Indiana, Ackerville

Som lovet --- åh. alle disse ting der hænger fra sidste år, men jeg ved at Susanne TØRSTER efter at høre mere om Gary Indiana og hans artikel i forrige udgave af London Review of Books. Ackerville hedder den, og er en anmeldelse af Lust for Life: On the Writings of Kathy Acker.

Egentligt havde jeg ikke tænkt mig at skrive noget om anmeldelsen, men bare rive i den; lade Gary tale for sig selv --- der ligger så meget i den anmeldelse, den er på alle mulige måder, synes jeg, eksemplarisk for en helt bestemt måde at læse på, som man finder alle steder, ikke kun i UK… Jeg tror det særligt er den lidt hånlige, arrogante attitude der… interesserer mig… at han har regnet den ud, ham Indiana, at Acker (eller hvem som helst) i virkeligheden ikke skrev og arbejdede som hun gjorde fordi der var en dybere idé med det, måske sågar en form for ideologi eller livssyn, men fordi hun i virkeligheden gerne ville skrive som Proust og Musil (eller hvem som helst i den kategori), de virkelige genier, men ganske enkelt ikke magtede det… Ja, Indiana har gennemskuet alt det tomme, floskuløse gejl Acker (og den slags) producerer, og som hendes halvblinde proselytter er gået på halen over…

Et enkelt sted i artiklen citeres Kathy Acker, som eksempel på at ”Her first writings – quirky, stream-of-consciousness, deceptively confessional – are whimsically strewn with pornography, violence, black humour and incongruous cultural references:

last night with Mary was a complete failure I couldn’t understand what she was saying I’ve never seen any Warhol films I felt she was deaf was I supposed to fuck her Harriet’s work was gorgeous eccentric Beardsley one interpretation could be that I was maniacal and Mary was uptight me babbling I could be far from reality I don’t know why no one is willing to come close enough to tell me why the fuck should they I wouldn’t be my ugly self Mary might have been very shy and into herself I got smashed and watched TV was she smashed she said so”

Det er bemærkelsesvædigt hvor meget mere energi og power der er i den lille tekststump i forhold til Indianas omgivende tekst, hvor meget bedre det er skrevet, synes jeg.

Mister Gary Indiana in pieces:

“(…) Born in New York, she began writing when she returned there in the early 1970s after studying at Brandeis and the University of California, San Diego, a brief marriage, and spells working as a stripper, a bakery clerk and in several other eccentric jobs.

(…)

Reading this early work was like being stoned in a taxi speeding through an unfamiliar city.

(…)

Acker often claimed that she was ‘doing something new with language’, meaning something on a par with Gertrude Stein or William Burroughs. But one can’t avoid noticing what she wasn’t doing with it: making sense, communicating with readers, contacting a world outside her cerebellum. Acker pre-empted criticism of her solipsistic procedures by pronouncing them elements of her master strategy: she wrote badly because she intended to; she did everything wrong because that was her technique for deconstructing ossified literary conventions. How such a writer came to be regarded, by a substantial cult, as feminist oracle and literary innovator has a lot to do with academic fashion.

(…)

She imagined that she could take on the male domination of the literary canon, levelling the edifice of classical literature by flashing her vagina. She flashed it with such frequency, and with such gleeful conviction, that people began to talk about her writing and her genitalia as if they were the same thing.

(…)”

Og den charmerende udgang:

“(…) Acker had begun to acknowledge the existence of the reader. I like to think that one day she would have surprised everyone with a truly important book, one that wouldn’t need defending with arabesques of pataphysical jargon.”