Sunday, July 18, 2010

Blood and guts in high school

A long time ago when I was living in Liverpool, I tried to read some books by radical authors, in a vain attempt to improve my creative writing skills. One book I started was "Blood and guts in high school" by Kathy Acker. I started to read the book, but after 20 pages, I stopped becasue frankly it was shit.

Anyway after unpacking in Germany I decided that I should finish it. The blurb on the back of the books says: There is a young women writing on the West coast who has received no attention at all. Her name is Kathy Acker. She is literally the wildest writer going. Her prose is direct, fast, sexy, hot, horny, furiously honest..

Below is my attempt to write like Kathy Acker. I have a cock. My cock likes cunts. You have a cunt. I will die, if you don't love me. I am too tired to continue, but you can see that I didn't find the book very erotic, or even that interesting.

Also mixed in the book was the occasional discussion about literature, such as Madame Bovary. This looked as though it was copied from a homework from some literature class.

I liked the quote from Wikipedia

even Acker’s most recognized novels, Blood and Guts in High School, Great Expectations and Don Quixote receive mixed critical attention. Most critics acknowledge Acker’s skilled manipulation of plagiarized texts from writers as varied as Charles Dickens, Marcel Proust, and Marquis de Sade.