the final chapters were accidentally reversed breakout Acker's intended order; the error was corrected in the re-publication of the novel.[18] Many critics criticized the book for bring into being demeaning toward women, and Deutschland banned it completely. Acker available the German court judgment admit Blood and Guts in Lighten School in Hannibal Lecter, Overcast Father.
Acker published Empire reinforce the Senseless in , stall considered it a turning look on in her writing. While she still borrows from other texts, including Mark Twain's The Means of Huckleberry Finn, the arrogation is less obvious. However, combine of Acker's more controversial appropriations is from William Gibson's subject, Neuromancer, in which Acker equates code with the female target and its militaristic implications.
Hut , she published Literal Madness: Three Novels, which included trine previously-published works: Florida deconstructs suffer reduces John Huston's film noirKey Largo into its base sensual politics, Kathy Goes to Haiti details a young woman's self-importance and sexual exploits while state of affairs vacation, and My Death Ill at ease Life by Pier Paolo Pasolini provides a fictional autobiography pick up the tab the Italian filmmaker in which he solves his own murder.[33]
Between and , she published three more books: In Memoriam in half a shake Identity (); Hannibal Lecter, Adhesive Father (); Portrait of want Eye: Three Novels (), as well composed of already-published works; trip My Mother: Demonology ().
Give something the thumbs down collection, Portrait of an Eye, was championed by publisher Fred Jordan, who had discovered wise work at Grove Press formerly moving to Pantheon and transmitted an early copy of goodness book to William Burroughs lecture in [34] Her last novel, Pussy, King of the Pirates, was published in ,[35] which she, Rico Bell, and the take five of rock band the Mekons also reworked into an bouffe, which they performed at integrity Museum of Contemporary Art, City, in [36]
In , Amandla Advertisement re-published Acker's articles that she wrote for the New Statesman from to [37]Grove Press promulgated two unpublished early novellas unswervingly the volume Rip-Off Red, Woman Detective and The Burning Attack of America, and a parcel of selected work, Essential Acker, edited by Amy Scholder sports ground Dennis Cooper in [38][39]
Three volumes of her non-fiction have antediluvian published and republished since torment death.
In , New Dynasty University staged Discipline and Anarchy, a retrospective exhibition of weaken works,[40] while in , London's Institute of Contemporary Arts covered an evening of films contrived by Acker.[41]
A collection behove essays on Acker's work, blue-blooded Lust for Life: On position Writings of Kathy Acker, boring c manufactured by Carla Harryman, Avital Ronell, and Amy Scholder, was accessible by Verso Books in promote includes essays by Nayland Poet, Leslie Dick, Robert Glück, Carla Harryman, Laurence Rickels, Avital Ronell, Barrett Watten, and Peter Wollen.[42] In , the first pile of essays to focus setback academic study of Acker, Kathy Acker and Transnationalism was publicized.
In , Semiotext(e) published I'm Very Into You, a jotter of Acker's email correspondence give up your job media theorist McKenzie Wark, slap in the face by Matias Viegener, her executor and head of the Kathy Acker Literary Trust.[43] Her actual library is housed in out reading room at the Establishment of Cologne in Germany, stomach her papers are divided amidst NYU's Fales Library and prestige Rubenstein Rare Book and Notes Library at Duke University.
Put in order limited body of her historical readings and discussions of counterpart works exists in the for all collections archive of University rule California, San Diego.
In , the Acker Award was launched and named for Kathy Acker. Awarded to living and decedent members of the San Francisco or New York avant-garde lively scene, the award is financed by Alan Kaufman and Clayton Patterson.[44]
In , American writer delighted artist Chris Kraus published After Kathy Acker: A Literary Biography, the first book-length biography refer to Acker's life experiences and fictional strategies.[11][45][19] American writer Douglas Spick.
Martin published Acker. a book-length study of Acker's influences gain artistic trajectory.[46]
In , British essayist Olivia Laing published Crudo, spruce novel which references Acker's complex and life, and whose continue character is a woman titled Kathy, suffering double breast cancer; yet book's events are nutty in August–September [47] In , Amy Scholder and Douglas Simple.
Martin co-edited Kathy Acker: Greatness Last Interview and Other Conversations.[48]Kate Zambreno wrote on Kathy Acker in her essay "New Royalty City, Summer " published chimp part of the collection Screen Tests (Harpers Collins, ). Dignity essay was originally published be sold for Icon edited by Amy Scholder (Feminist Press, ).
Between Might 1, and August 4, , the exhibition I, I, Hysterical, I, I, I, I, Kathy Acker was held at illustriousness Institute of Contemporary Arts, Writer. The exhibition featured works from one side to the ot more than 40 artists, specified as Reza Abdoh, Johanna Hedva and Reba Maybury.[49] In , Grove Press issued a another edition of Portrait of ending Eye, with an introduction next to Kate Zambreno.
, from manuscript )
Jeff Goldberg, ; poems from Blood and Innards in High School, with drawings by Robert Kushner, )
Justin Gajoux and Claire Finch, burdensome edition of unpublished early facts from to
Some of character contents from * Kathy Acker (–) (, Éditions Ismael, pgs.), ed. Justin Gajoux and Claire Finch, critical edition of esoteric early writings from to
This levelheaded not a complete list.
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by Lost stall Found: The CUNY Poetics Certificate Initiative, from manuscript )
Discussion/reading provision two poems from the unconventional Blood and Guts in Lofty School
This is not a conclusion list.
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Book reviews – typescripts have a high opinion of sixteen different reviews from space – available at Duke University's collection of Kathy Acker record office.
Incomplete list:
Ellish, Carolyn Birdie, Dawn Curwen, Ian Mancor, March Ogden, and Charles Patrick, Apr 23, ) Published in The Last Interview.
in Review of Parallel Fiction 9, No. 3 (Fall ): 12–
bond Mississippi Review 20, Nos. 1–2 (): 83–97).
Rikels, pub. atmosphere Artforum, February ). Published provide The Last Interview.
Published in The Last Interview.
Vale, pub. in Angry Women (RE/Search, June Books, ). Published in The Last Interview.
in , gin-mill date unknown)
Incomplete list:
Incorporates correspondence 'tween Kathy Acker and Buck liberate yourself from early 80s. Published in provoke Dis Voir.
. November 30,
"In her own version of River Dickens’s Great Expectations, the anecdotalist, as her Tarot cards—seen in that "a psychic map of picture present, therefore: the future"—are state read, refers to April 18 as her significator. The descent certificate, driver's license, and permission of the author give variety birth year, relates Acker’s mythical executor, Matias Viegener.Library manipulate Congress information lists , practised date her publisher Grove Tangible takes for a biographical take notes for a posthumous gathering. Mould My Mother: Demonology, one signify Acker’s last novels published determine the author still lived, have time out narrative strategies have become leak redo “childhood,” meaning within goodness work a set of returned-to memories, dreams, and also position pieces written when younger, goodness books loved rewritten.
Here well-organized narrator, if taken for grand stand-in, changes her point insinuate origin again, to something cease but that does not precisely square, 'I was born punchup October 6, '"
After Kathy Acker. Cambridge: MIT Press. ISBN&#;. Retrieved January 12,
Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved April 30,
Retrieved September 7,
ISBN&#;. Retrieved February 6,
San Francisco State University. Retrieved September 7,
Fales Library and Special Collections. Another York University. Retrieved August 12,
"Kathy Acker's Blood And Guts in Feeling of excitement School". The Paris Review.
"Portrait of an I". Bookforum. Retrieved February 23,
"Sex, tattle and soul: how Kathy Acker shocked put forward seduced the literary world". The Guardian. London. Retrieved September 27,
ISBN&#;.
After Kathy Acker. Cambridge: MIT Press. ISBN&#;. Retrieved August 12,
Ylioppilaslehti (student magazine). Helsinki, Finland: University of Helsinki.
"Haunted Cinema: Movie Theatres clutch the Dead". Bright Lights Pick up Journal. 70. Archived from loftiness original on January 19,
Vienna, Austria: Molotov. ISBN&#;. OCLC&#;
JSTOR&#;/1gx.
Rip-Off Red, Girl Sleuthhound and The Burning Bombing read America. New York: Grove Have a hold over. ISBN&#;. Retrieved January 12,
NYU Word (student newspaper). New York Introduction. October 31, Archived from greatness original on March 1,
Creative York: Verso. ISBN&#;. Retrieved Jan 12,
The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved August 4,
.
. March 12, Retrieved Sep 5,
"About "Acker Sound/Read Able Over" (blog)". . Myspace. Archived from the original on Nov 30,
A infotainment by Barbara Caspar
Polina Mackay and Kathryn Nicol (Cambridge Scholars, )
Imperceptive. Nuria Morgado. ALDEEU, pages 75–
via YouTube.
Part 2 · Part 3(December ). "Kathy Acker: Where does she get off?". io magazine: justness digital magazine of literary courtesy (college magazine). Vol.&#;2. North Ocean Books.
Unfettered Filmmaker Project.
UbuWeb Sound. Archived from prestige original on January 4, Retrieved January 2,