![]() Well, Acker won’t do that for you, but she will help you get high. Just gimme a good story, we say, with a beginning, middle, and end. In the arts, and particularly literature, we still moan and groan at experiment. That doesn’t mean that all risky work is important, but it does mean that safety gets us nowhere. ![]() The idea is that you put in a few jazz chords, take out that tiresome riff and add a new one, get rid of the sub plot about the neighbour's wife's suspicions that her son was a rent boy - good god, that was terrible - increase the bpm by a. Okay, so Acker was art as performance and language as desire, but was she an important writer? Yes. This is what Kathy Acker was revolutionalistically suggesting by rewriting very badly Great Expectations. ![]() Not rarefied, not back-dated, not dull, just something you suddenly wanted-the way you suddenly want to be kissed by someone you hadn’t even looked at before. To see Kathy in her leopard-skin leotard, slash of red lipstick, gym-honed muscles, maybe a dildo, usually a backing track, seduce a packed crowd with that gorgeous voice and knowing childlike look was to discover how exciting art could be. Kathy Ackers practice of literary appropriation and pastiche made her notoriousas a rebel and a groundbreakerwhen Great Expectations was first published in 1982. It’s why her readings were more like stage shows than those creepy literary events where some dude mumbles in a monotone for half an hour. The author of Empire of the Senseless gives the Dickens classic a punk twist, setting it in 1980s New York City. ![]() It’s why she fronted bands-most famously The Mekons on the CD of Pussy, King of Pirates-if you haven’t heard it, buy it now. ![]()
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