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Blood and Guts in High School
'You exist in this darkness. Rebels. Creeps. Outcasts. Loners. People who hate everybody'
This is the story of Janey, who lived in a locked room, where she found a scrap of paper and began to write down her life. It's a story of lust, sex, pain, youth, punk, anarchy, gangs, the city, feminism, America, Jean Genet and the prisons we create for ourselves. A heady, surreal mash-up of coming-of-age tale, prose, poetry, plagiarism and illustration, Kathy Acker's breakthrough 1984 novel caused huge controversy and made her an avant-garde literary icon.
'A postmodern Colette with echoes of Cleland's Fanny Hill'
William S. Burroughs
'Kathy Acker's writing is virtuoso, maddening, crazy, so sexy, so painful, and beaten out of a wild heart that nothing can tame'
Jeanette Winterson
This is the story of Janey, who lived in a locked room, where she found a scrap of paper and began to write down her life. It's a story of lust, sex, pain, youth, punk, anarchy, gangs, the city, feminism, America, Jean Genet and the prisons we create for ourselves. A heady, surreal mash-up of coming-of-age tale, prose, poetry, plagiarism and illustration, Kathy Acker's breakthrough 1984 novel caused huge controversy and made her an avant-garde literary icon.
'A postmodern Colette with echoes of Cleland's Fanny Hill'
William S. Burroughs
'Kathy Acker's writing is virtuoso, maddening, crazy, so sexy, so painful, and beaten out of a wild heart that nothing can tame'
Jeanette Winterson
176 pages, Paperback
First published January 11, 1984
373 people are currently reading
19786 people want to read
About the author
Kathy Acker
86 books1,206 followersBorn 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 946 reviews
November 20, 2011
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, but come on. Blood and Guts in High School? Really? Yougottabekiddinme!
Rarely has my eye brow spent so much time raised over one piece of prose. Eventually the right eye brow got tired of being sceptically raised and I had to give it a rest and raise the left one instead. I'm giving this book one star because I can't give it half a star and because if I gave it no stars then that would imply a state of unratedness which might lead people to erroneously conclude at first glance that I loved it so much I felt there were not enough stars available or that I was too lazy or forgetful to apply any stars at all.
To my mind this was an exercise in juvenile and moderately pointless self indulgence with a little bit of crap porn thrown in. The ground breaking theatrically scrap book style smells of laziness not genius to me and it is hard to discern the smell of either of things beneath the even headier smell of mendacity because surely this was intended as nothing more than a practical joke? This book is the Emperors new clothes. Someone said it was genius and others followed suit (or suitless as the case may be).
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, but come on. Blood and Guts in High School? Really? Yougottabekiddinme!
Rarely has my eye brow spent so much time raised over one piece of prose. Eventually the right eye brow got tired of being sceptically raised and I had to give it a rest and raise the left one instead. I'm giving this book one star because I can't give it half a star and because if I gave it no stars then that would imply a state of unratedness which might lead people to erroneously conclude at first glance that I loved it so much I felt there were not enough stars available or that I was too lazy or forgetful to apply any stars at all.
To my mind this was an exercise in juvenile and moderately pointless self indulgence with a little bit of crap porn thrown in. The ground breaking theatrically scrap book style smells of laziness not genius to me and it is hard to discern the smell of either of things beneath the even headier smell of mendacity because surely this was intended as nothing more than a practical joke? This book is the Emperors new clothes. Someone said it was genius and others followed suit (or suitless as the case may be).
July 28, 2019
You know those two assholes who break up at every party? Like, get four beers into them and they are definitely going to have a big tearful thing in the kitchen and he’s going to lurk creepily in the driveway chainsmoking for the rest of the night and she’s going to lock herself in the bathroom and you’re going to have to try to talk her down just so you can get in there to pee. By the end of the party they’ll be slobbering all over each other again and eventually they’ll fuck on your parents bed and leave some sort of gross stain that you’ll never be able to explain even to yourself.
So this is a deep dive into these idiots and their shitty relationship, and the book is exactly like they are: fun for like two minutes in sortof a “Lol, get a load of these knuckleheads” way and then very, eternally tiresome.
This is Kathy Acker, whose back is cooler than her book
Also Janey is maybe really Johnny’s ten-year-old daughter, so there’s that. She says she sees him as father, brother, lover etc and she’s written that way, switching voices constantly as she talks to him, a totally unstable character from a writing POV which, again, fun for a couple pages and then tiresome. Whoever he is, she definitely fucks him and Kathy Acker drew his cock, like she made a picture and it’s in the book. Her illustration style reminds me of Quentin Blake. Later she draws a crude vagina and labels it “my cunt red ugh” and it’s hard not to suspect this is all mostly for shock value.
Anyway, by about halfway through she tumbles into various experimental pages and pages of poetry and it gets pretty much impossible to keep paying attention or caring. She gets cancer but she’s too involved in a Jimmy Carter sex fantasy to talk about the cancer in any meaningful way. Erica Jong shows up. It’s boring. She got cancer in real life too, it killed her in a mumbo-jumbo clinic in Mexico. How much of the rest of this is real? That couple at the party tells stories too, and the thing is that you absolutely do not care.
So this is a deep dive into these idiots and their shitty relationship, and the book is exactly like they are: fun for like two minutes in sortof a “Lol, get a load of these knuckleheads” way and then very, eternally tiresome.
This is Kathy Acker, whose back is cooler than her book
Also Janey is maybe really Johnny’s ten-year-old daughter, so there’s that. She says she sees him as father, brother, lover etc and she’s written that way, switching voices constantly as she talks to him, a totally unstable character from a writing POV which, again, fun for a couple pages and then tiresome. Whoever he is, she definitely fucks him and Kathy Acker drew his cock, like she made a picture and it’s in the book. Her illustration style reminds me of Quentin Blake. Later she draws a crude vagina and labels it “my cunt red ugh” and it’s hard not to suspect this is all mostly for shock value.
Anyway, by about halfway through she tumbles into various experimental pages and pages of poetry and it gets pretty much impossible to keep paying attention or caring. She gets cancer but she’s too involved in a Jimmy Carter sex fantasy to talk about the cancer in any meaningful way. Erica Jong shows up. It’s boring. She got cancer in real life too, it killed her in a mumbo-jumbo clinic in Mexico. How much of the rest of this is real? That couple at the party tells stories too, and the thing is that you absolutely do not care.
August 23, 2019
I knew I would love this one. It was written in the stars and I could have shelved it as a fave without even reading it.
'Reading' is an inadequate word though: in fact I am utterly unable to think of it as a mere reading experience. Acker's book is indeed a challenge to any attempt to define what a novel is supposed to be, a challenge that sucked me in, deeper and deeper and then higher and higher, from the very first page.
Text, illustration, mixed fonts, pages written in the author's weird handwriting, narrative paragraphs that become diary excepts turning into poems which merge into drawings, maps, graffiti, translations of latin odes and blatant, parodic plagiarism: this book is a postmodern Wunderkammer and I got lost in it as soon as I took a glimpse of its decadent monstrosity.
Thank God I didn't read this as a teenager.
Now, it's easy to look at "Blood and Guts" as literary filth, sold as a masterpiece of experimental fiction. It's quite comfortable to call it garbage and pretend not to see what it actually is; its outrageous contents are better dealt with if we deny the meaning and depth of the outrage.
The truth is that Acker's work must be analysed from two different perspectives: exoterically and esoterically.
That's exactly what I'll try to do.
1)The exoteric concept:
The book opens with a dialogue that seems to be taken from a French Nouvelle Vague film: a ten (!) year old child named Janey is dumped by her father, who is also her fiancé (yep).The guy can't stand the pressure of a long-term relationship, he needs his space and Janey is preventing him from being himself. By the way, she also suffers from pelvic inflammatory desease, guess why. Among the Mayan ruins of Merida, a disquiting landscape of unintelligible architecture and nature, they go through silences, sex, jealousy, sex, nostalgic memories, sex, incommunicabilty. They both know the romance is over.
Janey is therefore sent to New York and, until she turns fourteen, she goes through a daily routine of drugs, junior high school, street gangs, syphilis, abortions, underpaid jobs, filthy dwellings in the city slums. To make things even worse, one day a Persian dwarf and slave trader (don't forget this is a Kathy Acker
book) has her kidnapped and locked in a room, where she's thoroughly trained in whoring techniques in order to walk the streets for the dwarf.
You think it's enough? Nope. Unfortunately, Janey has cancer. When she realises that her beloved Slave Trader is going to leave her, she escapes to Tangier, the Moroccan haven for Beatniks, artists and junkies, where she meets Jean Genet. The strange couple sets off on a hallucinatory journey to Egypt in search of an ancient book that teaches how men can change their nature and become... well, something else. Doves, alligators, souls, who knows. Whatever it is, it's better than what we are now.
So they find the book, have a glimpse of its contents and Janey dies.
The end.
Okay.
Now, if you're still reading, please let me point out a few more things that seem to be conveniently overlooked by most 'serious' reviewers (though I wonder whether they've actually read the novel before trashing it).
2) The esoterical revelation:
This is a postmodern coming-of-age tale. A disgusting, painful, terribly serious tale in which the protagonist undergoes any sort of mental and physical alienation.
Alienation, not abuse: there's no abuse here. The violence has been completely metabolised by the child's mind, to the point that it's not even perceived as such anymore.
When Janey is abandoned by her father/lover, she finally realises how desperate she is for love. In the big city she's swallowed by a downward spiral of loneliness, lack of feeling, lack of affection, and starts looking for a compensation in raw sex and sheer violence: any man is a means for her to feel protected from her own needs.
At this point the author makes an amazingly clever analysis of her character's psychology. The effect is just hilarious: a little girl in her early teens talking like a Jungian shrink or a French existentialist. Furthermore, Acker makes a merciless satire of modern society: the episode of Janey's first abortion is unforgettable, with a chilling description of the assembly-line work of the doctors and nurses performing it.
The world in which Janey lives is a jail run by a cannibalistic society that feeds on the kids' need for love and understanding. The Mayan temples surrounding her house in Mexico remind us indeed of the ritual slaughtering of kids as offerings and scapegoats; the ancient tribes killed their offspring in order to appease their gods, whereas our society sacrifices kids to its lust and dissatisfaction.
This is not a story of pedophilia and child abuse, for the very simple reason that there is no child here. Janey is treated, beaten, fucked, talked to like an adult, or rather a slave who has neither age nor identity. We hardly remember the protagonist is a ten-year-old child as we read the dialogue between Janey and her 'adulterous' father, written in the form of a script or play (pure dialogue, in which emotions are left aside).
The Persian dwarf and Slave Trader (a crossing between Twin Peaks and Pierre Guyotat) is the grotesque spokesman of the author's viewpoint with regard to culture and art, seen as the only way out for mankind. In his own words:
"Culture is our highest form of life. And it is literature more than any other art which enables us to grasp this higher life, for literature is the most abstract of the arts. It is the only art which is not sensual."
Language as a weapon and a shield, the only means to forward any true act of rebellion; otherwise, the lack of a proper language makes freedom suicidal and pointless.
Hence Janey's urge to tell us about her life: through words, obscene drawings (don't read this in public if you still care about respectability), imaginary maps we must decipher like Egyptian hieroglyphics... as long as we find a way to express ourselves, says Acker, we aren't the defeated, broken creatures 'they' want us to be: we are still in control of our minds, bodies, feelings, despite the state of slavery in which we are meant to live. Because self-expression means judgement, either it is to condemn or to absolve:
"Either I judge and blame and Hell exists, or I don't judge and everything's OK. Either this is a time for total despair or it's a time of madness."
In one of the most complex parts of the book, Janey identifies herself with Hester Prynne, the protagonist of Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter": a victim of the old puritanism morphs into a victim of our cold, nihilist world.
Acker makes a good point here:
"Hawthorne had to protect himself so he could keep writing. Right now I can speak as directly as I want 'cause no one gives a shit about writing and ideas, all amyone cares about is money."
She knew her book wouldn't be banned, censored, burnt on the stake... quite the contrary. It would sell pretty well and its devastating power would be tamed by commercial success and intellectual indifference.
What a shame. I wonder whether the Holy Office wasn't more sensitive to culture than we are nowadays. It certainly recognised the revolutionary charge of books, and knew where their potential can lead. Alas, we've become too open-minded to be really outraged by anything; after all, Janey's is the world we've wanted - and created.
"We are dreaming of sex,
of thieves, murderers,
firebrands,
of huge thighs opening
to us like this night.
So we create this world
in our own image."
The final part of the novel is entirely graphic: Janey and her mentor Genet (whose homosexuality prevents him from loving the girl: yet another delusion and failure) find the mysterious book and learn how to go 'beyond' their human nature. We don't know what the secret is, though it does work, for Janey's death is kind of a catharsis. The shortest ever, as far as I know: "She dies", says Acker. That's all.
Janey is the symbol of innocence in the modern world, and her story is an allegory depicting how it is stifled and exploited. It's also a heartrending, often poetic celebration of its potential: "We are all alike, we are all immaculately crazy".
Despite the filth, the obscenity, the nihilism, this is basically a tale of hope. It's a journey through hell that leads nonetheless to some indefinite redemption.
" Soon many other Janeys were born and these Janeys covered the world."
'Reading' is an inadequate word though: in fact I am utterly unable to think of it as a mere reading experience. Acker's book is indeed a challenge to any attempt to define what a novel is supposed to be, a challenge that sucked me in, deeper and deeper and then higher and higher, from the very first page.
Text, illustration, mixed fonts, pages written in the author's weird handwriting, narrative paragraphs that become diary excepts turning into poems which merge into drawings, maps, graffiti, translations of latin odes and blatant, parodic plagiarism: this book is a postmodern Wunderkammer and I got lost in it as soon as I took a glimpse of its decadent monstrosity.
Thank God I didn't read this as a teenager.
Now, it's easy to look at "Blood and Guts" as literary filth, sold as a masterpiece of experimental fiction. It's quite comfortable to call it garbage and pretend not to see what it actually is; its outrageous contents are better dealt with if we deny the meaning and depth of the outrage.
The truth is that Acker's work must be analysed from two different perspectives: exoterically and esoterically.
That's exactly what I'll try to do.
1)The exoteric concept:
The book opens with a dialogue that seems to be taken from a French Nouvelle Vague film: a ten (!) year old child named Janey is dumped by her father, who is also her fiancé (yep).The guy can't stand the pressure of a long-term relationship, he needs his space and Janey is preventing him from being himself. By the way, she also suffers from pelvic inflammatory desease, guess why. Among the Mayan ruins of Merida, a disquiting landscape of unintelligible architecture and nature, they go through silences, sex, jealousy, sex, nostalgic memories, sex, incommunicabilty. They both know the romance is over.
Janey is therefore sent to New York and, until she turns fourteen, she goes through a daily routine of drugs, junior high school, street gangs, syphilis, abortions, underpaid jobs, filthy dwellings in the city slums. To make things even worse, one day a Persian dwarf and slave trader (don't forget this is a Kathy Acker
book) has her kidnapped and locked in a room, where she's thoroughly trained in whoring techniques in order to walk the streets for the dwarf.
You think it's enough? Nope. Unfortunately, Janey has cancer. When she realises that her beloved Slave Trader is going to leave her, she escapes to Tangier, the Moroccan haven for Beatniks, artists and junkies, where she meets Jean Genet. The strange couple sets off on a hallucinatory journey to Egypt in search of an ancient book that teaches how men can change their nature and become... well, something else. Doves, alligators, souls, who knows. Whatever it is, it's better than what we are now.
So they find the book, have a glimpse of its contents and Janey dies.
The end.
Okay.
Now, if you're still reading, please let me point out a few more things that seem to be conveniently overlooked by most 'serious' reviewers (though I wonder whether they've actually read the novel before trashing it).
2) The esoterical revelation:
This is a postmodern coming-of-age tale. A disgusting, painful, terribly serious tale in which the protagonist undergoes any sort of mental and physical alienation.
Alienation, not abuse: there's no abuse here. The violence has been completely metabolised by the child's mind, to the point that it's not even perceived as such anymore.
When Janey is abandoned by her father/lover, she finally realises how desperate she is for love. In the big city she's swallowed by a downward spiral of loneliness, lack of feeling, lack of affection, and starts looking for a compensation in raw sex and sheer violence: any man is a means for her to feel protected from her own needs.
At this point the author makes an amazingly clever analysis of her character's psychology. The effect is just hilarious: a little girl in her early teens talking like a Jungian shrink or a French existentialist. Furthermore, Acker makes a merciless satire of modern society: the episode of Janey's first abortion is unforgettable, with a chilling description of the assembly-line work of the doctors and nurses performing it.
The world in which Janey lives is a jail run by a cannibalistic society that feeds on the kids' need for love and understanding. The Mayan temples surrounding her house in Mexico remind us indeed of the ritual slaughtering of kids as offerings and scapegoats; the ancient tribes killed their offspring in order to appease their gods, whereas our society sacrifices kids to its lust and dissatisfaction.
This is not a story of pedophilia and child abuse, for the very simple reason that there is no child here. Janey is treated, beaten, fucked, talked to like an adult, or rather a slave who has neither age nor identity. We hardly remember the protagonist is a ten-year-old child as we read the dialogue between Janey and her 'adulterous' father, written in the form of a script or play (pure dialogue, in which emotions are left aside).
The Persian dwarf and Slave Trader (a crossing between Twin Peaks and Pierre Guyotat) is the grotesque spokesman of the author's viewpoint with regard to culture and art, seen as the only way out for mankind. In his own words:
"Culture is our highest form of life. And it is literature more than any other art which enables us to grasp this higher life, for literature is the most abstract of the arts. It is the only art which is not sensual."
Language as a weapon and a shield, the only means to forward any true act of rebellion; otherwise, the lack of a proper language makes freedom suicidal and pointless.
Hence Janey's urge to tell us about her life: through words, obscene drawings (don't read this in public if you still care about respectability), imaginary maps we must decipher like Egyptian hieroglyphics... as long as we find a way to express ourselves, says Acker, we aren't the defeated, broken creatures 'they' want us to be: we are still in control of our minds, bodies, feelings, despite the state of slavery in which we are meant to live. Because self-expression means judgement, either it is to condemn or to absolve:
"Either I judge and blame and Hell exists, or I don't judge and everything's OK. Either this is a time for total despair or it's a time of madness."
In one of the most complex parts of the book, Janey identifies herself with Hester Prynne, the protagonist of Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter": a victim of the old puritanism morphs into a victim of our cold, nihilist world.
Acker makes a good point here:
"Hawthorne had to protect himself so he could keep writing. Right now I can speak as directly as I want 'cause no one gives a shit about writing and ideas, all amyone cares about is money."
She knew her book wouldn't be banned, censored, burnt on the stake... quite the contrary. It would sell pretty well and its devastating power would be tamed by commercial success and intellectual indifference.
What a shame. I wonder whether the Holy Office wasn't more sensitive to culture than we are nowadays. It certainly recognised the revolutionary charge of books, and knew where their potential can lead. Alas, we've become too open-minded to be really outraged by anything; after all, Janey's is the world we've wanted - and created.
"We are dreaming of sex,
of thieves, murderers,
firebrands,
of huge thighs opening
to us like this night.
So we create this world
in our own image."
The final part of the novel is entirely graphic: Janey and her mentor Genet (whose homosexuality prevents him from loving the girl: yet another delusion and failure) find the mysterious book and learn how to go 'beyond' their human nature. We don't know what the secret is, though it does work, for Janey's death is kind of a catharsis. The shortest ever, as far as I know: "She dies", says Acker. That's all.
Janey is the symbol of innocence in the modern world, and her story is an allegory depicting how it is stifled and exploited. It's also a heartrending, often poetic celebration of its potential: "We are all alike, we are all immaculately crazy".
Despite the filth, the obscenity, the nihilism, this is basically a tale of hope. It's a journey through hell that leads nonetheless to some indefinite redemption.
" Soon many other Janeys were born and these Janeys covered the world."
June 23, 2022
I don't think I've ever read anything quite like this before. This is some gloriously fucked-up shit. Had Sid Vicious & Nancy Spungen ever been parents - now there's a scary thought - I'd imagine them reading this to their kids as a bedtime story, ha!
June 13, 2019
if Breakfast of Champions were Kurt Cobain, Blood and Guts in High School is Courtney Love.
June 18, 2012
Blood and guts in high school
This is all I know
Parents teachers boyfriends
All have got to go
Some folks like trains,
some folks like ships,
I like the way you move you hips
All I want is a taste of your lips,
boy,
All I want is a taste of your lips.
I'm glad I worked up to this via Acker's first two published novels, which were messy and serially enjoyable, because thye underscore all her techniques while also revealing how elegantly arranged and plotted this one is. Insane and ragged as it is (must be), she's cutting up and repurposing lit canon and her own life with a deft touch here, horrifying and hilarious and relentlessly unpredictable, interspersing any shock moments with crystal-eyed insight and poetic beauty (though rarely in the actual Poetry bits in here, which serve other purposes).
I walked along a highway. I was looking for a place to sit down, for some grass I could walk in, for a wood I could explore. I walked for hours. All the land on both sides of the highway, cultivated and wild, was private. I had to keep walking on the highway. I thought that people today, when they move move only by car, train, boat, or plane and so move only on roads. They perceive only the roads, the map, the prison. I think it's becoming harder to get off the roads.
Of course, there's this ebbing-and-flowing level of total high school journal mawkishness and emotionallity and raging vulnerability, but that's the point. Your rage at age 14 was not misplaced and your should never let those flames get sanded over because they have never never stopped being real. It's just useful, easier to socialize and forget, isn't it? I'm also reminded of an old zine I found in a exhibition of sorts: Kathleen Hanna (of Bikini Kill) writing about her crush on Evan Dando, circa the early 90s. The same kind of self-aware perceptive juvenalia, the same invitation. I wasn't surprised to find out that meeting Kathy Acker was some kind of significant event for Hanna.
I won't claim to catch more than a fraction of the references here, Acker being better-read by age 30 than I, it seems, but that's just fine, this offers plenty regardless, and I'll be happy to keep this in the back of my mind as I discover the sources for years to come.
Teachers teach you intricate ways of saying one thing and doing something else.
November 30, 2007
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 a straight line more like a jagged forest of follicles and razor blades. it is the most readable kathy acker book and the only one that i liked (i think i read about five, there are more). i read this around the time that the movie "natural born killers" came out and i think together they pulled up all my shit that i didn't know how to name. they let me revel in the horror of survivors' revenge and glory stories. this book is not a nice healing adventure. it's scary and kind of awesome in that way. as far as the racist stuff i kind of noted it and put it aside while i was reading, i think maybe she's trying to address racism but it feels like she's perpetuating it. but i personally don't know if i've figured out as a white person how to address racism in my own fiction much better, i'm working on it...
March 10, 2014
This gets five stars from me, despite its flaws, simply because of the highly impressive range of techniques on display. She draws on all the tools at her disposal in an inventive and impassioned way. Language at its crudest remains language, remains filled with meaning and with power. The speech of the abused is built from abused language, and its brokenness is its strength.
On a lighter note, opening a page which contains nothing but a large drawing of a cunt while sat on a packed tube train, evoked a noticeable reaction in the commuters around me.
On a lighter note, opening a page which contains nothing but a large drawing of a cunt while sat on a packed tube train, evoked a noticeable reaction in the commuters around me.
June 25, 2012
If you’re going to make a statement, best jump in at the deep end straight away. And so, the first ten pages are a bevy of delights, a veritable cornucopia of plenty, a smorgasbord of every vile, disgusting, grotesque act known to man. Ten year old Janey is being buttfucked by daddy, because her cunt is red raw from VD, probably acquired from when daddy’s best friend Billy had a go. In between blowing both of them off. The bonus track is a stache of lithographs of daddy’s pecker, in all manners of repose, and not: occasionally there are squirts of gism for special effects. And if I’m not staring at the great big eye of daddy’s winking willy, theres plenty of female genitalia in this gallery opening to keep me busy.
Janet is quickly abandoned and sent to board in NYC, where she whores it a bit (well a lot), has an impressive number of abortions and eventually ends up as a sex slave to an eighty year old Iranian (as you do). The finale sees her (now at the grand old age of 14) in Tangiers, lording it about with Jean Genet (the novel’s piece d’ resistance). And then she dies. The end.
And it never happened, so thats OK then.
Poems, epistolary motifs, confessional modes, book reviews, some clever stuff with pagination and text breaks, and loads of scribbly pictures flesh out the storyboard.
Whilst I appreciate the non too subtle message of female sexualisation, exploitation and degradation, the curve balls keep coming hard and fast, but always from left field. So, mono-dimensional diatribe, perhaps seeking to numb with repetitive mantra even though the palette of media truncates.
Hard, fast, frenetic and unapologetic, the imagery leaves a cold, disquieting impression and a desperate want for a shower, or something. Cleansing.
Janet is quickly abandoned and sent to board in NYC, where she whores it a bit (well a lot), has an impressive number of abortions and eventually ends up as a sex slave to an eighty year old Iranian (as you do). The finale sees her (now at the grand old age of 14) in Tangiers, lording it about with Jean Genet (the novel’s piece d’ resistance). And then she dies. The end.
And it never happened, so thats OK then.
Poems, epistolary motifs, confessional modes, book reviews, some clever stuff with pagination and text breaks, and loads of scribbly pictures flesh out the storyboard.
Whilst I appreciate the non too subtle message of female sexualisation, exploitation and degradation, the curve balls keep coming hard and fast, but always from left field. So, mono-dimensional diatribe, perhaps seeking to numb with repetitive mantra even though the palette of media truncates.
Hard, fast, frenetic and unapologetic, the imagery leaves a cold, disquieting impression and a desperate want for a shower, or something. Cleansing.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 3, 2016
It is so hard to like this book with its clunky prose, weird drawings, garbled thinking, bizarre narrative, a sex-obsessed protagonist...
But once in a while, after such horror-laden passages, you come across something like this that brings a lump to your throat:
"Most people are what they sense and if all you see day after day is a mat on a floor that belongs to the rats and four walls with tiny piles of plaster at the bottom, and all you eat is starch, and all you hear is continuous noise, you smell garbage and piss which drips through the walls continually, and all the people you know live like you, it's not horrible, it's just . . .Who they are."
Kathy's self-deprecatory humour is the saving grace here which while laughing out loud also moistens your eyes- esp. mention here of the madcap "Inside a small East Village bakery" scene: "what's that cooky?"
And that hilarious feminist deconstruction of The Scarlet Letter, the Latinate versification – yeah, it's a mash up of many genres & styles.
But those diamonds in the dross are so few & far between that it mainly becomes an exercise in tedium - I just couldn't wait for this book to be over & done with.
You'll say "Oh but what about that magic word-Experimental?"
More like 'Mental' I shd say!
Susan E. Hawkins has analysed this book as a postmodernist work in her article "All in the Family: Kathy Acker’s Blood and Guts in High School.” Contemporary Literature 45.4 (2004).
From Wikipedia:
"According to Hawkins, Acker is motivated by two discourses: the oedipal and the imperial (642). Using the mechanism of sexual and economic oppression, Acker is able to actualize the taboo surrounding incest by associating it with capitalism to demystify the oedipal formation of desire in the Western culture (Hawkins 646)."
That's true but the fact remains that even when Janey is out of the influence of her father, she remains addicted to sex & hardly makes much of an effort to change her life. Also the fact that Acker's female protagonist is a mere ten year old who dies by the age of fourteen doesn't really give her much of a say in how her life is run.
It was really frustrating reading these lines:
"...despite her high fever, she walked the streets. Where could she run to? Where was peace (someone who loved her)? No one would take her in. It was raining lightly. The rain was going to increase her infection. She stood in front of Sally's house. Then she made herself walk away. She walked back into her father's and her apartment. She hated the apartment. She didn't know what to do with her hateful tormented mind."
Unlike the others, I wasn't appalled by the 'incest' angle because it is clear Janey doesn't have the priviledge of an adult perspective / value judgement on her life: this is life exactly how she has known it & she relays it as such.
Also that weird thing abt President Carter– how could Acker get away with such nonsense here when Coover had to face so many problems with The Public Burning?
The edition I read was Blood and Guts in High School, plus two: ( Great Expectations; My Death My Life by Pier Paolo Pasolini [1984]) – and I was driven so brain-dead by this book that I didn't even notice there were two more books in it! And went on with glazed eyes in my dogged reading ( almost 420 pages of it, a parody of Macbeth kind of woke me up & it was followed by a spoof on The Merchant of Venice, damn!), but I'm not really to be blamed as these also continue more or less the same themes, the same techniques – a female in dysfunctional surroundings, exploited by one & all, obsessed with sex, raging against capitalism, religion, social structures - no offense to her fans, but maybe if you've read one of her books; you've read them all!
Some readers might enjoy Acker's pastiche-driven, typographically varied narrative but that didn't work for this reader. There is a reason why folks on Gr have shelf named dropped / abandoned. Time I got one of those.
Gift it to a frenemy- the good & the bad parts of this book will nicely balance the good & bad part of that friendship.
But once in a while, after such horror-laden passages, you come across something like this that brings a lump to your throat:
"Most people are what they sense and if all you see day after day is a mat on a floor that belongs to the rats and four walls with tiny piles of plaster at the bottom, and all you eat is starch, and all you hear is continuous noise, you smell garbage and piss which drips through the walls continually, and all the people you know live like you, it's not horrible, it's just . . .Who they are."
Kathy's self-deprecatory humour is the saving grace here which while laughing out loud also moistens your eyes- esp. mention here of the madcap "Inside a small East Village bakery" scene: "what's that cooky?"
And that hilarious feminist deconstruction of The Scarlet Letter, the Latinate versification – yeah, it's a mash up of many genres & styles.
But those diamonds in the dross are so few & far between that it mainly becomes an exercise in tedium - I just couldn't wait for this book to be over & done with.
You'll say "Oh but what about that magic word-Experimental?"
More like 'Mental' I shd say!
Susan E. Hawkins has analysed this book as a postmodernist work in her article "All in the Family: Kathy Acker’s Blood and Guts in High School.” Contemporary Literature 45.4 (2004).
From Wikipedia:
"According to Hawkins, Acker is motivated by two discourses: the oedipal and the imperial (642). Using the mechanism of sexual and economic oppression, Acker is able to actualize the taboo surrounding incest by associating it with capitalism to demystify the oedipal formation of desire in the Western culture (Hawkins 646)."
That's true but the fact remains that even when Janey is out of the influence of her father, she remains addicted to sex & hardly makes much of an effort to change her life. Also the fact that Acker's female protagonist is a mere ten year old who dies by the age of fourteen doesn't really give her much of a say in how her life is run.
It was really frustrating reading these lines:
"...despite her high fever, she walked the streets. Where could she run to? Where was peace (someone who loved her)? No one would take her in. It was raining lightly. The rain was going to increase her infection. She stood in front of Sally's house. Then she made herself walk away. She walked back into her father's and her apartment. She hated the apartment. She didn't know what to do with her hateful tormented mind."
Unlike the others, I wasn't appalled by the 'incest' angle because it is clear Janey doesn't have the priviledge of an adult perspective / value judgement on her life: this is life exactly how she has known it & she relays it as such.
Also that weird thing abt President Carter– how could Acker get away with such nonsense here when Coover had to face so many problems with The Public Burning?
The edition I read was Blood and Guts in High School, plus two: ( Great Expectations; My Death My Life by Pier Paolo Pasolini [1984]) – and I was driven so brain-dead by this book that I didn't even notice there were two more books in it! And went on with glazed eyes in my dogged reading ( almost 420 pages of it, a parody of Macbeth kind of woke me up & it was followed by a spoof on The Merchant of Venice, damn!), but I'm not really to be blamed as these also continue more or less the same themes, the same techniques – a female in dysfunctional surroundings, exploited by one & all, obsessed with sex, raging against capitalism, religion, social structures - no offense to her fans, but maybe if you've read one of her books; you've read them all!
Some readers might enjoy Acker's pastiche-driven, typographically varied narrative but that didn't work for this reader. There is a reason why folks on Gr have shelf named dropped / abandoned. Time I got one of those.
Gift it to a frenemy- the good & the bad parts of this book will nicely balance the good & bad part of that friendship.
May 14, 2012
This book was released in 1978, making “post-punk feminism” an apposite description. Not that punk had stopped in 1978 but post-punk bands were already evolving the two-chord assault of the punk sound into something better (or in the case of Howard Devoto or Jonathan Richman before punk even happened). So this hysterical novel chimes perfectly with the nascent post-punk art explosion coming from NY in the late seventies, entwining it with this glorious period of art-school pretention and irredeemable poetry. The novel uses typographical attack weapons (enormous fonts! childish scribblings! decorative borders!) to tell its horrible story of an abused feminine receptacle desperate to free herself from the whoredom of men. Along the way, she meets Genet who also proves himself to be a prick. Tsk. Something of a response to William H. Gass’s potentially sexist typographical funhouse, Willie Masters' Lonesome Wife, perhaps? A perverse relic: mainly dark and funny now, too hysterical to make any longstanding feminist impact. I hate the cover. I feel I’m supposed to.
January 3, 2015
Poor pliant Janey just wants to be loved, but when her father dumps her at the age of 10 for a sexier girlfriend, and then ships her off to a New York boarding school, her only option, naturally, is to fall in with a street gang called the Scorpions and devote her pre-teens to a life of petty theft, random sex and multiple abortions. By the time Janey is 14, she has been kidnapped by a malaprop-cracking dwarf and forced into a life of prostitution. She passes the days writing her slaver love poems in Persian, until he also dumps her. And away Janey goes to Tangier, to hook up with the French writer Genet while utilizing her sense of self-loathing to stir up a revolution in Egypt against the powers that be (misogynistic bureaucrats with names like Mr. Blowjob).
But all this summarizing is misleading; Blood and Guts in High School operates mainly as a trampoline to bounce off different experimental techniques (in heavy debt to William S. Burroughs) that further Acker's feminist agenda against 2000 years of men dominating women, mind, body and prose. Crude poetry written in scatter-shot free verse and rude drawings of his and hers genitalia pack a lot of the pages of this over-sized but slim novel. Most of the other pages carry screenplay-formatted conversations or cartoonish depictions of pedophilia. But Acker's lack of restraint, narrative focus and characterization are made up for with the energy, typographical chicanery and ferocity with which she rails against the prison bars of gender conformity. I approve. Especially the snide, punk-rock book report on the The Scarlet Letter.
But all this summarizing is misleading; Blood and Guts in High School operates mainly as a trampoline to bounce off different experimental techniques (in heavy debt to William S. Burroughs) that further Acker's feminist agenda against 2000 years of men dominating women, mind, body and prose. Crude poetry written in scatter-shot free verse and rude drawings of his and hers genitalia pack a lot of the pages of this over-sized but slim novel. Most of the other pages carry screenplay-formatted conversations or cartoonish depictions of pedophilia. But Acker's lack of restraint, narrative focus and characterization are made up for with the energy, typographical chicanery and ferocity with which she rails against the prison bars of gender conformity. I approve. Especially the snide, punk-rock book report on the The Scarlet Letter.
July 14, 2007
Seriously, what's this supposed to be? I love a good anti-novel as much as the next pretentious hipster, but don't just slap together a bunch of stuff and then bore me to death with it.
November 14, 2019
One hard to forget cover. Some enviable title. Up there with "Prozac (too-early-in-my-life-it-was-too-late) Nation" & "Girl, Interrupted" And in the same genre. But whereas those aforementioned two were in reality self-serving bitchathons (and we must not forget which of the three were converted into feature films). "Blood & Guts" is not. Its the very sense of the word intrepid.
1990s director Gregg Araki should have made the celluloid equivalent. What a pastiche of terrible teenage dreaddom! Not unlike Jeanette Winterson in her Nin-like creative journey into the sexual self.
1990s director Gregg Araki should have made the celluloid equivalent. What a pastiche of terrible teenage dreaddom! Not unlike Jeanette Winterson in her Nin-like creative journey into the sexual self.
Read
May 12, 2017
"Compendiously Nipping Pastiche. Clearseeing."
-cunt
-fuck
...but for me this was evidence that some people believe feminism trumps good writing.
This book is the Emperors new clothes. [sic!]
sucky post-modernist writing.
But it's really perverted and I felt a little violated reading it. Incest, rape, domestic violence, etc. etc.
well, i'm going to give it to you anyway.
We've been punked, folks.
This was one of the most off-putting and obnoxious pieces of literature I've faced recently.
She's just a parasite. Then again, that's pretty harsh.
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?"
...this trash via the "1001" list are laughing their collective asses off...pathetic prank.
Yougottabekiddinme!
...this was thoroughly unenjoyable, and completely unenlightening....
Absolutely the worst book I have ever read, and I've read a lot of books.
basically, it's horrific.
...an exercise in juvenile and moderately pointless self indulgence with a little bit of crap porn thrown in.
...I wanted to gouge my eyes out.
Seriously, what's this supposed to be? I love a good anti-novel as much as the next pretentious hipster, but don't just slap together a bunch of stuff and then bore me to death with it.
But I just really despised the author's style.
...smells of laziness not genius ... beneath the even headier smell of mendacity because ... nothing more than a practical joke?
Did the author read A Clockwork Orange and Wild Animus, do some really strong pharmaceuticals and then decide she could write a book more disjointed and senseless than those two books ?
...because it's on the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list.
I'd rather have read the ingredient list on my shampoo bottle than to have wasted my time on this tripe.
It wasn't the fact that the main character in this novel was sleeping with her father.
...this has absolutely no literary value.
This is undeniably the worst piece of crap I've ever read.
I'd give this book zero stars, but I'm compelled to rate it both as a warning to my fellow readers, and to do my small part to help bring down its overinflated rating. [noble!]
...to me like an outburst of loathing;
one of those "top 10 books you've probably never read written by a woman"
as post-punk porn, post-punk feminist.
...kathy acker's fuckin crazy.
what the hell did I just read
...it’s fucked-up.
A somewhat pointless and annoying experimental novel with silly dirty pictures drawn in it.
...the Kathy Acker who seems to go off a prescribed psychiatric medication; in turn, a deluge of profanity, personal insults, and pornography erupts.
How and why was this huge waste of my time even published ?
...written by an angry 14 year-old.
Please, someone explain to me the literary value of this book.
...what appears an incestuous relationship with her father. She has an abortion...
I actually like weird, playful, vulgar books.
...(including lots of sexual organs).
If I owned the copy I read, I would have defaced it and thrown it away.
...(post-punk is much milder).
However I mostly found it embarrassing to read in public because of the smutty line drawings, offensive because of the continual use of foul language or confusing because sentence flow skipped lines of text.
...would probably never be able to fully understand its contents… [final ellipses in original]
If someone has a logical point to make it does not necessarily have to be laden with a metaphysical analogy to be compelling. Capitalism is not like a man raping his daughter.
...is unreadable and makes you look forward to reading Adjunct: An Undigest.
If you're of the opinion that punk is all rage and no talent, then yes, this is punk lit.
...her insatiable desire for violent sex kind of contradicts those cries.
before I die
...having your head flushed down a recently utilized commode.
Don't waste yr time w/ this. Read the people that she rips off instead - esp Jean Genet.
...then told their emotions and feelings are high art and should be displayed at full volume.
"1001 books to read before you die"
...is disgusting, poorly written, and not worth reading.
I love a good anti-novel. I'm all up for some experimentalist literature. But what is this?
....not to be taken lightly, all skill and power and raw emotion, this ain't it.
If I could ever support the horror that is book burning, it could done with this book.
Over all I needed to know what happened Janey. My boyfriend looked over my shoulder quite a few times while I was reading and thought the pictures were "interesting."
A truly awful book - 1 part The Atrocity Exhibition, ..., 3 parts crystal meth, and 7 parts blotter acid.
There's no denying Acker's intelligence, but I found this to be a mess. Perhaps it seemed more subversive when originally published, if so, it hasn't aged well.
Had to read this in grad school.
I'm usually not a fan of book burning.
But, burn the &^%$ign book as soon as you can!
I could not stand this book when I first found it. Ran across it recently and realized my first instincts were just fine for me.
I have no idea why this has a cult following.
This book sucked. Big giant monkey balls. As sucky as this review is, this book sucked even worse.
By far the strangest, most disturbing book I've ever read.
I have no idea what I just read. Nothing about this book made sense at all and I do not recommend it.
I thought "wtf?" and "well, that was over-rated"
i couldn't do it. I do not normally abandon a story that I start but I could not read this book. It was miserable.
It's a shocker. Not shocking no, just fucking terrible.
I feel dirty. And confused.
Rubbish
Bored me rigid.
-cunt
-fuck
...but for me this was evidence that some people believe feminism trumps good writing.
This book is the Emperors new clothes. [sic!]
sucky post-modernist writing.
But it's really perverted and I felt a little violated reading it. Incest, rape, domestic violence, etc. etc.
well, i'm going to give it to you anyway.
We've been punked, folks.
This was one of the most off-putting and obnoxious pieces of literature I've faced recently.
She's just a parasite. Then again, that's pretty harsh.
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?"
...this trash via the "1001" list are laughing their collective asses off...pathetic prank.
Yougottabekiddinme!
...this was thoroughly unenjoyable, and completely unenlightening....
Absolutely the worst book I have ever read, and I've read a lot of books.
basically, it's horrific.
...an exercise in juvenile and moderately pointless self indulgence with a little bit of crap porn thrown in.
...I wanted to gouge my eyes out.
Seriously, what's this supposed to be? I love a good anti-novel as much as the next pretentious hipster, but don't just slap together a bunch of stuff and then bore me to death with it.
But I just really despised the author's style.
...smells of laziness not genius ... beneath the even headier smell of mendacity because ... nothing more than a practical joke?
Did the author read A Clockwork Orange and Wild Animus, do some really strong pharmaceuticals and then decide she could write a book more disjointed and senseless than those two books ?
...because it's on the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list.
I'd rather have read the ingredient list on my shampoo bottle than to have wasted my time on this tripe.
It wasn't the fact that the main character in this novel was sleeping with her father.
...this has absolutely no literary value.
This is undeniably the worst piece of crap I've ever read.
I'd give this book zero stars, but I'm compelled to rate it both as a warning to my fellow readers, and to do my small part to help bring down its overinflated rating. [noble!]
...to me like an outburst of loathing;
one of those "top 10 books you've probably never read written by a woman"
as post-punk porn, post-punk feminist.
...kathy acker's fuckin crazy.
what the hell did I just read
...it’s fucked-up.
A somewhat pointless and annoying experimental novel with silly dirty pictures drawn in it.
...the Kathy Acker who seems to go off a prescribed psychiatric medication; in turn, a deluge of profanity, personal insults, and pornography erupts.
How and why was this huge waste of my time even published ?
...written by an angry 14 year-old.
Please, someone explain to me the literary value of this book.
...what appears an incestuous relationship with her father. She has an abortion...
I actually like weird, playful, vulgar books.
...(including lots of sexual organs).
If I owned the copy I read, I would have defaced it and thrown it away.
...(post-punk is much milder).
However I mostly found it embarrassing to read in public because of the smutty line drawings, offensive because of the continual use of foul language or confusing because sentence flow skipped lines of text.
...would probably never be able to fully understand its contents… [final ellipses in original]
If someone has a logical point to make it does not necessarily have to be laden with a metaphysical analogy to be compelling. Capitalism is not like a man raping his daughter.
...is unreadable and makes you look forward to reading Adjunct: An Undigest.
If you're of the opinion that punk is all rage and no talent, then yes, this is punk lit.
...her insatiable desire for violent sex kind of contradicts those cries.
before I die
...having your head flushed down a recently utilized commode.
Don't waste yr time w/ this. Read the people that she rips off instead - esp Jean Genet.
...then told their emotions and feelings are high art and should be displayed at full volume.
"1001 books to read before you die"
...is disgusting, poorly written, and not worth reading.
I love a good anti-novel. I'm all up for some experimentalist literature. But what is this?
....not to be taken lightly, all skill and power and raw emotion, this ain't it.
If I could ever support the horror that is book burning, it could done with this book.
Over all I needed to know what happened Janey. My boyfriend looked over my shoulder quite a few times while I was reading and thought the pictures were "interesting."
A truly awful book - 1 part The Atrocity Exhibition, ..., 3 parts crystal meth, and 7 parts blotter acid.
There's no denying Acker's intelligence, but I found this to be a mess. Perhaps it seemed more subversive when originally published, if so, it hasn't aged well.
Had to read this in grad school.
I'm usually not a fan of book burning.
But, burn the &^%$ign book as soon as you can!
I could not stand this book when I first found it. Ran across it recently and realized my first instincts were just fine for me.
I have no idea why this has a cult following.
This book sucked. Big giant monkey balls. As sucky as this review is, this book sucked even worse.
By far the strangest, most disturbing book I've ever read.
I have no idea what I just read. Nothing about this book made sense at all and I do not recommend it.
I thought "wtf?" and "well, that was over-rated"
i couldn't do it. I do not normally abandon a story that I start but I could not read this book. It was miserable.
It's a shocker. Not shocking no, just fucking terrible.
I feel dirty. And confused.
Rubbish
Bored me rigid.
October 22, 2007
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
January 12, 2009
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 with her father. It wasn't that she was sold into white slavery and locked in a room for months while a Peruvian man taught her to be a whore. It wasn't any of these things, although admittedly they don't make for a great story line. It was that the entire time I was reading the book I wanted to gouge my eyes out. I could have forgiven the jumping around from topic to topic and random segues - part of the story is supposed to be a journal that Janey, the main character, is keeping and part of the story is ... I don't even know what. But I just really despised the author's style. To be honest, I didn't understand how a lot of it fit together, and that's because I really didn't care to. I don't abandon books; once I've started a story I have to see it through to the bitter end. I should have just thrown this one away. Literally. I HATE giving poor reviews and can usually find at least one thing I like about a novel, but as far as I can see, this has absolutely no literary value. I just don't see how anyone could make an argument for its inclusion on a list of books you must read before you die.
May 2, 2024
A kaleidoscope of patriarchal horrors, shot through with the blackest of gallows humor, hectic and crazed and—in a way that passes understanding—riotously fun: “Being in prison is being in a cunt. Having any sex in the world is having to have sex with capitalism. What can Janey and [Jean] Genet do?”
August 15, 2017
Originally written in the 1970s, this Penguin re-release coincides with Acker's untimely death from cancer 20 years ago this year. Ever the enfant terrible, this is deliberately designed to provoke and shock - and that it still can in 2017 would, I think, have amused Acker vastly.
She throws everything into this dislocated narrative: sex, violence, disease, exploitation, corruption, abuse, incest, feminism, capitalism, anger, submission, identity, the grotesque body... with nods along the way to all those master-narratives that construct culture, from Freud and Marx to Hamlet and Sartre. At times deliberately disgusting, at others blackly funny (Janey's analysis of The Scarlet Letter is twisted genius!), this tears up the rule books of what 'fiction', 'narrative', a 'novel' are 'supposed' to be, and creates what only barely passes for a story via a collage of prose, dialogue, verse, drawings, scrawled capitals, 'Persian' writing.
For all of the ways that this intersects with critical theory, the theorisation of women's writing (think Cixous' écriture féminine, Irigaray, Kristeva) and Lacanian psychoanalysis, it's also dirty and grubby and revelling in its own gleeful rebelliousness and subversive energy. Certainly not for everyone...
Thanks to Penguin for an ARC via NetGalley.
She throws everything into this dislocated narrative: sex, violence, disease, exploitation, corruption, abuse, incest, feminism, capitalism, anger, submission, identity, the grotesque body... with nods along the way to all those master-narratives that construct culture, from Freud and Marx to Hamlet and Sartre. At times deliberately disgusting, at others blackly funny (Janey's analysis of The Scarlet Letter is twisted genius!), this tears up the rule books of what 'fiction', 'narrative', a 'novel' are 'supposed' to be, and creates what only barely passes for a story via a collage of prose, dialogue, verse, drawings, scrawled capitals, 'Persian' writing.
For all of the ways that this intersects with critical theory, the theorisation of women's writing (think Cixous' écriture féminine, Irigaray, Kristeva) and Lacanian psychoanalysis, it's also dirty and grubby and revelling in its own gleeful rebelliousness and subversive energy. Certainly not for everyone...
Thanks to Penguin for an ARC via NetGalley.
February 19, 2013
I didn't understand about Kathy Acker's fiction before I read this. Since the title was BLOOD AND GUTS IN HIGH SCHOOL, I thought it would be about high school. And would feature blood and guts. it was something totally different. I felt so frustrated I wrote my own book of BLOOD AND GUTS IN HIGH SCHOOL. But I called mine: GIRL.
March 2, 2022
A brutal parable of American pain and abuse, highly irreverent, grossly comical, and more often than not, incomprehensible, but in the spirit of honesty. Sex specifically is treated here as repulsion, dread, and chaos, but our main character never succumbs to being a sex object, rather an object that ballistically dabbles in sex. I’m conflicted, but I’m also intrigued and arrested by this book, so that’s pretty good!
December 22, 2023
CRITIQUE:
Metafiction, Paedophilia, Incest, Disease and Abortions
Kathy Acker finished a manuscript of "Blood and Guts" in 1978, but it wasn't published until 1984.
At the time of publication, it received a shocked response. One of the reasons was that, at the beginning, the protagonist and narrator, Janey Smith, is a ten year old girl who is having an incestuous paedophilic relationship with her father, Johnny (who plays in a rock band in Mexico). (1) Janey is two years younger than Lolita was when Humbert Humbert met her.
"Blood and Guts" is far less ambivalent than "Lolita". Kathy Acker embraces the content of her metafictional novel, without embarrassment, shame or guilt, let alone any self-conscious Vollmanian affectation or delight in the transgression of others.
She does so in the name of fiction, of literature, and of poetic licence. The novel is an expression of her own freedom. She's able to live out her fantasies in writing. Janey is the vehicle for this act of liberation, rather than the victim of systemic or male oppression of Acker in real life.
Kathy Acker was 31, when she finished the manuscript. It's arguable that some of Janey's perspective reflects the views of a sophisticated 31 year old woman, rather than a ten year old girl (however, this might just reveal something paternalistic in my own perspective).
Janey defines her relationship with Johnny as one that encompasses "boyfriend, brother, sister, money, amusement and father."
Paradoxically, Janey seems to be the more manipulative of the two lovers. Janey frequently rejects Johnny's advances (treat him mean, keep him keen), and starts to look for someone more stable. Their "mutual fantasy that he adored me and I was just hanging on to him for the money actually concealed the reality that he had stuck to me all these years cause I didn't ask too much of him, especially emotionally. In this way a fantasy reveals reality: reality is just the underlying fantasy, a fantasy that reveals need. I have an unlimited need of him."
When she moves to the Lower East Side of New York, Janey tells Johnny:
In contrast, she admits to herself:
Janey has other relationships, even before she goes to America. All through the novel, she suffers from a pelvic inflammatory disease, but continues to engage in sex, despite the discomfort and pain. She has two abortions in New York, after which the PID recurs:
Dreams
Janey is co-opted into a Lower East Side gang called THE SCORPIONS.
Her life takes on dream-like qualities:
Fairy Tales
Janey's dreams morph into a fairy tale about a hideous monster, a beaver, and a big brown bear that sounds like a little girl, but tries to break into their house.
Readers of the fairy tale "exist in [the] darkness. Rebels. Creeps. Outcasts. Loners. People who hate everybody. People who feel uneasy around everybody. People who know everyone hates them. People who hate being tied down, restricted, constricted..."
Slums of New York City
Janey, who's now 13, moves on from the Fairy Tale to the East Village:
She's kidnapped by some hoodlums who take her to Mr Linker, an old Iranian who engages a Persian slave trader to teach Janey how to be a whore. As with her use of dreams and fairy tales, this forms part of Acker's critique of materialistic American society.
Janey finds a Persian grammar book in her cell, and teaches herself Persian, so she can write Persian poems about her life and lifestyle.
Janey ends up in Tangier, where she meets Jean Genet, and describes to him how she realised who she was:
"I is now she. She, Janey..."
Dual Images of Kathy Acker(Source)
FOOTNOTES:
(1) For the sensitive and easily-offended, there are also numerous explicit hand-drawn images of penises and vulvas.
PERSIAN VERSE:
Jean Genet
[More or Less in the Words of Kathy Acker]
Jean Genet walks slowly,
His hands in his pockets,
He stares as if he's not
Seeing anything much,
Eyes fixed, on this cafe.
I've Got Cancer
[Mostly in the Words of Kathy Acker]
I've got cancer,
The outward condition
Of the condition of
Being screwed-up.
I am such a total mess,
That is, askew to the world,
The nature of things,
Therefore, myself,
Askew to myself,
Such that I will never
Live without pain.
I can't help but do
Everything wrong.
Beetle on its Back
[Apologies to Gang of Four]
I feel like a beetle on its back,
A pervert diverted off the track.
All Kinds of Strife
I want to peruse dirty books,
And receive disapproving looks.
I want to embarrass my wife,
And get into all kinds of strife.
SOUNDTRACK:
Metafiction, Paedophilia, Incest, Disease and Abortions
Kathy Acker finished a manuscript of "Blood and Guts" in 1978, but it wasn't published until 1984.
At the time of publication, it received a shocked response. One of the reasons was that, at the beginning, the protagonist and narrator, Janey Smith, is a ten year old girl who is having an incestuous paedophilic relationship with her father, Johnny (who plays in a rock band in Mexico). (1) Janey is two years younger than Lolita was when Humbert Humbert met her.
"Blood and Guts" is far less ambivalent than "Lolita". Kathy Acker embraces the content of her metafictional novel, without embarrassment, shame or guilt, let alone any self-conscious Vollmanian affectation or delight in the transgression of others.
She does so in the name of fiction, of literature, and of poetic licence. The novel is an expression of her own freedom. She's able to live out her fantasies in writing. Janey is the vehicle for this act of liberation, rather than the victim of systemic or male oppression of Acker in real life.
Kathy Acker was 31, when she finished the manuscript. It's arguable that some of Janey's perspective reflects the views of a sophisticated 31 year old woman, rather than a ten year old girl (however, this might just reveal something paternalistic in my own perspective).
Janey defines her relationship with Johnny as one that encompasses "boyfriend, brother, sister, money, amusement and father."
Paradoxically, Janey seems to be the more manipulative of the two lovers. Janey frequently rejects Johnny's advances (treat him mean, keep him keen), and starts to look for someone more stable. Their "mutual fantasy that he adored me and I was just hanging on to him for the money actually concealed the reality that he had stuck to me all these years cause I didn't ask too much of him, especially emotionally. In this way a fantasy reveals reality: reality is just the underlying fantasy, a fantasy that reveals need. I have an unlimited need of him."
When she moves to the Lower East Side of New York, Janey tells Johnny:
"I know you think it's a high school romance like you and Sally...but it's really serious to me. I loved you."
In contrast, she admits to herself:
"I just LOVE to fuck."
Janey has other relationships, even before she goes to America. All through the novel, she suffers from a pelvic inflammatory disease, but continues to engage in sex, despite the discomfort and pain. She has two abortions in New York, after which the PID recurs:
"I didn't know how much these abortions hurt me physically and mentally. I was desperate to fuck more and more so I could finally get love. Soon my total being was on fire, not just my sex, and I was doing everything to make the non-sexual equivalent of love happen."
Dreams
Janey is co-opted into a Lower East Side gang called THE SCORPIONS.
Her life takes on dream-like qualities:
"Dear dreams, You are the only thing that matters. You are my hope and I live for and in you. You are rawness and wildness, the colours, the scents, passion, events appearing. You are the things I live for. Please take me over.
"Dreams cause the vision world to break loose of consciousness.
"Dreams by themselves aren't enough to destroy the blanket of dullness.
"The dreams we allow to destroy us cause us to be visions/ see the vision world...
"The blackness I now see everywhere comes from perverted because unrealised wants...Now overwhelming fear separates me from the want I [see]. Now overwhelming fear makes me part of the death-world."
Fairy Tales
Janey's dreams morph into a fairy tale about a hideous monster, a beaver, and a big brown bear that sounds like a little girl, but tries to break into their house.
Readers of the fairy tale "exist in [the] darkness. Rebels. Creeps. Outcasts. Loners. People who hate everybody. People who feel uneasy around everybody. People who know everyone hates them. People who hate being tied down, restricted, constricted..."
Slums of New York City
Janey, who's now 13, moves on from the Fairy Tale to the East Village:
"I get distracted real easily. I'm getting very distracted by sex these days. I want to fuck around as much as possible. When I fantasise fucking, the encounters are always cold wild and free."
She's kidnapped by some hoodlums who take her to Mr Linker, an old Iranian who engages a Persian slave trader to teach Janey how to be a whore. As with her use of dreams and fairy tales, this forms part of Acker's critique of materialistic American society.
Janey finds a Persian grammar book in her cell, and teaches herself Persian, so she can write Persian poems about her life and lifestyle.
Janey ends up in Tangier, where she meets Jean Genet, and describes to him how she realised who she was:
"I is now she. She, Janey..."
Dual Images of Kathy Acker(Source)
FOOTNOTES:
(1) For the sensitive and easily-offended, there are also numerous explicit hand-drawn images of penises and vulvas.
PERSIAN VERSE:
Jean Genet
[More or Less in the Words of Kathy Acker]
Jean Genet walks slowly,
His hands in his pockets,
He stares as if he's not
Seeing anything much,
Eyes fixed, on this cafe.
I've Got Cancer
[Mostly in the Words of Kathy Acker]
I've got cancer,
The outward condition
Of the condition of
Being screwed-up.
I am such a total mess,
That is, askew to the world,
The nature of things,
Therefore, myself,
Askew to myself,
Such that I will never
Live without pain.
I can't help but do
Everything wrong.
Beetle on its Back
[Apologies to Gang of Four]
I feel like a beetle on its back,
A pervert diverted off the track.
All Kinds of Strife
I want to peruse dirty books,
And receive disapproving looks.
I want to embarrass my wife,
And get into all kinds of strife.
SOUNDTRACK:
June 27, 2025
Weibliche Selbstauslöschung als absolute Prosa. Sprachdestruktionsmanie.
Inhalt: 3/5 Sterne (weibliche Selbstauslöschung)
Form: 2/5 Sterne (Slang)
Erzählstimme: (nicht narrativ - keine Bewertung)
Komposition: 4/5 Sterne (kollagiert-auflösend)
Leseerlebnis: 4/5 Sterne (wuchtig-subversiv)
Kathy Acker gilt als „Königin der Punk-Literatur“ und hat es 1985 mit Harte Mädchen weinen nicht (Blood and Guts in High School) sogar auf den Index der Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdete Schriften geschafft. Nicht ohne Grund wird sie als literarische Terroristin tituliert. Ihre Text besitzen sprachexplosiven Charakter. Sie sprengt das Narrative von innen heraus, lässt Semantiken in sich zusammenstürzen, um den Sexus strudeln, im Rausch verpuffen und Logik/Vorurteil/Urteil im nirwanesischen Nichts verschwinden:
Alle großen Männer, die ich je kennengelernt habe, alle diese Männer, die mich verletzt haben, weil sie keine Gefühle hatten, oder die mir ihre Zuneigung angeboten haben und in dem Moment, in dem ich danach gegriffen habe, auf mir herumgetrampelt sind, die ihre monströsen Schwänze vor meinem Gesicht geschwenkt und dann gelacht haben, wenn ich darum bat, sie berühren zu dürfen, VERRÄTER, FASCHISTEN, die ihre Komplotte brauchen, ihr alle lebt in dieser prächtigen Stadt. Ich bete euch an. Ich kann niemand anderes ficken. Es sind nicht eure Schwänze, sondern es ist eure Unehrlichkeit, euer Drang, zu manipulieren und zu lügen, die Art, auf die die meisten Menschen auf der Straße rumlaufen, was zu diesen Verwicklungen führt, die ich ABENTEUER nenne. Alles andere ist tot. Wenn ich mit einem von euch zusammen bin, bin ich lebendig, und ansonsten ist mir alles egal.
Janey, die, möglicherweise, Protagonistin dieser Form der absoluten Prosa, reist im zarten Alter von zehn Jahre nach New York City, dann nach Tanger und Alexandria, wo ihre Reise endet. Sie erlebt so ziemlich alles in kürzester Zeit und erfüllt jedes Klischee einer Sex besessenen, unersättlichen Frau, die sich alles gefallen lässt, was die männliche wie weibliche Umgebung so von ihr will. Hierbei widerfahren ihr die schlimmsten Dinge, die selbst beim Lesen kaum zu ertragen sind. Kathy Acker zeichnet offenkundig die Satire der Projektionsfläche der Kindsfrau nach, weshalb sie Janey auch so jung sein lässt. Das Alter, die Konstellationen, all dies erscheinen aber enthoben jedweder Narrationsemantik, so dass die Altersangaben auch keine Rolle mehr spielen – genauso wenig wie der Vater-Tochter-Inzest, der ebenso das Rollenspiel zwischen Rock’n’Roll-Musiker und Groupie sein könnte. Das Buch schießt einfach aus allen Kanonen gleichzeitig. Viel geht daneben. Manches trifft:
PRÄSIDENT CARTER: Du glaubst, es gäbe eine Wahrheit. Alles ist Lüge. Wir brauchen nicht zu lügen, weil alles Lüge ist. Lerne, stolz auf die Lügen und den Materialismus und die Versteckspiele und die Diskrepanzen zu sein.
JANEY: Akzeptieren! So eine Scheiße. Geh doch, und nimm deine Scheiße mit ins Grab. Das sage ich dir.
Janey vereint als Projektionsfläche Unverwüstbarkeit wie allzeitige Verfügbarkeit und Anhänglichkeit. Sie sucht Männer. Männer suchen sie, aber alles geht schief und zwar permanent. Alles höhlt sich aus, entlarvt sich als Lüge, als Hohn, als Scharade. Mit vielen Mitteln verwüstet Kathy Acker die Erzählweise, fügt Zeichnungen in den Fließtext, handschriftliches Gekrakel, lässt Janey dichten, mit Jean Genet palavern, über Hawthorne reflektieren und wieder und wieder den Ägyptizismus des Todes durchschreiten: die Sphinx als Rätsel des Menschen.
Harte Mädchen weinen nicht gehört der Dada-Literatur an, schließt mit Carl Einsteins Bebuquin auf, zieht die Stell- und Zwingschraube nur ein paar Umdrehungen weiter, bis es erneut schmerzt. Und der Text schmerzt, aber er entkrampft auch. Leider wirkt das ganze formalästhetische ein wenig zu roh. Nadja von André Breton schafft es ruhiger und besonnener. Harte Mädchen weinen nicht wirkt wie das ungeliebte Kind von Bretons Schriften und Valerie Solanas SCUM Manifesto .
---------------------------------
---------------------------------
Details – ab hier Spoilergefahr (zur Erinnerung für mich):
---------------------------------
---------------------------------
Inhalt:
●Hauptfigur(en): Janey Smith, zwischen 10 und 20 Jahre alt, lebt mit Vater in Mexiko, Merida.
●Charaktere: im Grunde keine psychologische Form, keine Charaktere in dem Sinne
●Zusammenfassung/Inhaltsangabe:
1.) Janey, 10 Jahre alt, streitet sich mit ihrem Vater Johnny über seine neue Freundin Sally. Ein Urlaub in New York City steht bevor. Sie hat mit J ein destruktives Verhältnis, offenbar schlafen sie miteinander. Es bleibt aber von der Textstruktur fraglich, ob Johnny nicht der Freund und Janey nicht auf Kleinmädchen für ihren Rockstarfreund macht, und insofern Rollenspiele abgezogen werden. Naturalistisch gesehen handelt der Anfang von hartem Kindesmissbrauch. Sie will nicht vom Vater verlassen werden. Der Vater hat aber genug von ihr. Er möchte sein Leben nicht damit verbringen, eine Tochter aufzuziehen. Sie verabschieden sich. Sie reist nach New York. Sie telefonieren, streiten sich. Der Vater will für sie sorgen. Sie lehnt das fadenscheinige Angebot ab. Um zu verhindern, dass sie zurück nach Merida kommt, steckt ihr Vater sie in eine Schule.
Sie hängt mit einer Gang namens Scorpions ab. Sie muss viele Abtreibungen über sich ergehen lassen und hat eine chronische Beckenentzündung. Sie fängt an, in einer Hippie-Bäckerei zu arbeiten, 1977. Sie lernt Tommy kennen und startet mit ihm eine Bonnie&Clyde-Tour. Glücklich verliebt mit viel Sex. Bei einer Verfolgungsfahrt kommen viele ums Leben. Sie beschließt dem Tod davonzulaufen, geht von der High School ab und zieht ins East Village.
2.) Geschichte vom Biber, Ungeheuer und Bär. Der Bär versucht ins Haus vom Ungeheuer und dem Biber zu kommen. Janey lebt nun im East Village, 13 Jahre alt. Sie fällt in die Hände von Mr. Linker, einem Perser und Zuhälter. Sie reflektiert über Der scharlachrote Buchstabe von Hawthorne, über Hester Prynne. Sie beginnt Persisch zu lernen. In der Gefangenschaft beginnt sich Janey in den Perser zu verlieben, aus Mangel an Alternativen. Sie beginnt Gedichte zu schreiben. Über Sklaverei und Freiheit. Als sie genug dressiert worden ist und für den Sklavenhändler sich prostituieren soll, wird festgestellt, dass sie Krebs hat.
3.) In Tanger, Nordafrika. Sie lernt Jean Genet kennen. Tirade gegen Jimmy Carter. Tirade gegen Erica Jong. Sie benötigt einen Reisepass. Sie und Jean Genet erschummeln sich einen. Auf dem Weg zum Atlasgebirge, nach Ägypten, Alexandria. Dort liegt Janey im Schmutz und träumt vom Sex mit Rock’n’Roll-Stars. Sie arbeitet auf Sklavenfelder im Süden von Alexandria. Reflexion über die beste Sklaverei. Jean Genet und Janey geraten in Gefangenschaft. Rebellen verjagen Jean Genet und Janey. Sie trennen sich. Er gibt ihr Geld, und sie stirbt.
●Kurzfassung: Von Merida, Mexiko, nach New York, nach Tanger, nach Alexandria. Tod in Luxor. Stets dominiert von Männer: Vater in Merida, Tommy in New York, Jean Genet in Tanger.
●Ereignisse/Szenen: Gedichte und experimentelle Prosa während ihrer Gefangenschaft
●Diskurs: ziemlich inkohärente Gedankengänge, aber eindringlich Männer-Frauen-Thematik, und Sexbesessenheit
… ich komme nicht umhin, dieses Buch als eine Persiflage auf das Frauenbild zu verstehen, eine Satire, Janey als Projektionsfläche, die stirbt, als sich Jean Genet mit der Kunst beschäftigt. Also dient Janey als Psychogramm und nicht als literarische Figur, weshalb es ein schwieriger, sehr experimenteller Roman wird, der subversiv verhohnepiepelt. Inhaltlich passiert so gut wie nichts, außer dass Klischees über Klischees aufgehäuft werden, von Kindsfrauen. Plot durch sein Wirrwarr aber tabubrechend absurd und von mittelmäßiger Intensität. Vergleich mit Carl Einsteins Bebuquin und André Bretons Nadja.
--> 3 Sterne
Form:
●Wortschatz: Slapstick, Avantgarde, Obszönitäten, Radikalität.
●Type-Token-Ratio: nicht ermittelbar (Musil 0,23 - Genre 0,11)
●Satzlängen-Verteilung-Median: nicht ermittelbar
(bei Musil: 28 Wörter mit Standardabweichung 19 Wörter)
●Anteil der 1000 häufigsten Wörter: nicht ermittelbar (Musil/Mann <70% - Genre >80%)
●Wortartenverteilung: nicht ermittelbar (Adjektive - Musil 13%, Adverbien 7%)
●Verhältnis Nominal-/Verbalstil: nicht ermittelbar, vom Augenmaß sehr Verbalstil geprägt
●Stimmige Wortfelder: Ziemlich stimmig, Gossensprache.
●Satzstrukturen: Kaum normale Sätze, alles zersprengt.
●Wiederkehrende Motive/Tropen: Sexbesessenheit von Janey.
●Innovation: Sprachlich kaum.
--> 2 Sterne
Erzählstimme:
●Reflektiert: Nein.
●Situiert: Nein.
●Perspektiviert: Mehr oder weniger auf Janey, mit Wechsel, zwischen Ich- und Sie-Erzählung.
●Erzählform: Ich-, und Sie-Erzählweise
●Erzählstandort: räumlich wie zeitlich unbekannt
●Erzählsicht: nur von außen oder mit Innenperspektive – alles zusammen
●Erzählverhalten: extrem kommentierend
●Erzählhaltung: wuchtig verachtend
●Erzählverfahren: alles zusammen - direkte, indirekte, erlebte Rede, Bericht, Dialoge
●Erzählstil: nivellierend
… im Grunde kein klassischer Narrationstext, daher passt die Kategorie nicht
--> Keine Wertung
Komposition:
●Verhältnis Dialog/Beschreibung: Theater, Tagebuch, Gedicht absolute Prosa
●Tempiwechsel: rhythmisch, schnell, langsam, gekonnt heftig, abmildernd, pointiert
●Extradiegetische Abschnitte: seltsame Einschübe über Meridan, bspw.
●Lose Versatzstücke: nicht zu beurteilen bei dem Text, zu großes Chaos
●Reliefbildung: dynamische Ortswechsel, Akzente, Strukturbildnisse, Motive … straffe, harte Kontour, als Prosatext interessant mit Bildern, mit Dialogen, mit narrativen Sequenzen, Reflexionen, Tagebucheinträge, intensives Sprachbegehren, intensives Gegen-die-Sprache-Schreiben, kompositorisch ungezügelt, wild, entschlossen, klar perspektivisch auf den Putz gehauen, mit trauriger Pointe
--> 4 Sterne
Leseerlebnis:
●Gelangweilt: nein
●Geärgert: nicht wirklich, etwas geekelt
●Amüsiert: ja, durch die Unverhohlenheit
●Gefesselt: ja, durch die Heftigkeit
… das Buch besitzt einen extremen Subversionsgrad, sobald klar ist, wie hier die Klischees zerstört und zerlumpt werden. Eher ein performativer Text.
--> 4 Sterne
--------
Inhalt: 3/5 Sterne (weibliche Selbstauslöschung)
Form: 2/5 Sterne (Slang)
Erzählstimme: (nicht narrativ - keine Bewertung)
Komposition: 4/5 Sterne (kollagiert-auflösend)
Leseerlebnis: 4/5 Sterne (wuchtig-subversiv)
Kathy Acker gilt als „Königin der Punk-Literatur“ und hat es 1985 mit Harte Mädchen weinen nicht (Blood and Guts in High School) sogar auf den Index der Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdete Schriften geschafft. Nicht ohne Grund wird sie als literarische Terroristin tituliert. Ihre Text besitzen sprachexplosiven Charakter. Sie sprengt das Narrative von innen heraus, lässt Semantiken in sich zusammenstürzen, um den Sexus strudeln, im Rausch verpuffen und Logik/Vorurteil/Urteil im nirwanesischen Nichts verschwinden:
Alle großen Männer, die ich je kennengelernt habe, alle diese Männer, die mich verletzt haben, weil sie keine Gefühle hatten, oder die mir ihre Zuneigung angeboten haben und in dem Moment, in dem ich danach gegriffen habe, auf mir herumgetrampelt sind, die ihre monströsen Schwänze vor meinem Gesicht geschwenkt und dann gelacht haben, wenn ich darum bat, sie berühren zu dürfen, VERRÄTER, FASCHISTEN, die ihre Komplotte brauchen, ihr alle lebt in dieser prächtigen Stadt. Ich bete euch an. Ich kann niemand anderes ficken. Es sind nicht eure Schwänze, sondern es ist eure Unehrlichkeit, euer Drang, zu manipulieren und zu lügen, die Art, auf die die meisten Menschen auf der Straße rumlaufen, was zu diesen Verwicklungen führt, die ich ABENTEUER nenne. Alles andere ist tot. Wenn ich mit einem von euch zusammen bin, bin ich lebendig, und ansonsten ist mir alles egal.
Janey, die, möglicherweise, Protagonistin dieser Form der absoluten Prosa, reist im zarten Alter von zehn Jahre nach New York City, dann nach Tanger und Alexandria, wo ihre Reise endet. Sie erlebt so ziemlich alles in kürzester Zeit und erfüllt jedes Klischee einer Sex besessenen, unersättlichen Frau, die sich alles gefallen lässt, was die männliche wie weibliche Umgebung so von ihr will. Hierbei widerfahren ihr die schlimmsten Dinge, die selbst beim Lesen kaum zu ertragen sind. Kathy Acker zeichnet offenkundig die Satire der Projektionsfläche der Kindsfrau nach, weshalb sie Janey auch so jung sein lässt. Das Alter, die Konstellationen, all dies erscheinen aber enthoben jedweder Narrationsemantik, so dass die Altersangaben auch keine Rolle mehr spielen – genauso wenig wie der Vater-Tochter-Inzest, der ebenso das Rollenspiel zwischen Rock’n’Roll-Musiker und Groupie sein könnte. Das Buch schießt einfach aus allen Kanonen gleichzeitig. Viel geht daneben. Manches trifft:
PRÄSIDENT CARTER: Du glaubst, es gäbe eine Wahrheit. Alles ist Lüge. Wir brauchen nicht zu lügen, weil alles Lüge ist. Lerne, stolz auf die Lügen und den Materialismus und die Versteckspiele und die Diskrepanzen zu sein.
JANEY: Akzeptieren! So eine Scheiße. Geh doch, und nimm deine Scheiße mit ins Grab. Das sage ich dir.
Janey vereint als Projektionsfläche Unverwüstbarkeit wie allzeitige Verfügbarkeit und Anhänglichkeit. Sie sucht Männer. Männer suchen sie, aber alles geht schief und zwar permanent. Alles höhlt sich aus, entlarvt sich als Lüge, als Hohn, als Scharade. Mit vielen Mitteln verwüstet Kathy Acker die Erzählweise, fügt Zeichnungen in den Fließtext, handschriftliches Gekrakel, lässt Janey dichten, mit Jean Genet palavern, über Hawthorne reflektieren und wieder und wieder den Ägyptizismus des Todes durchschreiten: die Sphinx als Rätsel des Menschen.
Harte Mädchen weinen nicht gehört der Dada-Literatur an, schließt mit Carl Einsteins Bebuquin auf, zieht die Stell- und Zwingschraube nur ein paar Umdrehungen weiter, bis es erneut schmerzt. Und der Text schmerzt, aber er entkrampft auch. Leider wirkt das ganze formalästhetische ein wenig zu roh. Nadja von André Breton schafft es ruhiger und besonnener. Harte Mädchen weinen nicht wirkt wie das ungeliebte Kind von Bretons Schriften und Valerie Solanas SCUM Manifesto .
---------------------------------
---------------------------------
Details – ab hier Spoilergefahr (zur Erinnerung für mich):
---------------------------------
---------------------------------
Inhalt:
●Hauptfigur(en): Janey Smith, zwischen 10 und 20 Jahre alt, lebt mit Vater in Mexiko, Merida.
●Charaktere: im Grunde keine psychologische Form, keine Charaktere in dem Sinne
●Zusammenfassung/Inhaltsangabe:
1.) Janey, 10 Jahre alt, streitet sich mit ihrem Vater Johnny über seine neue Freundin Sally. Ein Urlaub in New York City steht bevor. Sie hat mit J ein destruktives Verhältnis, offenbar schlafen sie miteinander. Es bleibt aber von der Textstruktur fraglich, ob Johnny nicht der Freund und Janey nicht auf Kleinmädchen für ihren Rockstarfreund macht, und insofern Rollenspiele abgezogen werden. Naturalistisch gesehen handelt der Anfang von hartem Kindesmissbrauch. Sie will nicht vom Vater verlassen werden. Der Vater hat aber genug von ihr. Er möchte sein Leben nicht damit verbringen, eine Tochter aufzuziehen. Sie verabschieden sich. Sie reist nach New York. Sie telefonieren, streiten sich. Der Vater will für sie sorgen. Sie lehnt das fadenscheinige Angebot ab. Um zu verhindern, dass sie zurück nach Merida kommt, steckt ihr Vater sie in eine Schule.
Sie hängt mit einer Gang namens Scorpions ab. Sie muss viele Abtreibungen über sich ergehen lassen und hat eine chronische Beckenentzündung. Sie fängt an, in einer Hippie-Bäckerei zu arbeiten, 1977. Sie lernt Tommy kennen und startet mit ihm eine Bonnie&Clyde-Tour. Glücklich verliebt mit viel Sex. Bei einer Verfolgungsfahrt kommen viele ums Leben. Sie beschließt dem Tod davonzulaufen, geht von der High School ab und zieht ins East Village.
2.) Geschichte vom Biber, Ungeheuer und Bär. Der Bär versucht ins Haus vom Ungeheuer und dem Biber zu kommen. Janey lebt nun im East Village, 13 Jahre alt. Sie fällt in die Hände von Mr. Linker, einem Perser und Zuhälter. Sie reflektiert über Der scharlachrote Buchstabe von Hawthorne, über Hester Prynne. Sie beginnt Persisch zu lernen. In der Gefangenschaft beginnt sich Janey in den Perser zu verlieben, aus Mangel an Alternativen. Sie beginnt Gedichte zu schreiben. Über Sklaverei und Freiheit. Als sie genug dressiert worden ist und für den Sklavenhändler sich prostituieren soll, wird festgestellt, dass sie Krebs hat.
3.) In Tanger, Nordafrika. Sie lernt Jean Genet kennen. Tirade gegen Jimmy Carter. Tirade gegen Erica Jong. Sie benötigt einen Reisepass. Sie und Jean Genet erschummeln sich einen. Auf dem Weg zum Atlasgebirge, nach Ägypten, Alexandria. Dort liegt Janey im Schmutz und träumt vom Sex mit Rock’n’Roll-Stars. Sie arbeitet auf Sklavenfelder im Süden von Alexandria. Reflexion über die beste Sklaverei. Jean Genet und Janey geraten in Gefangenschaft. Rebellen verjagen Jean Genet und Janey. Sie trennen sich. Er gibt ihr Geld, und sie stirbt.
●Kurzfassung: Von Merida, Mexiko, nach New York, nach Tanger, nach Alexandria. Tod in Luxor. Stets dominiert von Männer: Vater in Merida, Tommy in New York, Jean Genet in Tanger.
●Ereignisse/Szenen: Gedichte und experimentelle Prosa während ihrer Gefangenschaft
●Diskurs: ziemlich inkohärente Gedankengänge, aber eindringlich Männer-Frauen-Thematik, und Sexbesessenheit
… ich komme nicht umhin, dieses Buch als eine Persiflage auf das Frauenbild zu verstehen, eine Satire, Janey als Projektionsfläche, die stirbt, als sich Jean Genet mit der Kunst beschäftigt. Also dient Janey als Psychogramm und nicht als literarische Figur, weshalb es ein schwieriger, sehr experimenteller Roman wird, der subversiv verhohnepiepelt. Inhaltlich passiert so gut wie nichts, außer dass Klischees über Klischees aufgehäuft werden, von Kindsfrauen. Plot durch sein Wirrwarr aber tabubrechend absurd und von mittelmäßiger Intensität. Vergleich mit Carl Einsteins Bebuquin und André Bretons Nadja.
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Form:
●Wortschatz: Slapstick, Avantgarde, Obszönitäten, Radikalität.
●Type-Token-Ratio: nicht ermittelbar (Musil 0,23 - Genre 0,11)
●Satzlängen-Verteilung-Median: nicht ermittelbar
(bei Musil: 28 Wörter mit Standardabweichung 19 Wörter)
●Anteil der 1000 häufigsten Wörter: nicht ermittelbar (Musil/Mann <70% - Genre >80%)
●Wortartenverteilung: nicht ermittelbar (Adjektive - Musil 13%, Adverbien 7%)
●Verhältnis Nominal-/Verbalstil: nicht ermittelbar, vom Augenmaß sehr Verbalstil geprägt
●Stimmige Wortfelder: Ziemlich stimmig, Gossensprache.
●Satzstrukturen: Kaum normale Sätze, alles zersprengt.
●Wiederkehrende Motive/Tropen: Sexbesessenheit von Janey.
●Innovation: Sprachlich kaum.
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Erzählstimme:
●Reflektiert: Nein.
●Situiert: Nein.
●Perspektiviert: Mehr oder weniger auf Janey, mit Wechsel, zwischen Ich- und Sie-Erzählung.
●Erzählform: Ich-, und Sie-Erzählweise
●Erzählstandort: räumlich wie zeitlich unbekannt
●Erzählsicht: nur von außen oder mit Innenperspektive – alles zusammen
●Erzählverhalten: extrem kommentierend
●Erzählhaltung: wuchtig verachtend
●Erzählverfahren: alles zusammen - direkte, indirekte, erlebte Rede, Bericht, Dialoge
●Erzählstil: nivellierend
… im Grunde kein klassischer Narrationstext, daher passt die Kategorie nicht
--> Keine Wertung
Komposition:
●Verhältnis Dialog/Beschreibung: Theater, Tagebuch, Gedicht absolute Prosa
●Tempiwechsel: rhythmisch, schnell, langsam, gekonnt heftig, abmildernd, pointiert
●Extradiegetische Abschnitte: seltsame Einschübe über Meridan, bspw.
●Lose Versatzstücke: nicht zu beurteilen bei dem Text, zu großes Chaos
●Reliefbildung: dynamische Ortswechsel, Akzente, Strukturbildnisse, Motive … straffe, harte Kontour, als Prosatext interessant mit Bildern, mit Dialogen, mit narrativen Sequenzen, Reflexionen, Tagebucheinträge, intensives Sprachbegehren, intensives Gegen-die-Sprache-Schreiben, kompositorisch ungezügelt, wild, entschlossen, klar perspektivisch auf den Putz gehauen, mit trauriger Pointe
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Leseerlebnis:
●Gelangweilt: nein
●Geärgert: nicht wirklich, etwas geekelt
●Amüsiert: ja, durch die Unverhohlenheit
●Gefesselt: ja, durch die Heftigkeit
… das Buch besitzt einen extremen Subversionsgrad, sobald klar ist, wie hier die Klischees zerstört und zerlumpt werden. Eher ein performativer Text.
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September 18, 2009
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.
Yeah. I'm 34 now. And I'm just not feeling it anymore.
I get the deconstruction, the post-structuralism, the neo-sex-positive-feminism argument. But, when it gets right down to it, other than the reconfiguration of "The Scarlet Letter" that happens about 2/3 of the way through this thing, it just bored the hell out of me.
Yeah. I'm 34 now. And I'm just not feeling it anymore.
I get the deconstruction, the post-structuralism, the neo-sex-positive-feminism argument. But, when it gets right down to it, other than the reconfiguration of "The Scarlet Letter" that happens about 2/3 of the way through this thing, it just bored the hell out of me.
Read
September 26, 2017This is an amazing book, hyperbolic, mad, outrageous, cynical, expressive, and audacious. Acker has portrayed an odd and often grotesque intersection of nightmare and fantasy in which the worst nightmare often is the realization of fantasy. At the same time she gives very real insight into the mind of a person whose character and vision have been shaped by a life of abuse and exploitation. She doesn't mind being crude and inelegant, and she happily presents a disjointed and often surreal narrative... she has basically no inhibition whatsoever:
If I could find a thesis in this book (I swear I found it at some point, but may have misplaced it along the way) it would be something about the necessity of vision and the horror of a life without dreams. Even if the visions are of being sexually abused by a filthy, sado-masochistic President Jimmy Carter with a shitty ass (one of the most disgusting characters I've ever encountered in literature), they apparently have more vitality than an ordinary job in a bakery. Robotic slaves to capitalist materialism have no escape when their dreams die. Of course, Janey the dreamer also has no escape, and her body and sanity are bound to die. She's also never really given many choices. Yet there's a romantic desperation in her vision-life.
We need more literary terrorists like this. Kathy Acker was an innovator. At the same time, I think her voice sometimes echoes in the writings of some of today's alternative/cynical writer-outsiders. Anyway, she's left her mark.
"Right now I can speak as directly as I want 'cause no one gives a shit about writing and ideas, all anyone cares about is money."
If I could find a thesis in this book (I swear I found it at some point, but may have misplaced it along the way) it would be something about the necessity of vision and the horror of a life without dreams. Even if the visions are of being sexually abused by a filthy, sado-masochistic President Jimmy Carter with a shitty ass (one of the most disgusting characters I've ever encountered in literature), they apparently have more vitality than an ordinary job in a bakery. Robotic slaves to capitalist materialism have no escape when their dreams die. Of course, Janey the dreamer also has no escape, and her body and sanity are bound to die. She's also never really given many choices. Yet there's a romantic desperation in her vision-life.
"Everything takes place at night,
In the centres of nightmares and dreams,
I know I'm being torn apart by my needs,
I don't know how to see anymore."
We need more literary terrorists like this. Kathy Acker was an innovator. At the same time, I think her voice sometimes echoes in the writings of some of today's alternative/cynical writer-outsiders. Anyway, she's left her mark.
August 20, 2012
One of the most fucked up books I've ever read. I can see, certainly, how it would annoy some in a stylistic manner and infuriate others on a conceptual level (for example, Janey is being...raped?...by her father, but Acker presents this relationship in the terms of a dying love affair). Let's say it's not for the weak of heart, nor is it recommended to those without a sense of incredibly, powerfully grotesque and debasing humor.
Thankfully, I'm a kind of monster with no boundaries! So this was an absolute joyride to me. By the time Janey is describing Jimmy Carter's asshole caked in several inches of old shit, and referring to him as a syphilitic pustule that fell off of Nixon's dick, I was nearly crying with laughter in the middle of the Boston Public Garden - likely looking like a total maniac, to boot. Jean Genet makes a wonderfully bizarre appearance, and the "letter" from Erica Jong was likewise too fucking funny to get offended by. If there's ever been a line of appropriateness drawn in any context, Acker's novel pukes on it and keeps on trucking.
Like I said, not for everyone, but if you're totally fucked in the head or the funny bone, you should definitely give it a test run.
Thankfully, I'm a kind of monster with no boundaries! So this was an absolute joyride to me. By the time Janey is describing Jimmy Carter's asshole caked in several inches of old shit, and referring to him as a syphilitic pustule that fell off of Nixon's dick, I was nearly crying with laughter in the middle of the Boston Public Garden - likely looking like a total maniac, to boot. Jean Genet makes a wonderfully bizarre appearance, and the "letter" from Erica Jong was likewise too fucking funny to get offended by. If there's ever been a line of appropriateness drawn in any context, Acker's novel pukes on it and keeps on trucking.
Like I said, not for everyone, but if you're totally fucked in the head or the funny bone, you should definitely give it a test run.
April 10, 2021
My God not many books have made me feel this sad and depressed to the point where I had to keep stopping and giving myself a hug. Not many books have done this whilst at the same time making me laugh. I took far too long to sit down and read this. How to summarise what it's about? Well, it's initially about Janey and her toxic relationships various men, the way that sex impacts on her psyche, the way that she's lost and trying to find herself but there's nothing to be found because so much of her has already been taken away and how it keeps getting taken away (over and over). It's about child prostitution and human trafficking (or that's how I interpreted parts of it). I've seen a few negative reviews of this book on here, some people are seemingly put off by the abstraction and weird style of it. I suggest you get over that and just look at it as a form of high expressionism.
April 17, 2021
I read a short story by Kathy Acker ages ago which was about her process and how she uses plagariasm... so basically she'll take other people's writing and then reconfigure them into her own shapes. The thing is that from reading this I would never have guessed that's what she's done. She makes it breathe in such an authentic way... in fact it feels like it can't be anything BUT authentic. So what an amazing artist she is.
July 15, 2015
We've been punked, folks. I suspect that the critics and editors involved in recommending this trash via the "1001" list are laughing their collective asses off, knowing they've tricked yet another reader into falling for their pathetic prank. How has this "novel" stayed on the list?
This is undeniably the worst piece of crap I've ever read. I'd rather have read the ingredient list on my shampoo bottle than to have wasted my time on this tripe. Actually, I could've poured the shampoo into my eyes and experienced less pain.
I'd give this book zero stars, but I'm compelled to rate it both as a warning to my fellow readers, and to do my small part to help bring down its overinflated rating.
This is undeniably the worst piece of crap I've ever read. I'd rather have read the ingredient list on my shampoo bottle than to have wasted my time on this tripe. Actually, I could've poured the shampoo into my eyes and experienced less pain.
I'd give this book zero stars, but I'm compelled to rate it both as a warning to my fellow readers, and to do my small part to help bring down its overinflated rating.
June 14, 2024
Título en verdad iconoclasta y desafiante, en el que sus corrosivas frases, repletas de explícitas referencias sexuales, algunas muy gráficas, viene a ser una forma contestataria de devolver con violencia la violencia que a su vez el mundo ofrece a Janey, una joven judía que vive en Mérida (Yucatán), quien mantiene una relación incestuosa (incómodamente incestuosa) con su padre y es enviada a Nueva York para mantenerla alejada de esa relación híper-tóxica. Por supuesto en el instituto los problemas no quedan atenuados, menos todavía zanjados, si no que se expanden y alcanzan cotas chocantes.
En verdad la escuela referida en el título no tiene apenas presencia, sólo es una referencia al mundo juvenil de su protagonista, entorno que a ella le genera más relaciones dañinas y destructivas, que la conducen por senderos tortuosos en su aprendizaje del mundo, sufriendo varios reveses antes de su descenso a la oscuridad. Por lo tanto la expresión descarnada de la lengua con la que se escribió no es más que el esfuerzo por romper el círculo y buscar la liberación de todas esas fuerzas que la presionan y aprisionan.
Hay que decir que no se trata de la típica literatura punk, es decir, prosa realista surtida de suciedad, violencia y mucha sexualidad. Acker cita entre sus referentes a William Burroughs, acto en absoluto pedante o arbitrario, pues es notorio, al estilo de Burroughs, que su texto rompe con el tono uniforme de la literatura normativa y conoce diversas mutaciones, desde poesía hasta narración, mapas, ejercicios de aprendizaje de persa, dibujos pornográficos, textos en primera persona o tercera, una narración mutante que abarca un amplio ámbito, dando cabida desde retorcidas pesadillas, ejercicios de pura imaginación, a personajes reales como los neoyorkinos The Contortions o al escritor francés Jean Genet, otro modelo indudable de Acker debido a su tono rebelde y ácido.
La aparición de Genet rondando las callejuelas de Tánger, por cierto, no me ha resultado del todo convincente. Recuerdo el retrato que le hizo Juan Goytisolo y el de Acker me resulta un tanto desdibujado o descafeinado, con poco relieve. Luego, aparte del continuo choque contra el buen gusto y la ininterrumpida exposición a relaciones violentas y entornos tóxicos, de tanta mutación que conoce el texto, más que una especie de mosaico sencillamente parece un flujo discontinuo y en ocasiones desparejo. También me cuesta compaginar la melancolía que trasluce con el predominantemente ánimo combativo, que en absoluto resulta falso o contradictorio, sólo está encajado de una forma que no me convenció. Como decía el propio Burroughs se califica de experimental cuando el experimento no funciona. Diremos entonces que esta novela es semi-experimental, aunque la parte final, cuando Janey viaja a Tánger, opino que sí tiene más brillo que los segmentos mexicanos y neoyorkinos, pues plasma con creatividad y capacidad de sorpresa ese viaje a la libertad de la imaginación de la narradora.
En verdad la escuela referida en el título no tiene apenas presencia, sólo es una referencia al mundo juvenil de su protagonista, entorno que a ella le genera más relaciones dañinas y destructivas, que la conducen por senderos tortuosos en su aprendizaje del mundo, sufriendo varios reveses antes de su descenso a la oscuridad. Por lo tanto la expresión descarnada de la lengua con la que se escribió no es más que el esfuerzo por romper el círculo y buscar la liberación de todas esas fuerzas que la presionan y aprisionan.
Hay que decir que no se trata de la típica literatura punk, es decir, prosa realista surtida de suciedad, violencia y mucha sexualidad. Acker cita entre sus referentes a William Burroughs, acto en absoluto pedante o arbitrario, pues es notorio, al estilo de Burroughs, que su texto rompe con el tono uniforme de la literatura normativa y conoce diversas mutaciones, desde poesía hasta narración, mapas, ejercicios de aprendizaje de persa, dibujos pornográficos, textos en primera persona o tercera, una narración mutante que abarca un amplio ámbito, dando cabida desde retorcidas pesadillas, ejercicios de pura imaginación, a personajes reales como los neoyorkinos The Contortions o al escritor francés Jean Genet, otro modelo indudable de Acker debido a su tono rebelde y ácido.
La aparición de Genet rondando las callejuelas de Tánger, por cierto, no me ha resultado del todo convincente. Recuerdo el retrato que le hizo Juan Goytisolo y el de Acker me resulta un tanto desdibujado o descafeinado, con poco relieve. Luego, aparte del continuo choque contra el buen gusto y la ininterrumpida exposición a relaciones violentas y entornos tóxicos, de tanta mutación que conoce el texto, más que una especie de mosaico sencillamente parece un flujo discontinuo y en ocasiones desparejo. También me cuesta compaginar la melancolía que trasluce con el predominantemente ánimo combativo, que en absoluto resulta falso o contradictorio, sólo está encajado de una forma que no me convenció. Como decía el propio Burroughs se califica de experimental cuando el experimento no funciona. Diremos entonces que esta novela es semi-experimental, aunque la parte final, cuando Janey viaja a Tánger, opino que sí tiene más brillo que los segmentos mexicanos y neoyorkinos, pues plasma con creatividad y capacidad de sorpresa ese viaje a la libertad de la imaginación de la narradora.
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