Kathy Acker (Pt 2)

I'd put this book down for awhile and finally finished it the other week (part one here). Acker is...well, you probably already know about her reputation. Difficult is one word. Some call her problematic. The last piece in this book, Hannibal Lecter, My Father, is the testimony of The Federal Inspection Office for Publications Harmful to Minors in Germany and their reasons for banning the book Tough Girls Don't Cry. In addition to the hypersexual content and coarse language throughout, they cite the book as being difficult to follow, adopting too many styles, and for plagiarism.

I can't argue that this book should be read my minors. I've thought about this in the past when I first read Naked Lunch. Or first heard the Velvet Underground. I wonder if I have kids what kind of media I would expose them to, or what of mine they would find on their own. I'm all for the possibility of expansion of ideas especially in children and teenagers. But how does one determine when one can begin to handle such dark and surreal or evocative and cerebral texts? Making works taboo only makes them more attractive.

The disjointedness of Acker makes me think I won't read anything of hers again, or at least any non-non-fiction work (essays, interviews, etc). I like her thoughts but can't get into the prose. I think I could have appreciated this experimental writing style actually if I were still in high school or college. She eschews conventional tactics entirely. Of course, this is also a work of her earliest material, and maybe I need to find the Acker that's best for me.

I've thought a lot lately too about conventional texts and sounds. Music becomes more monotonous to me over time. Musicians have decided that one note must be followed by another of only two or three notes, or can be played simultaneously with a handful of notes. It's boring. Granted, I've heard much more music than I have read literature. But will we get to the point where writing too becomes so predictable? That any given word can only be followed by a handful of words? Are we already there?

Anyway, here's a now defunct website that put Kathy Acker lines into the comic Cathy.