The Portrait of an Eye by Kathy Acker

The Portrait of an Eye by Kathy Acker

Scarified sensibility, subversive intellect, and predatory wit make her a writer like no other I know. -New York Times Book Review

A subversive triptych of novels from legendary punk author, Kathy Acker, reissued with a new introduction from Kate Zambreno, author of Heroines, Screen Tests, Green Girl, and others.

The Childlike Life of the Black Tarantula, Kathy Acker's first novel and the opening of the three-novel collection Portrait of an eye, was initially self-published as episodic handmade pamphlets that were mailed to influential writers and artists. In this work which would make her name as an experimental stylist (New Republic), Acker steps into the biography of a Mississippi murderess who falls in love with a famous lawyer, and mixes in fragments from porn, historical romance, pulp fiction, and The Story of O. Collected with her second novel, the dreamy odyssey through desire I dreamt I was a Nymphomaniac, and her third, The Adult Life of Toulouse Lautrec, Portrait of an Eye is a dive into the frenzy of sexual desire, the search for identity, and the invention of a new literary language.

Now reissued with a new introduction by Kate Zambreno, revisiting the novels in Portrait of an Eyereminds us of all there is still to learn from Kathy Acker, whose work remains radical and uncanny, entirely inimitable, a smash and grab on the history of literature (Guardian).