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Portrait of an Eye: Three Novels

September 20, 2015 / posted in images of being-human, reviews / No Comments

Portrait of an Eye: Three NovelsPortrait of an Eye: Three Novels by Kathy Acker
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is an author finding her voice. There are brief moments of insight, tantalizing bits of sublime work, but mostly repetitious, meandering cut ups and pastes of various sorts. As Acker says in an interview (and so Zizek and Lacan would agree) the erotica is not erotica! If the text speaks of something else, it’s obviously sexual, but if it’s sexual then it’s obviously something else. So you can read this as a tear-down of power relations, of the attempt to break out of family-oedipal narratives, of the whole rigmarole. Does she succeed? Is she able to find a new space? It doesn’t seem so with these texts.

Definitely for the die hard Acker fan.

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Hannibal Lecter, My Father

July 29, 2015 / posted in art, images of being-human, reviews, Theory / No Comments

Hannibal Lecter, My FatherHannibal Lecter, My Father by Kathy Acker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I agree with much of the other commentators. The interview at the beginning was well worth the read. The selection of other works afterwards appear to be padding to exemplify the interview and also by giving us more of Acker’s work, but of works that may be less known.

Still, her methodology and philosophy come together in her interview and presents itself as a force. At first a critique, and then with the yet to be Pussy: King of the Pirates the making of a new mythology. Acker did manage to mature as a writer, not to destroy and create but to end with creating.

In some ways, I wish I read this first, before reading some of her other works, especially when she was churning them out in a way, the same book over and over at some point in the middle there.

It is telling to see how as a mere writer, she was able to provoke so much “bad touch” in the areas of culture, when government and legislation were involved. We cannot hide from that which we do not understand only because there is so much more we do not, cannot understand.

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