Blood and Guts in High School, Plus Two

‘There is a young woman writing on the west coast who has received not attention at all. Her name is Kathy Acker. She is literally the wildest writer going… Her prose is direct, fast, sexy, hot, horny, furiously honest… Insofar as I can see, she’s the dark horse in American Lit. Not for fame, but for influence. Originality. Sheer voice. Guts.’

Now for the first time on either side of the Atlantic a major publishing house will be publishing Kathy Acker’s most recent work.

Her novels have been described as everything from post-punk porn to post-punk feminism, first person narratives which combine detailed eroticism with detailed politics and what Acker calls ‘pop content’. Acker hasn’t lacked controversy. She doesn’t shy away from what is brutal, violent, and ugly. She describes sexual acts graphically, frequently and seldom in the approved ‘feminine’, ‘Romantic’ manner. Her narrative is both poetic and powerful – a montage of conversation, description, conjecture, moments snatched from history and from literature. Short, episodic, outspoken and outrageous, Acker’s eerie exposition of anti-social values, her attack on religion, education, and government, chart the emergence of a new culture.

BLOOD AND GUTS IN HIGH SCHOOL
Janey lived in the locker room. Twice a day the Persian Slave Trader came in and taught her to be a whore. Otherwise there was nothing. One day she found a pencil stub and scrap paper in a forgotten corner of the room. She began to write down her life…

GREAT EXPECTATIONS
Great Expectations begins when a young boy, Pip, learns he has come into great expectations. What these expectations actually are, or the change from the total disparity between Pip’s ideas of ‘expectations’ and what is real to Pip’s learning to feel, is the narrative of this plagiarized Bildungsroman. This book is totally sensuous.

MY DEATH, MY LIFE BY PIER PAOLO PASOLINI
The renowned philosopher, poet, cinematographer, painter and writer Pier Paolo Pasolini solves the mystery of his own death.