Janey lived in the locked room. Twice a day the Persian slave trader came in and taught her to be a whore. Otherwise there was nothing. One day she...
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reviews
Jan 08, 2012
Ren
rated it: 
I ran into Acker via these kids I lived next door to when I was about 23. They ate a lot of E and Acid. I was listening a lot of Patti Smith and PJ Harvey at the time and they were like "here, Kathy Acker" and I read it and I really liked it. You can analyze Acker's work all you want. I'm sure it's important/powerful/whatever but if you aren't between the ages of lets say 16 and 23 you might miss out on how much brutal fun this book is.
At current, it doesn't rank as somethi More...
At current, it doesn't rank as somethi More...
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Oct 21, 2007
megan
rated it: 
Mr Fuckface: You see, we own the language. Language must be used clearly and precisely to reveal our universe.
Mr Blowjob: Those rebels are never clear. What they say doesn't make sense.
Mr Fuckface: It even goes against all the religions to tamper with the sacred languages.
Mr Blowjob: Without language the only people the rebels can kill are themselves.
I CAN SCRAWL AND I CAN CRAWL I I I I I I I I I
life GLOOGLOOGLOO
FUCK YOU SHIT PISS
Mr Blowjob: Those rebels are never clear. What they say doesn't make sense.
Mr Fuckface: It even goes against all the religions to tamper with the sacred languages.
Mr Blowjob: Without language the only people the rebels can kill are themselves.
I CAN SCRAWL AND I CAN CRAWL I I I I I I I I I
life GLOOGLOOGLOO
FUCK YOU SHIT PISS
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Jan 11, 2009
Stephanie
rated it: 
Absolutely the worst book I have ever read, and I've read a lot of books. This was horrid. The only reason I read it was because it's on the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list, and I am now obsessed with reading every book on the list. Up to this point, it hadn't really steered me wrong. That streak has ended. Honestly, I have no problem with vulgar books, and I don't shy away from books with pornographic material. It wasn't the fact that the main character in this novel was sleeping w
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(4 people liked it)
Nov 30, 2007
Nomy
rated it:
okay a disclaimer. this book is weird and racist and has fucked up incest fantasies and a million things that might make your skin crawl. it's also poetic and experimental in a way that was really inspiring for me as a nineteen year old trying to find my voice. like, none of the rules about writing matter, you can create your own punctuation and grammar, you can change the spelling of your main character's name halfway through, you can explore sexuality in the way it really feels which is not
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May 07, 2008
Kelli
rated it:
ok, so, do you want my honest opinion? well, i'm going to give it to you anyway.
if you really, really like the following words repeated over and over and over until you can't think straight, then this book is for you:
-cunt
-fuck
so i thought there would be more but no, that's really it. basically, it's horrific. it's worth the read if you like to torture yourself, which apparently i do. also, it was recommended as one of those "top 10 books you'v More...
if you really, really like the following words repeated over and over and over until you can't think straight, then this book is for you:
-cunt
-fuck
so i thought there would be more but no, that's really it. basically, it's horrific. it's worth the read if you like to torture yourself, which apparently i do. also, it was recommended as one of those "top 10 books you'v More...
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Nov 20, 2011
Shovelmonkey1
rated it:
Again I turn to the creators and compilers of the 1001 books to read before you die list and ask, "Why?"
Yes, noted scholars, authors and critics who form the all seeing literary eye that is the 1001 books list, "Why do you hate people who read books? And why do you want to punish them so?"
I know the list is supposed to represent many novels, genres and styles not for their likeability but for their uniqueness and their gift to literature and the world at large, More...
Yes, noted scholars, authors and critics who form the all seeing literary eye that is the 1001 books list, "Why do you hate people who read books? And why do you want to punish them so?"
I know the list is supposed to represent many novels, genres and styles not for their likeability but for their uniqueness and their gift to literature and the world at large, More...
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May 13, 2011
Noriyuko 'Pat'
rated it:
Ah Acker! What I love about her, strangely enough, is how weirdly conservative she is! She insists on situating her work within a recognizable American and European literary lineage / heritage (Hawthorne / Genet) and engages in deep conversation with her predecessors, updating and complicating Hawthorne's nascent radical feminism and Genet's outlaw posturing by framing them within the context of the most outlandish anti-heroine imaginable....little Janey, the incestuous, hysterical, passionate f
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Feb 05, 2010
Matt
rated it:
This is another book that I thought I'd never have to read, only to discover that my students might actually get something out of it, so off I fuck.... but unlike August Burroughs, I really liked this one and think it must have been an earthshaking book, and one of those that I probably SHOULD have read a long time ago.
Honest to god, I feel like a whole generation of experimental writers, pretty much the entire FC2 crew and some others, owe their careers to this book and what's in it. More...
Honest to god, I feel like a whole generation of experimental writers, pretty much the entire FC2 crew and some others, owe their careers to this book and what's in it. More...
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May 30, 2009
Kerfe
rated it: 
Is this pornographic? The sex is here, but it doesn't seem real, even with graphic illustrations. From incest to sex slavery, I'm sure it's supposed to be symbolic in some way. Acker's character Janey is an amplification of the sense of oppression and misunderstanding adolescents feel, with political ramifications--the exploitation of women by men, the destructive power of money, poverty, drugs--but it's all dreamlike, an exaggerated fantasy of the adolescent mind, an acting-out through a com
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Sep 18, 2009
Jennifer
rated it: 
Here's a polarizing one, huh? I read some Acker in college - you know, back when my hair was purple, my stereo was screaming with angry grrrl singers, and the world was just. not. ready. for. my. brilliance! I liked it then. It felt subversive and important. In fact, it felt a whole lot like all the shit I woke up at 5pm and read that I wrote on a youthful rebellious cocaine binge when I was about 19 years old. Bad words, sex, cunt, piss, shit, run on sentences, angst angst angst.
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Mar 10, 2009
Zelda
rated it:
I'm on the fence about this one. I'm appreciative of all the space she opens up in terms of form/structure and not being bound by conventional expectations of narrative (plot/character); of the dialogue she's in with American Lit (Hawthorne) and the classics and contemporary lit. theory. I'm unclear whether she actually succeeds in subverting the objectification of women & sex as commodities or whether she ends up reinforcing them to the extent that every interaction in the book is sexualized.
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Sep 18, 2011
Tessa
rated it:
Blood and Guts opens with ten-year-old Janey Smith barricading her front door because she suspects her father (“boyfriend, brother, sister, money, amusement and father”) of sleeping with another woman. Once this nasty little incest narrative is established, we are flung into a mish-mash of words, languages, genres and styles which leaves the reader totally confounded and with no idea what is supposed to be going on. A thin plotline can be extricated from this mess: Janey leaves her home in Mexic
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Nov 04, 2011
Anselm
rated it:
This book makes most of the work I read that's supposed to be edgy or transgressive come off like elmo's song from sesame st.
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Dec 07, 2011
Erica
rated it:
I read this book because it's featured in "1001 books to read before you die", a list which I have become obsessed with completing. Never before has the list let me down so much... I love a good anti-novel. I'm all up for some experimentalist literature. But what is this? I read several criticisms of the book all proclaiming feminist motivies... but I didn't even find that. Please, someone explain to me the literary value of this book. If I owned the copy I read, I would have defaced i
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Jul 11, 2011
Alyx
rated it:
Having read around Kathy Acker for years because of her influence on riot grrrl, I thought it was time to delve into her literary work and figured her best-known novel was a good entry point. I totally get why Kathleen Hanna recently celebrated her on her blog for Mother's Day. Touchstone riot grrrl themes abound--monstrous infantilization, reinvention, gender trouble, incest, the problematics of hero worship--all of which can either be read literally or as a metaphor for the power dynamics of m
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Jul 03, 2009
Melanie
rated it:
Sometimes I wonder if there's something wrong with my brain, or at least with my memory/reading comprehension/retention abilities. This happens when I read multiple works by the same author in a short period of time; I go on a spree, devouring everything I can find by a particular writer, and at some point, I'll find myself unable to tell one book from another. It doesn't seem to be related to the quality of the author's work--I've experienced this sensation with feline-centric mystery novels p
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Sep 15, 2008
Celestthebest
rated it:
I found this, and two other books, abandoned in my campsite at the Sand Dunes in Colorado, otherwise I would never have intentionally picke a book like this to read...
This is a fictional autobiography about a girl named Janey Smith. Janey's mom dies while she's a baby, leaving her with her dad. Her dad becomes her sexual partner early on. She is promiscuous with many in their small town in Mexico. When she is 10, her father gets an adult g.f. and sends Janey off to boarding school More...
This is a fictional autobiography about a girl named Janey Smith. Janey's mom dies while she's a baby, leaving her with her dad. Her dad becomes her sexual partner early on. She is promiscuous with many in their small town in Mexico. When she is 10, her father gets an adult g.f. and sends Janey off to boarding school More...
Sep 03, 2007
Rob
rated it:
Reading context: during the 2000-2001 period I am frantically working my way through my SMP at SMCM, writing 5-10 pages per day (on a good day) of new material (most of which will be culled) and reading approx. 20 pages per day of novels (or essays by those novelists) plus 10-20 pages per day of essays/book chapters on post-modernism. And 3 other classes worth of reading, writing, and class attendance. Advisor JK slips this title to me and says that if since I've mentioned I'm looking to do in
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Jul 19, 2011
S.B.
rated it:
Before, I thought people read books by this woman just to be able to scream in other people's faces, "I've read Kathy Acker!" Turns out, it's just a normal side effect. I can't say I liked every bit of this book, [who likes translating Persian poetry?] but I liked that it was different and non-boring. It will make you want to re-read The Scarlett Letter with freshened eyes (for the 3rd time) and subvert the patriarchy.
Quote:
"I think most writers are crazy 'cause the More...
Quote:
"I think most writers are crazy 'cause the More...
Jun 10, 2011
Clayton
rated it:
Read this for a women writers course at the UNiversity at Buffalo. This is not your average novel. At first it was difficult to get past the shock value woven into the incestous, and highly sexualizeds dialogue taking place bewteen a preteen girl and her "boyfriend/father?" You'll have to read to understand. Acker takes some familiar cliches and forms, feeds them to you, and makes you want to spit them up as you're reading.
Jul 22, 2009
I really expected to like this book, but just couldn't get into it. Like her mentor Burroughs, or his buddy Brion Gysin, the theory behind Acker's literature is compelling, but the product really isn't--at least not for long (I quit after 50 pages, twice). I admire this stuff--it's punk as fuck, so how can I not?--but don't necessarily devour it. I'm sure I'll give Blood and Guts another shot, but it's not too high on the list.
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Aug 04, 2010
Elisia
rated it:
Kathy Acker’s Blood and Guts in High School uses abstract art in the form of images, blunt language, seemingly disconnected thoughts and ideas, and plagiarism to introduce readers to her character Janey’s reality. Acker’s functions of plagiarism of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter are essential to connecting readers with Janey’s perceptions of American culture in order to evaluate their response to people like her. Plagiarism also functions to provide enough reader-comfort by breaking r
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Jan 04, 2012
Janet
rated it:
It took me ages to realise that Kathy Acker was funny. In fact, it took until I saw her read from Pussy, King of the Pirates during my university honours year. When she read her work aloud, it was SO funny. So I went back and re-read what I had previously experienced in a terribly earnest, feminist, post-structuralist way, and I finally got the jokes. Much better that way.
Jun 02, 2008
Carolanne
rated it:
I can't do it! I don't think I can finish this book. Its so wrong and sick and gross. the first like 15 pages are all about how she has sex with her dad. and there are pictures in it of penis ejaculating and vaginas and stuff. its seriously is fucked up. I can't believe I have to read this for SCHOOL. I don't see any educational purposes at all. Its really really grossing me out. and its all weird written so I don't really know what the hell we are supposed to be grasping from it.
But I re More...
But I re More...
Nov 21, 2010
Birdlashes
rated it:
Tradition of Burroughs--collage, illustration, dream maps, stream of consciousness. An incredible book--an experience. Janey the victim/hero in a dream quest--bad break ups, gang warfare, intellectual rebirth, sex slavery, a quest for the holy book.
Mar 28, 2010
Mac
rated it:
Extreme ambivalence: At times brilliant, at times the worst kind of angsty. I don't know, it tries to shock its reader, and succeeds - but I'm not sure that's enough of a goal for me. Still, as "difficult" as the book is, there's something definitely there to keep me interested. Could've used more of The Clash and less of GG Allin, but still something to behold.
Feb 10, 2010
Katherine
rated it:
One of my most favorite people in the world gave me this book...white in high school. It's a harsh one, not a light 'fun' read that's for sure. But as 'counterculture' literature goes,I'll take it over the beat poets anyday.
The one thing that many people miss in this is the humor, dark though it may be.
The one thing that many people miss in this is the humor, dark though it may be.
Jun 23, 2011
Katie
rated it:
i'm sure this was revolutionary in 1978, but from here it just looks like some more postmodern bullshit. there is a limit to the amount of patience i can muster for reading 16 lines of the word "no" in between some cartoon drawings of a vulva.
Aug 13, 2010
courtney
rated it:
I read this book as part of a class on non-traditional narrative fiction I took in college, and it has remained on of "those" books long since. Yes, it is explicit. Yes, it is hard to stomach. Yes, it was written by a radical feminist who was known for masturbating while typing her novels, and yes, part of it is in Farsi. BUT it is a book that will stick with you - something you'll recommend to other bibliophiles out there for years after you read it, even if you aren't particularl
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