Acker, Kathy (1948-1997)
In a process she described as "piracy," Kathy Acker appropriated the plots and titles of works such as Treasure Island, Great Expectations, and Don Quixote and r...
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In the following review, Howard offers a tempered assessment of Don Quixote.
Kathy Acker's work is not outrageous. That is what first comes to mind reading the abortion scene that launches h...
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In the following essay, Jacobs examines Acker's postmodern experimentation with authorial identity and literary history.
Postmodernist fiction differs from its modernist precedents less in s...
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In the following excerpt, Siegle offers an overview of Acker's literary significance and a critical reading of Don Quixote.
"Reading Kathy Acker is like reading the subway walls.�...
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In the following essay, Sciolino examines Acker's hybrid synthesis of poststructural theory, postmodern fiction, and feminist discourse.
By conflating her own lover's discourse with s...
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In the following review, Schiff provides a generally unfavorable assessment of In Memoriam to Identity.
The characters in Kathy Acker's nine novels are far less intriguing than the character...
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Below, Clark reviews In Memoriam to Identity.
In previous books like Don Quixote and Great Expectations, Kathy Acker has patented an audacious, irreverent, provocatively highhanded method of recycl...
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In the following review, Braverman offers an unfavorable assessment of Portrait of an Eye.
Kathy Acker has achieved cult status in the small-press world, presumably for the graphic sexual content o...
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In the following essay, Peters explores the narrative techniques and language of dominance and submission employed by Acker to subvert patriarchal hierarchies and conventional notions of sexual identi...
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Below, Friedman offers a favorable review of My Mother: Demonology.
The themes in Kathy Acker's newest book will not surprise followers of her delirious prose. Schizophrenic juxtaposition ag...
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In the following review, Adil offers favorable assessments of Eurydice in the Underworld and Bodies of Work.
To observe that Kathy Acker's writing refuses to seduce is not to denigrate her w...
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In the following review, Van Leer discusses the form, content, and literary intent of Don Quixote.
It was only a matter of time before the postmodernists got around to rewriting Don Quixote. In the...
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Below, Chase provides a favorable review of Don Quixote.
Kathy Acker's Don Quixote is a witty, irreverent and pained collage that explores a woman's search for identify and sexual lov...
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In the following review, Kakutani offers a tempered critical evaluation of Literal Madness.
In such previous books as Great Expectations (1984) and Don Quixote (1986), Kathy Acker not only set out ...
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In the following review, Frakes offers a generally unfavorable assessment of Literal Madness.
In order to set the mood for this collection of three novels, let's begin with some key statemen...
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In the following review, Dillard offers a favorable assessment of Empire of the Senseless.
In Kathy Acker's novel My Death My Life by Pier Paolo Pasolini, she made the suggestion that ...
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In the following review, Kaveney assesses Young Lust.
It is impossible to read in a way that is not implicitly political; but the methods of Kathy Acker's fictions aim to make possible radic...
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In the following essay, Dix examines nomadism, revolutionary subversion, and the possibility of personal affirmation and social transformation as portrayed by Acker in Don Quixote.
"This is...
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In the following essay, Friedman provides an overview of the intellectual, cultural, and literary contexts in which Acker's fiction, according to Friedman, is "designed to be jaws steadi...
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Acker, Kathy (1948-1997)
Critical Review by Maureen Howard
