After Kathy Acker

After Kathy Acker: A Biography
Chris Kraus
Book Review: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Kathy Acker lived a colourful life. She was a writer, a dreamer, and modern day women. She travelled. Kathy married and divorced twice. She had a great range of friends and lovers. She was a notorious fiction writer both in her books, and life. Kathy died at the age of 50 after a battle with cancer.


This book is a Biography of her life. There were some ups and downs. Kathy wasn't a sheep, and she was happy to colour outside the lines. She lived her life how she wanted and held her head high.

This is an interesting read, and the author Chris Kraus tries to keep to the facts (which I'm guessing was difficult as not even Kathy herself told the whole truth).


I enjoyed this book. I just would have liked to have seen some pictures.


4 stars out of 5. *ARC via Netgalley*

Hardcover £20 or £9.99 Kindle.
Expected publication: August 31st, 2017 by Allen Lane

I really enjoyed this biography and it made me want to go and read Kathy Acker's works. It has been very fully researched and has benefited from the fact that many of Acker's friends, lovers, publishers and erstwhile interviewers are still alive and able to give first-hand accounts of her. The book walks a perfect line between pinned-down facts and slightly gossipy opinion and I think Acker comes out of it well, even if it is also apparent that she was a difficult and needy person who rode fairly roughshod over almost everyone she met. She had what might be seen as the good fortune or the misfortune to try to define her own identity in a period when women had newfound freedoms of self-expression but during which time it was also fairly punishing to try and make it in the post-punk, experimental literary scene (in both New York and London).
I was delighted to have the opportunity to read Chris Kraus's latest book and enjoyed the echoes of I Love Dick (Sylvere!). I formed a bright and hectic image of the literary circles in which Kathy Acker moved and I felt it was a tragedy that she died so young and partly as a result of her own force of personality and her own neuroses. A memorable and wholly engaging portrait.

"I could've been Kathy. Kathy could've been me."

This is as much a compendium of Acker's writings as it is a biography, and Kraus has pulled together a vast amount of material from the archives and from personal interviews to supplement the texts. Together we're given, appropriately enough, a kind of collage of Acker: fragmented, contradictory, intelligent, sleazy at times, that mix of high and street culture, of literary sensibility and counter-culture that suffuses through Acker's thought and work.

Acker herself remains an enfant terrible, though the concerns of her texts (narrative structure, identity, sexuality, gender and writing) are increasingly mainstream. With its vibrant depiction of the 1960s/1970s New York art scene through to the more stable 1990s when Acker refused treatment for breast cancer, this is a fine and fitting tribute to an artist who constantly pushed herself, pushed boundaries and helped to reconfigure what a text might be.

To be posted on Amazon and Goodreads.

I'm not really a fan of Kathy Acker but I am of Chris Kraus so I read this book anyway after receiving an ARC via NetGalley (thanks!) It's a strong autobiography that places Kathy Acker in the context of her time and milieu. Kraus doesn't shy away from any of the contradictions in Acker's life and leaves the reader to her own conclusions.

Kathy Acker, punk poet is someone I was very interested in as a teen back in the early 90s. At that time she seemed almost impenetrably cool. Touring with rock bands, performing her poetry at gigs and festivals. She was an icon to me and some of my friends. That said, the fascination faded and I'd almost forgotten my fascination with her until I spotted this book.
After Kathy Acker is written by her close friend Chris Kraus and that friendship and affection shines through the writing. Kraus takes us back to Acker's late teens and uses her writing and performance work to provide a structure for this insight into her life. The nature of Acker's writing and the postmodern backdrop to it means that this can sometimes be hard going to read. I never got far with Acker's actual writing when I tried as a teenager but the way in which Kraus presents it actually does help me to understand it both from Acker's personal point of view and within the 'scene' she was part of.
This isn't a biography for the layman and I'd really recommend it to those who are interested in Acker and her contemporaries, or those particularly interested in writers and their methods and processes. It's a fascinating story from Acker's start as a private schoolgirl, through her surprisingly conventional early marriage and into her life as an artist. Kraus has clearly done her research and she presents her friend's story in a compelling and understanding way.

This study on the deeply troubled 'post punk plagiarist' Kathy Acker is at times as fraught as it's subject. Far from simply bestowing feminist accolades, the author delves deeper to find the privileged, opportunistic and defiantly promiscuous woman at the core of the publicly accepted image. Reading about her exploits feels at times overwhelmingly sad as she seems to struggle finding love in any form whatsoever from a string of men that she is desperate to constantly impress. The interviews from friends and exes are telling, painting the artist as woefully tone deaf, a selfish waif using or discarding people at a brisk clip and unaware or uncaring about the messes in her wake.

Sex sells, but like anything oft repeated, Acker's trademark abrasive shock humour eventually waned. She died practically alone in a Tijuana hospice, and now is barely a footnote amongst the peers of her time. That said, the importance of what Acker achieved when she was in the ascendant can't be denied. By what seems like sheer will alone, she grasped for and snatched her career with both hands. Right from the start she knew who she was and what she was meant to be and do. No matter her perceived faults, her drive is enviable and the legend that she created, immortal.

I didn't know much about Kathy Acker before reading this book, but I feel the writer did a great job in helping the reader get an insight to this interesting lady. A well written and well researched book, I feel that the writer was successful in explaining her life and I really enjoyed it!

Acker was the quintessential 70's New York artist/literary figure: an experimental "punk-poet" (whatever the hell that means) who came from the Upper East Side and migrated downtown. In her writing, she amalgamated autobiography, prose, poetry, and pornography.

What interests me more than her biography--and her writing--is her relationship with sex. Early on in her career, she funded her writing by stripping, performing in live sex shows, and being filmed nude. She loved sex; she was bisexual and polyamorous. Much of her career became about how to marry her sexuality and her writing. The revelation of this book, at least for me, is that Acker used her writing as she used her body: as a means of experimentation. She was very open about sex, both in life and in prose. Of course, this is what made her such a controversial figure: she constantly straddled the line between degradation and empowerment.

As you might expect from Kraus, the writer of I Love Dick, this biography explores what it means to be a "female artist," how, regardless of intention, the personal always becomes political. In fact, I was reminded of I Love Dick many, many, many times throughout this book.

Yet Kraus presupposes the reader will be interested in (a) Acker and (b) the social milieu in which she lived and wrote. Acker is an interesting figure, yes, but the people in her orbit come off as dull, which has the effect of dulling the experience of reading. Also, the book is quite overwhelming in its presentation of Acker's writing--every time an excerpt from her journal or a letter she wrote appeared, I would feel a migraine coming on. Reading this book is not a very pleasing experience.

Learned a few new things here and the writing left me mildly interested but not fully engaged.

I read Kathy Acker’s Blood and Guts in High School, not long after it was released in Australia and to put it mildly the book had a profound impact on me. Here was this young woman, emerging from the safe suburbs of Adelaide, South Australia, who was several worlds away from what she was reading. What was in the pages was violent, sexual, explicit drawings and covered areas that were quite simply taboo in my world at that time. It was nothing I had ever come across before and was my first real foray outside of mainstream fiction. What was illuminating to me was a woman wrote this brutal and brazen book. The very few female authors I knew at that time wrote nice fiction. Even though I regret not keeping a copy of the book, it is a novel that I recall rather vividly.
It was a nice surprise to be allowed an opportunity to read a biography on Kathy Acker’s life, as I can be honest and say I knew little about her.
Kraus commences the book with a group of Acker’s former friends trying to determine how to disperse her ashes. It is poignant as you realise that in life Acker was a formidable character and in death she continues to influence lives of those she knew.
The first time we meet the living Acker is as a 24 year old, living in New York who has hooked up with Neufeld. To fuel their writing habits they perform at a live sex show to earn money. The reason for commencing Acker’s story here is that Kraus can identify Acker as actually being there at that time. For as Kraus unpicks Acker’s life it becomes apparent that Acker was loose with the truth about her associations with people and where she was living. Kraus does try to uncover Acker’s teenage years and was able to ascertain that while at high school Acker was cavorting with the likes Andy Warhol, Jack Smith, Carolee Schneeeman and attending Jean Genet’s plays and films. Knowing this helps you understand why Acker is estranged from her family and why they may not have approved of her lifestyle choices.
Klaus and her research team do a marvellous job in tracking, plotting and pulling together Acker’s life over the next couple of decades. It must have been incredibly difficult to piece it all together. What I liked about Kraus’s research is that achieves several things. It placed you well and truly into the world Acker lived in. With the creatives, the poverty and the struggle to have your artistic voice heard. You are given a real strong sense of the major players and what it was like to be an artist. Then you have the collection of Acker’s work and how it is woven in to give further context. The linking of Acker’s writings to where she was located, what she was trying to achieve, who she was associating with is quite extraordinary. When coupled with the critical analysis of Acker’s work you are certainly given a holistic view.
I really enjoyed this book. Kraus and her team of researchers have done a really incredible job in bringing all the strands of Acker’s life and work together. Klaus has written an engaging narrative that really makes the reading compelling and honest. Towards the end when examining brand Acker I found really interesting. Posing the question as to whether the character Acker had created was a hindrance or made her iconic?
For those who are students of Acker’s work and those who were in her creative circle they will find this an invaluable book that provides both a historical and critical analysis of Acker’s life and work.
For people like me, who have encountered Acker’s work and have no other context, this book provides an in depth look at a complex woman and what drove her to be an author.
A well-researched and great character study of Kathy Acker.