Overview

The book that shocked a generation and introduced Kathy Acker as the enfant terrible of the 1980s literary underground This is a book about feminism, capitalism, sex, punk, youth, the city, the literary giants, anger, infatuation and the USA. A teenage coming-of-age story and a glorious, delirious patchwork of prose, poetry, drama, plagiarism and illustration. Childlike sexual drawings pepper the book, along with Acker's surreal, minutely detailed, annotated 'dream maps'. Hugely controversial upon its publication in 1984, Blood and Guts in High School has lost none of its power to shock and is still revered by readers today.

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9780241302514

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Reading Kathy Acker is like playing hopscotch with a genius -- Richard Foreman An avatar of nomadic urban modern primitive tribes... her novels perform postmodern campfire grill voodoo... She was a magician -- R.U. Sirius Scarified sensibility,subversive intellect, and predatory wit make her a writer like no other * The New York Times Review of Books * Kathy Acker's writing is virtuoso, maddening, crazy, so sexy, so painful, and beaten out of a wild heart that nothing can tame. Acker is a landmark writer -- Jeanette Winterson Acker understands that writing without myth is nothing * Chris Kraus * Acker gives her work the power to mirror the reader's soul -- William S. Burroughs Twenty years after her death and I still miss her -- Neil Gaiman [Kathy Acker is] part rebel bohemian avant-gardiste, part NYC downtown punk, and part venerable literary grande dame -- Michael Bracewell Acker's work, more than that of any other writer I can think of, challenged the traditional lines of demarcation between poetry and novel, between high culture and popular trash and, perhaps most important of all, between literature and art world. -- London Review of Books * Peter Wollen * A coming-of-age story which examines incest and paedophilia with a profoundly Sadist literary bent ... can be credited with moving mainstream literature into indie territory. -- A Stevens * Guardian * Acker is a postmodern Colette with echoes of Cleland's Fanny Hill -- William S. Burroughs

Acker is a postmodern Colette with echoes of Cleland's Fanny Hill -- William S. Burroughs A coming-of-age story which examines incest and paedophilia with a profoundly Sadist literary bent ... can be credited with moving mainstream literature into indie territory. -- A Stevens Guardian Acker's work, more than that of any other writer I can think of, challenged the traditional lines of demarcation between poetry and novel, between high culture and popular trash and, perhaps most important of all, between literature and art world. In all these respects, her work signalled the tremors of a deep cultural shift... -- London Review of Books Peter Wollen [Kathy Acker is] part rebel bohemian avant-gardiste, part NYC downtown punk, and part venerable literary grande dame -- Michael Bracewell Twenty years after her death and I still miss her -- Neil Gaiman Acker gives her work the power to mirror the reader's soul -- William S. Burroughs

Author Information

Kathy Acker was born in 1947 and was raised in New York City. In her twenties she broke ties with her family and worked as a stripper, while writing and publishing in the underground literary scene. The 1984 publication of Blood and Guts in High School caused a sensation - the book was at the centre of a surge of media attention. Diagnosed with breast cancer in 1996, she abandoned Western medicine after a traumatic experience of surgery. She died in an alternative cancer clinic in Tijuana, Mexico in 1997.Her major novels include Blood and Guts in High School, Great Expectations, Don Quixote and Pussy, King of the Pirates. A collection of her emails with cultural theorist McKenzie Wark was published in 2015, titled I'm Very into You.

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