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Blood and Guts in High School: A Novel (Acker, Kathy) by Kathy Acker
Book Summary InformationAuthor: Kathy Acker Edition: Paperback Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published) Published: 1994-01-11 ISBN: 080213193X Number of pages: 176 Publisher: Grove Press
Book Reviews of Blood and Guts in High School: A Novel (Acker, Kathy)Book Review: Finished it on an airplane...really cool! (Actually "in") Summary: 5 Stars
Excellent book. While my perfect rating (not that it matters) may drop over time, this was a jarringly satisfying read, one where the slipstream sexual complexity of all the smattered nonsense makes the cliches within (esp. at the end) all the more simple, profound, and resonant. It's something of an immature work perhaps, but I sort of think of it as the author really burying herself within the main character and speaking and thinking and expressing as she would, not that I think the novel should be understood merely as the record or diary of the protagonist. The book's language speaks in fits and starts, in diatribes and metaphors and irritating aphorisms. And tangential stories. And movie script. Poetry. Lessons. Pictograms. And jokes. It's stark. It's naked. It's pissed off. It's juvenile. And it's really refreshing. It's hardly perfect and I'm anxious to get into some of the author's other work in hopes of a more "fully realized" (whatever that means) novel. But to say that the lack of linearity or the somewhat prevalent vulgarity are liabilities of this book is to miss the point ENTIRELY. And the experience. I'd like to say that I read a lot but I don't. I'm a big music and film nerd and I generally take to the experimental or violent within each. So this book was right up my "alley". The only thing I could think to compare it to is Naked Lunch which is great. Anyway, it did touch a nerve in me and spoke to some kind of inner abused adolescent girl even if that makes me a fake bourgeois tourist. So what. The world is effed up and it was in 1977 and it is now. There's so much fake snobbery and indifference and condescending solutions. I think that's what the book decries and is ABOUT more than anything else. That and the fact that we desperately, foolishly, tirelessly make for ourselves our own embittering prisons. If you're a big prude don't read this stuff. Or rent horror movies. I'm sick of seeing people whine online about how offensive some piece of literature or film is. Yeah, thanks for the informed and creative warning, buddy! I didn't find this particular book to be all that offensive or vulgar anyway. It's no American Psycho, which really did churn my stomach and though I liked it, I certainly think Acker reveals a much greater and more perceptive moral sensibility in this book than does Ellis in his. What's the big deal with an old penis here and there? Anyway, don't read it if you're a whiny prude because we don't need to hear your complaining. But yes, very excellent. A real page-turner!!!!!!
Summary of Blood and Guts in High School: A Novel (Acker, Kathy)Jamey lived in the locked room. Twice a day the Persian slave trader came in and taught her to be a whore. Otherwise there was nothing. Once day she found a pencil stub and scrap of paper in a forgotten corner of the room. She began to write down her life, starting with "Parents stink" (Her father, who is also her boyfriend, has fallen in love with another woman and is about to leave her). With "Blood and Guts in High School, " Kathy Acker, whose work has been labeled everthing from post-punk porn to post-punk feminism, has created a brilliantly subversive narrative built from conversation, description, conjecture, and moments snatched from history and literature.
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