I dreamt I was a nymphomaniac imagining

Portrait of an Eye #2

by Kathy Acker, Michael McClard (Illustrator)

Originalmente publicado em 1974, o livro é escrito em primeira pessoa. “Meu nome é Kathy Acker. A história começa comigo totalmente entediada”, logo declara a autora. E sua prosa é escrita no ritmo do pensamento, por isso convoca quem lê a embarcar em sua viagem vertiginosa. Conforme um sonho se repete também são parágrafos inteiros que reaparecem, em um exercício literário no qual conteúdo e forma são inseparáveis um do outro.

A cada capítulo, Acker já não é ela mesma, e as personagens nas quais se converte contam suas histórias de prazeres, vícios, delírios. Nesse sentido, mais do que produzir um discurso supostamente verdadeiro sobre sexualidades, o livro experimenta múltiplas possibilidades do corpo, do gênero e da linguagem.

E para quem espera uma escrita frenética sobre prazeres, o livro surpreende. Acker consegue articular sua experimentação a cenários muitas vezes compostos por instituições disciplinares — escolas, hospitais, prisões — que modulam os desejos e possibilidades de nossas vidas. Parece ser, pois, de suas amarras que a autora busca escapar.

114 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

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

[Nate D]

Acker's second published novel, similarly cut up and recombine from diverse sources like my favorite sequence from Moravagine and a probably not-so-changed report on questionable prison policies with the names of semi-recurring characters subbed in. For some reason, though this was as choppy and non-linear as Acker's prior The Childlike Life of the Black Tarantula, it had more sustained sections of genuine narrative intrigue, which I KNOW, why am I looking for narrative intrigue in Acker, but some of the Peter sections were pretty great, even when they fractured into repetition and some kind of science discussion. Interesting.

[Steven Godin]

"I'm the Chinese wood comb running through her curly hair. I'm the bra which outlines her delicate breasts. I'm the transparent net of her sleeves. The dress swishing around her upper legs. The silk stocking of her thigh. The heel which lies beneath her. The puff she uses after she bathes. The salt of her armpits. I sponge off her clammy parts. I'm wet and tender. I'm her hand that does what she needs. I don't exist. I'm her chair, her mirror, her bathtub. I know all of her perfectly as if I'm the space around her. I'm her bed."

[Andrew]

I was ready to give this one or two stars with those annoying repetitive parts in the first few sections. I get that it served a purpose, but I think it's a dumb method to get that point across, at least for such an extended use of it.

Other than that, this book felt like a weird series of unrelated events. Acker seeking her way through her sexuality and her desires based on the traumas of her past, relating the things she's going through in the moment to societal and trends and wrongs. There are some of her best passages yet up to this point in her writing, but then stuff like the final chapter comes out of nowhere. It was almost as if she wanted to comment on something separate from the rest of her book and just shoved it in. It was good, but I am excited to eventually read a more mature Acker novel since I know that's where she gets her acclaim from.

[Lee Foust]

O, Kathy--only you really get me.