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paper), critic David Kelly wrote of its hardback release last spring in The
New York Times Book Review, “…if Ms. Acker were funny, she could probably
write first-rate episodes of Melrose Place… [with] an echo of Long
John Silver’s threat `Them that die’ll be the lucky ones.'” Committed, Kelly
forged on, “…[Acker] seems hard-pressed whether she wants to be pretentious,
or merely pedestrian,” concluded with a flippant, “Them that don’t read will be
the lucky ones.”
Ah, if it were only so simple.
One can only regard “God” as highly mercurial in light of the fact Ms. Kathy
Acker, post-modern-punk-poseur extraordinaire, can now be considered a gen-u-ine
cultural icon, right up there with William Burroughs, Jean Genet, Harold
Robbins, and whomever else’s oeuvre she happens to be ransacking this week.
And, as such, even a calculated, premeditated attack on Ms. Acker’s own
oeuvre, especially one predicated on a general assault as opposed to a
specific piece-related skirmish, sans the warm blanket of cultural sanctity
provided by the Times, stands an easy 90-10 chance of quickly dissolving
into a punch-drunk kamikaze dive — to the satisfaction, if not absolute glee, of post-modernists
everywhere.
In a not dissimilar situation two decades and change past, harsh criticism of
Erica Jong, author of the landmark Fear Of Flying, garnered an atypical
“intellectual” response of “Don’t get it, do you, anvilhead?” However, now that
Jong’s literary stock has crested, and currently laps shore in bargain bins, a
certain perspective-realization via distance, begins to emerge.
Jong was, in many ways, an “Acker” of her time — her concept of men and sex,
within a given context, as “zipless fucks,” was punk as hell for a woman in the
early Seventies. Nonetheless, now that shop gals, secretaries, and school
teachers from sea to shining sea regularly pleasure themselves with fantasies
first constructed, then legitimized by way of Ms. Jong’s sexual muse, her
existence as a socio-sexual nihilist, a “punk,” if you will, is drawn seriously
into question. Where orgasms of revelation and understanding once crackled,
giving off incandescent sparks — orange and red and yellow and brilliant,
phosphorescent white — the same climaxes now come on in splats, like mud
hitting a wall; familiarity having long since bred contemptuous nonchalance.
For all her bisexual “grrrl” hubris, Acker had ought enjoy her decidedly self-made
perch while it lasts — as an author flagrantly “risking the ridiculous to
achieve the sublime,” she is veering dangerously close to self-parody.
Though it’s a problem confronting anyone working exclusively outside the
mainstream, Acker seems hellbent on seeing her literary chicken- run
through. And she’s circling and picking up speed for an excessively sloppy,
figurative Seth Morgan on her turbo- charged
junk wagon of pookie- porn
and parlor- game
masochism all the piercings and tattoos in the world ain’t gonna make right
again.
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Pussy, King Of The Pirates is a grrrl pirate story that journeys from
the most famous whorehouse in Alexandria through an unidentified, crumbling
city that may or may not be sometime in the future, to Brighton Town, England,
and finally, to a ship headed toward Pirate Island, where the stories converge
and the vision ends.” That’s what it says on the fly-leaf at any rate.
Narrators come and go, as do genders, situations, you name it. I was
foundering. It got so the book mocked me nightly from beneath the Blue Bell
pint container/ashtray where I’d attempted to forget its existence on a
cluttered bedside table.
At book’s end, I was left with the awful feeling of having missed something,
some subtle, barely distinguishable nuance unlocking the Pandora’s Box Acker’s
work purports to represent. Feeling more and more like Jill Clayburgh in
Michael Ritchie’s 1978 film Semi- Tough,
I decided to solicit the opinion of my peers — editors, writers, bookstore
employees, even friends of friends. When I began to moan about my predicament,
one person signed off with a cryptic, “Don’t defend yourself. Discuss it
textually.”
Fate soon intervened. A few nights later a friend of a friend named Stephen
Pettinga appeared at my doorstep: “Screwed- up,
man. Forgot to renew my lease. Been sleeping in my car. Clutch going out.” I
gestured in the direction of the couch, then realized this was a guy known for
“appreciating” Ani DiFranco, and who’d endured two semesters of the University
of Iowa Undergraduate Poetry Workshop to boot. I casually tossed him my copy of
Pussy and retreated — spider-like — to my bedroom, calling back “Read
this. Lemme know what ya think.” Perfect. I was saved. Well, kinda….
A few days later, this missive appeared on my desk: “Acker’s intent seems
to be more of an experiment in subliminal language than a novel. It’s about
what you can do with language — a wide- open
plain free of literary constraints. It’s length, however, is problematical.
When I finished I felt as if my subconscious had been drubbed. In a way, I’m
relieved it’s over.”
“I should be so lucky,” I thought to myself. But Pettinga’s remarks, though
basically as vague as anybody else’s, did enable me to finally recognize, and
grudgingly accept Acker’s overt manipulation of my subconscious — and to
respond to the author’s metaphysical goals for said subconscious in a like
manner. Happily or no, the response was less a multi- colored
orgasmic burst of revelation and more Mel Gibson in the latter half of
Braveheart.
Acker’s themes aren’t
wrong — traditional feminism as orthodoxy, sex as a kind of touchstone for
humanist spirituality, bisexuality as a socio-political stance — it’s just she
has the gall to think she can write about them in the abstract, no less. And
this seems Acker’s primary talent — audacity. She really doesn’t have anything
“new” to say. Rebel Without A Cause director Nicholas Ray said more
about bisexuality in reference to Rebel star James Dean — “Bisexuality,
what does that mean? He was just normal.” — than Acker can manage in a
277-page book. The author’s oeuvre is clearly in the telling, the creepy,
uncomfortable way she burrows under your subconscious skin.
And it ain’t as if Acker don’t seem punk. The author springs from a
tradition established by the likes of The Boy Looked at Johnny‘s Julie
Burchill, who, in turn, springs forth from the likes of Nik Cohn and Lester
Bangs, to use delusional music critics as barometers for the transition of
“pop” (read “trash”) into something resembling “art.” Acker’s recent,
Pussy– related
collaboration with seminal — oops — English “deep- punk”
band The Mekons just kicks in the point.
A historical context is helpful in discerning Acker’s position in the current
milieu. Though now parading about as some kind of grrrl warrior/pirate/what- have-
you
� la L7, et al., the author was born, creatively, in an
era when “grrrl” meant “punkette” — with all the attendant fastidiousness and
attention to detail — and the mosh pit more resembled a pen full of methedrine- primed
kangaroos than a brawl at a soccer match. Sure, it may look tame, quaint even,
from a cool twenty-year perspective, but anyone with enough brain cells extant
should remember how wild and anarchic and insane the whole trip seemed to a
bunch of jaded hippies, discofied coke-heads, and corporate- slime-
in-
training.
It had nothing to do with a shell-shocked dying Woodstock Nation, instead a real- life
A Clockwork Orange, with a soundtrack provided by your kid brother and
his crummy musician pals who’d collectively christened themselves Loner Trend,
or Lawn Deer, or Shit Eaters, or Cervex. That punk failed the first time out
says more about us as a culture of scavengers — “pop will eat itself” — than
it does about the viability of any given genre or, in punk’s case, pose. This,
Acker has perfected to a T.
And playing Pat Buchanan to Andrea Dworkin’s Bob Dole, Acker’s renegade
position on orthodox feminism is undoubtedly “piratical” — slash and burn and
rape and pillage to the feminist hierarchies’ comparatively delicate royal
court minuets. Still, it’s odd how self- appointed
Acker feels, giving off the impression that once self- crowned,
she’d be a mere replica of her predecessors. Kathy Acker demands to be
taken seriously. My question is “Why?”
In a way, the whole thing is kinda sad. Poor Kathy, 48 going on 15, swiping her muse from other
authors… primarily male authors. Imagine if her literary blitzkriegs were,
instead, groupings composed of the likes of Toni Morrison, the aforementioned
Dworkin, Jacqueline Susann, and Annie Sprinkle — with a touch of daffy- like-a-
fox
cattiness � la Hollywood’s Gloria Grahame. Alas, Kathy’s got
dudes on the brain: She kinda hates ’em, kinda loves ’em, kinda likes screwin’
’em, sorta wants to be one of ’em — due more to the daddy she never met than
anything else. Beneath her “punk” veneer Acker drips pouty little orphan girl
vulnerability. It is perhaps this vulnerability powering Acker, rendering her
greater than the sum of her parts; her charisma — the charisma survival of
misery sometimes hands those plucky enough to hang on in spite of it all —
rising above the relative mediocrity of her work.
Still, there’s a posture included in this, for the author at any rate,
fortunate package: arrogance. It is here Acker skirts the abyss separating the
sublime from the ridiculous — not “ha-ha” ridiculous, but pompous, pathetic
ridiculous, the kind giving birth to ridicule.
Granted, this nugget of awareness exploded in my consciousness courtesy
of Anheuser- Busch
and, indirectly, a herd of cattle somewhere in Williamson County at an Afghan
Whigs concert at Liberty Lunch last May. And not to suggest thematic
parallels between Acker and Whigs resident muse Greg Dulli, goodness no. Yet
the way Dulli carried himself that evening, oozing… well, brattiness, the
snottiness of a little boy clearly fascinated with himself, was a
d�j� vu. About five songs into the over-amped set, some
jerk up front of the stage yelled something disparaging in reference to the
performer’s deportment. Dulli, shit-eating grin spread across his mug, retro
duds hangin’ just so, guitar poised like a weapon across his chest — a symbol
of patriarchal power — replied offhandedly “Think I’m pretty cool, don’t I?”
Another jerk, at the rear of the crowd, picked the pregnant pause to yelp
“You’re arrogant!” A couple people turned around with “Don’t get it, do you,
anvilhead?” looks on their faces while Greggie happily galloped into the next
number. It was nothing, really; just another stupid moment on a road stupidly
taken. Regardless, the evening was shot. I spent the balance of the show on the
patio thinking “Takes one to know one, anvilhead.”
The Acker connection swerved into my brainpan almost immediately. The author
seems, in the final analysis, to rely on pure, unadulterated spunk. So does
Elizabeth Berkeley in Showgirls, but it doesn’t mean she can act. Acker
is a talented artist all right — a con artist — with all the necessary,
inbred arrogance and utter aplomb of an old- time
con man, emphasis on the word “man.” Kathy Acker strikes me as an individual
who’d sweat and stumble and fret and agonize and, ultimately, postpone a
drawing of a tree posing as an abstractionist. It’s baloney — occasionally
interesting, often unintentionally amusing baloney, but baloney nevertheless.
Yeah, yeah, I know — it’s all just my subconscious reaction to Acker’s thought- provoking,
near- transcendent
subliminal technique, ad nauseam. Still, I’m compelled to pose
the query: “Why do I feel as if I’ve just been conned?” And I suppose the
answer has more than a little to do with my shock recognition of “empathy.” I
see exactly what Kathy Acker is up to: Given the opportunity, I’d probably pull
some of the same stunts myself.
This article appears in February 21 • 1997 and February 21 • 1997 (Cover).