#kathyacker

[jukeboxjunk]

(via kathyack-blog-blog)

(from Empire of the Senseless)

[scarletfasinera]

Hi sorry I remembered calvinanddune and went insane. I'm normal again now

[obsessioncollector]

haiiiii peyton ^_^ what were your favorite books this year?

Hiiii Lane!! 🤗💝 I hope you're having a lovely holiday or just a lovely day if you're not celebrating! I am so indecisive when it comes to picking faves so enjoy my non-answer 😊 I'm also going to tag you celia @symptomofloves bc you said you want to see my faves! ❤️

I would say the overarching theme of the year has been longing, desire, eroticism, and obsession, in many manifestations. So I'm going to list a cluster of excellent and often insanity-inducing (compliment!) books that fall into that category, in the order of when I read them (so unranked):

Dennis Cooper — George Miles cycle: THE obsessioncollector saga... Definitely not for everyone bc it's very graphic and upsetting, but he captures the desire for understanding and connection so well. I read it at the beginning of the year so it really set the tone for the year to come.

Mary Gaitskill — Bad Behavior: A story collection! She is one of those writers who articulates things I never realized I feel—reading her is such a revelation!

D.H. Lawrence — The Rainbow; Women in Love: Would transitioning have saved her? I'm kidding but truly he captures the experience of being a teen girl and young woman so well. (These two books are a diptych so I get to lump them together.)

Kathy Acker — In Memoriam to Identity: Read this so you can enjoy the sadly defunct @kathyack-blog-blog 😊 Like Mary Gaitskill in that she captures elements of myself I never knew existed.

Angela Carter — Burning Your Boats: The Collected Stories and The Magic Toyshop: Her most famous work is the story collection The Bloody Chamber, so I also recommend starting there if you want something less daunting than the complete stories. I love Angela Carter! I think I reblogged a gifset of her talking about her work being self-indulgent but she is self-indulgent in the same ways as me! Gothic and elegant and she is such a master of the fairytale/folklore retelling, which I think is so often done in boring and predictable ways.

Edmund White — A Boy's Own Story: All bangers from the very first few pages! Such an eloquent examination of a self-conscious adolescent painfully dedicated to trying to understand himself and others. Reminiscient of that Mishima quote about how he thought he was more mature than the other boys but it was just because he thought about himself more bc he was so insecure </3

And then here are a handful of ones that don't fit into that theme but were nonetheless highlights:

Scholastique Mukasonga — Our Lady of the Nile: Celia is also a Mukasonga fan so you know she has to be good! 😊 This is a collection of interlinked short stories, all set at a Rwandan boarding school. Masterfully combines the more mundane tensions of adolescence with the leadup to the genocide.

Maya Binyam — Hangman: A 2023 release! I don't read many recent releases bc I find it difficult to sift through the hype but I'm so glad I read this one. A treasure and also quite distinctive in terms of the style and structure.

Mae M. Ngai — The Chinese Question: This was my only 5 star nonfiction of the year! Ngai is probably better known for her book about undocumented immigrants in US history, but I read this one bc it was available at my library and it's excellent. It focuses on restrictions on Chinese immigration, both in the US and also South Africa and Australia, around the time of the Gold Rush. Ties into contemporary issues, both in terms of immigration (unsurprisingly) but also in terms of questions of diaspora and cultural identity.

Jhumpa Lahiri — Interpreter of Maladies: I should have read this years ago but I think I unconsciously avoid contemporary writers from bourgeois New England backgrounds bc that's literally me 😭😭😭 Pretty much the platonic idea of a story collection though. All the characters seem so fully realized, in such a small amount of time!

Thomas Mann — Death in Venice and Other Tales: Sometimes people talk about reading to see themselves reflected but Mann is a writer to read if you want to see yourself reflected in the most unflattering light possible 😭 Another writer I'd been putting off for way too long.

Isabella Hammad — Enter Ghost: As I said wrt Angela Carter, I can be wary of anything marketed as a retelling or too intertextual/meta bc I think they're often done poorly, but this is an exception! To be clear, it's not a retelling, but it's centered on a British Palestinian theatre actress who impulsively joins a Palestinian production of Hamlet while visiting her sister. Very intriguing examination of the protagonist trying to understand her own Palestinian identity while also negotiating how to present herself to her family + friends and the world and resists simple dichotomies.

[uququ]

i wish i had a lab or office or something so i could tape the kathyack all singing must now be howling comic onto the door

[transmascreplica]

im so Sober kathyyyyyyyy 😭 kathy ackerrrr @kathyacker

[mielcite]

Kathyack blog blog is one of the. Tumblrs of all time

[art3valence]

"GET RID OF MEANING. YOUR MIND IS A NIGHTMARE THAT HAS BEEN EATING YOU: NOW EAT YOUR MIND.

Kathy Acker

[yourdisappointedarms]

“There are times when the law jeopardizes those who obey it.” #kathyacker #american #novelist #playwright #essayist #readafuckingbook #pussykingofthepirates https://www.instagram.com/p/CGc-czyh6pi/?igshid=wzk3knau1ucy

[greeniezona]

Retellings for #riotgrams! It’s kind of obvious from the covers what each is a retelling of, except for Poor Things, which bills itself a postmodern revision of Frankenstein. I love that these are all female-centric retellings in some way, four of them authored by women, and Gray’s Poor Things replaces Frankenstein’s monster with Bella Baxter, a drowned woman brought back to life with the brain of an infant. Some of my all-time favorite authors on display here! . . #retellings #bookstack #bookdragon #merlinsbooke #janeyolen #greatexpectations #kathyacker #weight #jeanettewinterson #onethousandandonenights #hananalshaykh #alasdairgray #poorthings #booknerd https://www.instagram.com/p/ByiHWG6ARzn/?igshid=127ky4nubzra4

[ginzyblog]

Kathy Acker in Green Room, Detroit Institute of Arts, one night February 1985. We read together with Diane DiPrima -- She writes violent-sexed feminist narratives, parody or imaginative love-torture novels, lives in London, first published chapters of books as pamphlets I found in the mail from Lower East Side New York (photo and caption: Allen Ginsberg, courtesy Stanford University Libraries / Allen Ginsberg Estate) #kathyacker #literary #literature #lowereastside #allenginsberg #poetry #photography #feministart #feminist #BloodandGutsinHighSchool #grovepress #highriskbooks #pussykingofthepirates (at Detroit Institute of Arts) https://www.instagram.com/p/BwaSh2PhaH5/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1u0ujubqagg6j

[alittletoosmarttobestraight]

A good pass time on the train. Glad to read #KathyAcker again after almost 3 years. It’s better when you don’t have a TERF/SWERF lecturing you on her after. . 📖✨🚞 . Photo taken: 19/04/2019 . . . . . #Books #NewYorkCityin1979 #Reading #IndianPacificTrain #Photographs #Instagram #April #Autumn #Cook #Australia #2019 (at Nullarbor) https://www.instagram.com/p/BxJqGcJlUwG/?igshid=270n1f1keruc

[douglasa]

Way back in like 2000 or so I housesat for the constant encouragement with my eventual publishing of my writing and soon great fiend that was and is Amy Scholder (who showed my earliest novels to High Risk, to Chris at Semiotext(e), etc) and I worked on my MFA critical thesis component—Anais Nin Vs. Patti Smith, House of Incest or the Coral Sea?—under a photograph very much like this one just seen again in Karlsruhe, if not this very one...And one of Wojnarowicz.

And even then I knew I was very lucky. All over that x-mas break alone in NYC, even, the big day alone, so what. My bf Brian at the time not yet having split from me, my teacher Colm still championing me, the agent still wanting to rep me...

all this to say that two decades later Amy and I have done a book together, and she is the only remaining constant. And the love of Kathy’s words and all she stood for, even for me who didn’t know her personally. But books are another reality.

Kathy Acker The Last Interview and Other Conversations (Melville House)

Please come out for the release Friday. 11/30/18

nyc bluestockings 6:30 pm we will be joined by

Jen George

Savannah Knoop

Elizabeth Koke

Kay Gabriel

William Johnson

Shaun Cottle-spatari

Pamela Sneed. very grateful

[houseofellington]

book haul. #ruthbaderginsburg #rbg @malala #debbieharry #luigipirandello @susanorlean #kathyacker #womenshistorymonth #bookstagram https://www.instagram.com/p/CMf9tiGJYFS/?igshid=sh9oasuapwi2

[hcdahlem]

L’OBS revient cette semaine sur la réédition de «Sang et stupre au lycée» de Kathy Acker. Amandine Schmitt, qui a mené l’enquête sur ce «puissant classique méconnu», Virginie Despentes ou Chris Kraus sont les dignes descendants de l’Américaine sulfureuse. https://collectiondelivres.wordpress.com/2021/02/23/sang-et-stupre-au-lycee/ #sangetstupreaulycee #KathyAcker #editionslaurenceviallet #hcdahlem #litteratureetrangere #litteratureamericaine #roman https://www.instagram.com/p/CMASunEnOXA/?igshid=1q8s22u4lro70