Blood and Guts in High School by Kathy Acker

Blood and Guts in High School by Kathy Acker

A masterpiece of surrealist fiction, steeped in controversy upon its first publication in 1984, Blood and Guts in High School is the book that established Kathy Acker as the preeminent voice of post-punk feminism. With 2017 marking the 70th anniversary of her birth, as well as the 10th year since her death this transgressive work of philosophical, political, and sexual insight--with a new introduction by Chris Kraus--continues to become more relevant than ever before.

In the Mexican city of Merida, ten-year-old Janey lives with Johnny--her boyfriend, brother, sister, money, amusement, and father--until he leaves her for another woman. Bereft, Janey travels to New York City, plunging into an underworld of gangs and prostitution. After escaping imprisonment, she flees to Tangiers where she meets Jean Genet, and they begin a torrid affair that will lead Janey to her demise. Fantastical, sensual, and fearlessly radical, this hallucinatory collage is both a comic and tragic portrait of erotic awakening.

Kathy Acker (nee Karen Alexander) (18 April 1947 - 30 November 1997) was an American experimental novelist, prose stylist, playwright, essayist, postmodernist and sex-positive feminist writer. One of the leading experimental writers of her generation, she was strongly influenced by the Black Mountain School, William S. Burroughs, David Antin, French critical theory, philosophy, and pornography.Born and raised in New York City, Acker came to be closely associated with the punk movement of the 1970s and '80s that affected much of the culture in and around Manhattan. As an adult, however, she moved around quite a bit. She received her bachelor's degree from the University of California, San Diego in 1968; there she worked with David Antin and Jerome Rothenberg. Acker published her first book, Politics, in 1972. Although the collection of poems and essays did not garner much critical or public attention, it did establish her reputation within the New York punk scene. In 1973 she published her first novel The Childlike Life of the Black Tarantula: Some Lives of Murderesses under the pseudonym Black Tarantula. In 1974 she published her second novel, I Dreamt I Was a Nymphomaniac: Imagining.In 1979 Acker finally received popular attention when she won the Pushcart Prize for her short story New York City in 1979. She did not receive critical attention, however, until she published Great Expectations in 1982.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780802131935
ISBN 10	080213193X
Title	Blood and Guts in High School
Author	Kathy Acker
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press
Year published	1994-01-11
Number of pages	165
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable