Kalling Kathy's Bluff

In a predatory, frankly feline swipe at experimental writer Kathy Acker's Pussy, King Of The Pirates (Grove Press, $12 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.

"Loosely related to Robert Louis Stevenson's classic Treasure Island, 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 à 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 à 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 déjà 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.