Acker on narrative

remarks, prose

Baldwin

"People invent categories in order to feel safe. White people invented black people to give white people identity... Straight cats invent faggots so they can sleep with them without becoming faggots themselves." (in 1971, quoted in A QUEER READER)

the Viegener I was telling you about

Foucault

there is lots of good Foucault business in Clint Eastwood's CHANGELING, out now, up the street at Destinta for another week or so?--along with some food for thought as to scapegoating: who is being, by whom, just the police, the narrative, the director, the writer?

I forgot to mention, Acker was vegetarian.

ACKER, from ANGRY WOMEN (Juno Books):
"A gay friend of mine said something interesting to me. I asked her if she differentiated between gay and straight women, and she said, 'Yes, women who are gay are really outlaws, because we're totally outside the society--always.' And I said, 'What about people like me?' and she said, 'Oh, you're just queer.' Like--we didn't exists?! [laughs] It's as if the gay women position themselves as outside society, but meanwhile they're looking down on everybody who's perverse! Which is very peculiar..."

&
"...we're looking for a society that allows us the fullness of what it is to be human, I would think--it's hard to know because I've never been there! But I read about societies in which ecstasy and joy and certain areas of sexuality are venerated (not just in individual situations--or maybe it can be even individual experiences that go further). And: a whole range of feelings--really, a fuller life! I keep thinking: what we know of as 'life' is so thin and juiceless and boring, frankly--we're ground into nothing before we even start out! I mean, take tattooing (which has been denied us for so long): it's beautiful, the colors are gorgeous, the images: if you have the tiger on you, you have the spirit of the tiger in you--that's something: to find out what it is to be an animal! We forget everything: we forget all of this!"

see Civilization and Its Discontents

"The 'oceanic feeling,' Freud argues, is a form of infantile regression, in which the individual seeks to return to early childhood experiences of breast feeding; likewise, it is associated with personal mysticism and spirituality." (quoted in Mavor, Reading Boyishly)

links to Acker's voice

--link to one early excerpt , mid-70s, source of plagiarism case with Tom Robbins, text in book THE ADULT LIFE OF TOULOUSE LAUTREC (the longer piece is from late-late 80s IN MEMORIAM TO IDENTITY)
--piece from around MY MOTHER, DEMONOLOGY, '93, i'm thinking, off my head

Virginia Woolf Comes to New York

A Post-modern reinterpretation of the first post-modernist? I thought this article in the NY Times on a theatrical production of Virginia Woolf's last novel, "The Waves" was interesting. The show recently went up on Broadway and got a very favorable review, also in the Times. Thoughts?