Kathy

Acker

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KATHY ACKER QUOTES

"The only reaction against an unbearable society is equally unbearable nonsense."

A postmodern writer for me, of all the biggies, would be William Burroughs, but no one ever talks about him.

And I'm working at trying to find a kind of language where I won't be so easily modulated by expectation.

And internalization is used in this country as a very effective political tool.

Bataille is associated with the surrealists. Basically the idea is that democracy doesn't work. Communism doesn't work.

Burroughs was a very political writer.

But a lot of women are working with witchcraft. That's a very strong women's history.

But guys such as Allen and William are more supportive than most men.

But I still don't have a clear idea of what my voice is.

First of all, writing at best - certainly fiction writing - more and more I think is magic.

I don't think what happens in this country is censorship, I should say that. It's something else. It's not banning. It's something else.

I find Sufi practices such as refusing orgasms in order to make the various, whatever, liquids go the other way into the body, the chakras.

I found my voice was a reaction to all that voice stuff.

I have trouble with boys’ voices.

I mean, once work's out there it's meant to be used.

I mean, they censor your work when they're scared of it.

I might be writing what people expect me to write, writing from that place where I might be ruled by economic considerations. To overcome that, I started working with my dreams, because I'm not so censored when I use dream material.

I question: do we really understand the differences between modernist and postmodernist?

I think it's really important to find out why people hurt you or try to oppose you or whatever.

I think the best thing in cases of censorship or things like this is to get as much media as possible.

I think what we have in this country is a little more dangerous in a way because it can't be seen fully. It's sorta internal censorship. We censor each other.

I understand that postmodern literature probably means people like DeLillo, The Fiction Collective, but I don't get it that those writers are really influenced by postmodern theorists.

I understand that when people read my books that there's something there - but I don't identify with it.

I wasn't really into body piercings until I found that about half my female students had them.

I write it to get it out of me. I don't write it to remember it.

I'm really fascinated and you know I've been wondering about that usage of language, various breathing techniques and why in these practices language is being used in another way.

I'm very staid compared to my students, actually.
 
I've always turned to the media because one thing people like that fear is exposure.

On the surface we all act like we all love each other and we're free and easy, and actually we're far more moralistic than any other society I've ever lived in.
 
One of the reasons I think the ultra right-wing has such power in this country is that no one talks out.

Some of the stuff about Yogi energy is really fascinating.

That's what the right-wing is good at: figuring out the left wing.

The literary culture, if you examine it, the high literary culture is that which preserves the government and you know it's really the talk for those who have.

The students who come to my class are very closely related to all the evil girls who are very interested in their bodies and sex and pleasure.

There's a backlash against women that's really bad right now.
 
Traveling around I don't think people are that horrible, I think they just don't know.
 
We get on the bandwagon in all sorts of ways - you know minor ways and major ways - like what you've just encountered which isn't censorship exactly, it was something sort of uglier in a way.

We've been very bad at understanding why the right-wing does things.

Well, fear and homophobia are both pervasive.

Well, I think writing is basically about time and rhythm. Like with jazz. You have your basic melody and then you just riff off of it. And the riffs are about timing.

When Allen's work came into the world it really shocked everyone because his poetry comes from a very seductive place.

When it comes to Allen and Burroughs, I'm very supported. That's not the segment of the population I find problematic.
 
Writing is what I did when I was alone with no one watching me or telling me what to do. I could do whatever I wanted.
 
Yeah, I mean, I put work out there for people to use and I'm grateful when you use it. 

You can do whatever you want with my work.

You know I think many writers are dangerous to the establishment. I mean, they go against all the rules that you're told writing.

You know I've had work banned.

You know the center of the Aryan Nation is an hour north of Couer de Lane.

You know, I'm taking a lot of flack and I don't make any money and you know it's silly, but I guess that I had to re-come upon it very hard: my commitment to writing again.

You know, I've been told that by some of the writers in the generation above me: You'll be able to write when you've found a voice.

I like books that are primitive. I trust them. . . . I prize animal thoughts rather than cerebral thoughts.

I became very interested in the model of schizophrenia. I wanted to explore the use of the word 'I', that's the only thing I wanted to do. So I placed very direct autobiographical - just diary material, right next to fake diary material. I tried to figure out who I wasn't and I went to texts of murderesses . . . I was doing experiments about memory.

I wrote so many pages a day and that was that. I set up guidelines for each piece, such as you'll use autobiographical and fake autobiographical material, or you're not allowed to re-write. I really didn't want any creativity. It was task work, and that's how I thought of it.

If you scratch hard, you find I'm a humanist in some weird way. Well, humanist, you know what I mean!

I came out of the poetry world of America. Specifically, I was taught by the second generation of the Black Mountain poets and by Jackson MacLow who was a crossover between that group and Fluxus. Among the many lessons I had learned by the time I was in my early twenties was a practical one: poets never make money and are, as both Rimbaud and Patti Smith said, the white niggers of this earth.

Kathy Goes to Haiti was my attempt to make money through writing by writing a porn novel. ...I decided to write a novel that, while seeming to have a story, had none and whose characters were so deprived of psychology as to almost not exist. I wanted to stick a knife, a little one, up the ass of the novel.

Kathy Goes to Haiti was mathematically composed: every other chapter is a porn chapter; each chapter, except for the central one, mirrors its facing chapter. Mirrors are a significant part of the Voodoo cosmogony. Kathy Goes to Haiti was also my version both of a Nancy Drew book (an American girls' book) and of a travel journal.

My latest novel Pussy, King of the Pirates, takes two girls from an Egyptian whorehouse to an island where they fight with female pirates. It's loosely related to Robert Louis Stevenson's classic Treasure Island, and the whole idea was triggered after I saw a great Japanese film. In my book the characters enjoy themselves in a landscape that doubles for the female body.

I wanted to examine the word 'I'. What is identity? I placed 'real' autobiography next to 'fake' autobiography. Nothing else mattered but the examination of this word 'I'; any other writing rules pointed the finger away from the moon.

By the time of Toulouse, the problem of identity had become too complex and, at the same time, had resolved itself. I realized that identity is made, the legend of Daedalus is true, and perhaps of Icarus, that when one writes, one doesn't express true or false identity, truth or falsity, one makes identity.

'Florida' is a short story, written between the trilogy and Haiti. I used to have a severe, chronic infection. During one bout of the infection, the usual three weeks in bed, I had a strong, undeniable urge to read the script for Key Largo. Such a script was not to be found, at least by me in my bed. So I did the next best thing, I wrote this script according to my memory. A memory of holes, like those landscapes I love the most. Landscapes of identity. Some of my friends and I performed this story or script at The Kitchen in New York City. I remember that Laurie Anderson played the Lauren Bacall role, by candlelight, and she was superb...