Kathy Acker

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Kathy Acker, 1996 in Munich

Kathy Acker (born April 18, 1947 in New York City , † November 30, 1997 in Tijuana , Mexico ) was an American writer . Her first literary work was called Black Tarantula . Kathy Acker sometimes appeared under this pseudonym . She was enthusiastic about the work of William S. Burroughs and the ideas and texts of the anti-psychiatrist Ronald D. Laing . Kathy Acker's reputation as Queen of Punk was based on the one hand on the formal and content-related focus of her literary work, but on the other hand on the stylization of her person.

Life

The author's first work appeared in the mid-1970s against the backdrop of the then burgeoning literary underground in New York City. Her first works were fundamentally influenced by her own several months of experience as a stripper . Acker remained on the fringes of the literary establishment for a long time and was only published by small alternative publishers until the mid-1980s, giving the author a reputation as a literary terrorist . In 1984, Blood and Guts in High School was her first work published in the United Kingdom .

Acker wrote a remarkable number of short stories in the following period, almost all of which were published by Grove Press . She has also contributed to magazines and anthologies, including publications in RE / Search , Angel Exhaust and Rapid Eye .

1997 Kathy Acker's book appeared Pussy King of the Pirates (English Pussy, King of the Pirates ). The book is the story of pirates in search of legendary treasure that gives their pirate existence something like meaning and gives them the freedom to be something other than pirates. As in many of her books, historical, mythical and real people appear in it, such as Antonin Artaud , Antigone and King Creon. With the band Mekons , Kathy Acker recorded a CD with the same title as the book. Another CD by Kathy Acker, entitled Redoing Childhood , was released in 1999.

Towards the end of her life, Acker also published in traditional mass media such as several articles in the British newspaper The Guardian , including an interview with the Spice Girls , which appeared a few months before her death.

Kathy Acker died of breast cancer in 1997 at the age of 50 . Your estate is in the English Department of the University of Cologne . It includes parts of their library, manuscripts, records and personal effects. The estate can be used scientifically. It is managed by Hanjo Berressem and Norbert Finzsch .

controversy

Acker repeatedly deliberately used fragments of texts by other authors and thus came into conflict with copyright law. The bestselling author Harold Robbins sued them for using some passages. Kathy Acker wrote about her ideas on copyright in her book Ultra Light - Last Minute (edited by Sylvère Lothringer), which was published in 1990 by Merve Verlag . According to her idea, the works of all artists should be available for other artists to communicate and she advocated "plagiarism" as an art form. In Great Expectations (1983) (dt. Great Expectations , 1988), the author used extensive text from the famous sadomasochistic novel Dominique Aurys Story of O . In spite of her ambivalent feelings about academic institutions, Kathy Acker worked for several years as a literary professor in San Francisco .

reception

Acker's direct language and her idiosyncratic literary adaptations of topics such as sexuality and violence brought her book with the German title Harte Mädchen Weinen nicht (English original title: Blood and Guts in High School ) to the German Federal Testing Office for writings harmful to minors in 1985 . The book was reprinted in an abridged version in 1991, as an indexed work may neither be advertised nor made accessible to minors.

Text sample:

“Once upon a time there was a materialistic society and one of the results of that materialism was a“ sexual ”revolution. Since the materialistic society had succeeded in releasing sex from every imaginable feeling, you girls can now all go here and spread your legs as often as you want, because it is so easy to fuck around, because it is so easy not to feel anything . I can't remember who I first fucked with, but I couldn't have known about contraception because I got pregnant. I remember the abortion: one hundred and ninety dollars (…) The women in my queue were given forms; each form ended with a paragraph stating that she authorized the doctor to do exactly what he wanted and that it was not his fault if she died afterward. We had already confided in men beforehand. That's why we were here. "

Works

  • Politics (1972)
  • The childlike life of the Black Tarantula (1973)
  • I Dreamed I Was a Nymphomaniac: Imagining (1974)
  • Florida (1976; reissued in Literal Madness: Three Novels 1987)
  • Adult Life of Toulouse Lautrec (1978)
  • NYC in 1979 (1981)
  • Great Expectations (1983). German edition: Great expectations , Munich 1988, ISBN 3-453-00814-6
  • Algeria: A Series of Invocations Because Nothing Else Works (1984)
  • Blood and Guts in High School (1984). German edition: tough girls don't cry. Munich 1985 (indexed), abridged new edition 1991, ISBN 3-453-04608-0
  • Don Quixote: Which Was a Dream (1986). German edition: The history of Don Quichotte , Munich 1988, ISBN 3-926532-07-6
  • Kathy goes to Haiti (1987; published in: Literal Madness: Three Novels )
  • My Death My Life by Pier Paolo Pasolini. (1987; published in: Literal Madness: Three Novels ). German edition: My death my life - The story of Pier Paolo Pasolini , Munich 1987, ISBN 3-453-00103-6
  • Wordplays 5: An Anthology of New American Drama (1987)
  • Empire of the Senseless (1988). German edition: In the realm without senses , Ravensburg 1989, ISBN 3-926532-21-1
  • In Memoriam to Identity (1990)
  • Hannibal Lecter, My Father (1991)
  • My Mother: Demonology (1994). German edition: Meine Mutter - Demonologie , Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-929010-24-0
  • Pussycat Fever (1995)
  • Dust. Essays (1995)
  • Pussy, King of the Pirates (1996). German edition: Pussy, King of the Pirates , Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-929010-48-8
  • Bodies of Work: Essays (1997)
  • Portrait of an Eye: Three Novels (1998 reissue)
  • Redoing Childhood (2000) spoken word CD, KRS 349.
  • Rip-Off Red, Girl Detective (2002 posthumously from a 1973 manuscript)
  • Kathy Acker (1971-1975) , ed. Justin Gajoux and Claire Finch, critical edition of unpublished early writings from 1971-1975 (Éditions Ismael, 2019, 656p.)

German editions:

further reading

  • Andrea Juno: Angry Women: The feminine side of the avant-garde . Hannibal Verlag, 1997, ISBN 3-85445-134-2 (contains an interview with Kathy Acker)
  • Polina Mackay, Kathryn Nicol (Eds.): Kathy Acker and Transnationalism. Cambridge Scholars, 2009
  • Petra Nachbaur: Smile, baby! Puzzle! An investigation into experimental postmodern female writing with a special focus on the work of Kathy Acker . Diploma thesis, Innsbruck 1995
  • Karin Rick (Ed.): Bankruptcy Book. No. 20. The Sexual, Women and Art , bankruptcy book, 1987, ISBN 3-88769-220-9 (The symposium on the subject took place in Vienna in 1987)
  • Amy Scholder, Carla Harryman, Avital Ronell (eds.): Lust for Life. On the Writings of Kathy Acker. Verso, 2006, ISBN 1-84467-066-X
  • Florian Zappe: Writing in between. Transgression and avant-garde legacy with Kathy Acker. transcript, 2013, ISBN 978-3-8376-2362-8
  • Chris Kraus: After Kathy Acker: a biography , [London]: Allen Lane, 2017, ISBN 978-0-241-31805-8

documentation

  • Who's Afraid of Kathy Acker? (ZDF / arte / ORF, 2007. 79-minute documentary portrait by Barbara Caspar)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Acker, Kathy
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer
DATE OF BIRTH April 18, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City , USA
DATE OF DEATH November 30, 1997
Place of death Tijuana , Mexico