Acker

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[Experimental Literature] [Correspondence] Kathy Acker, Rudolph WurlitzerBiblio.com

Archive of seven letters from Kathy Acker to Rudolph Wurlitzer 1976

Best.-Nr. 146188N.p.: N.p. 1976. Archive of six autograph letters signed and one typed letter signed from Kathy Acker to fellow experimental novelist Rudolph Wurlitzer twenty five pages total undated but written during the first half of 1976 based on dates mentioned in the body of one of the letters. From the collection of Rudolph Wurlitzer with provenance. Acker and Wurlitzer were in a relationship begun while they were both in New York and continuing briefly after he left the city for Nova Scotia where he was a the time of this correspondence. Two of the letters directly address their relationship and correspond to letters written by Wurlitzer as quoted in Chris Kraus' 2017 biography of the late writer "After Kathy Acker." The letters offered here were not available to Kraus something she mentions when discussing the relationship with Wurlitzer and have never been published or previously available for sale. In addition to Acker's frank discussion of her feelings toward Wurlitzer the letters take a broadly confessional tone as Acker discusses her mental and emotional state as well as her conflicted feelings regarding the writing she was doing at the time. She writes candidly about feelings of isolation introversion and exhaustion with life in New York and its attendant social obligations presenting a version of Acker that is at odds with both her own self-mythologizing and her already established persona as a post-punk literary icon and chronicler of the downtown avant garde scene. Acker is similarly candid regarding her own writing mentioning both "The Adult Life of Toulouse-Lautrec" and "Florida" both 1978 as in-progress saying of the former "the hell with Toulouse I wanted to finish it off with hell and this is hell" and of the later that it "is about characters. Have to make characters grow." She goes into some detail regarding her feelings about "The Life of Johnny Rocco" section of "Toulouse" calling it "a horrible book" and noting that she's "scared of this book. Scared to type it up. Something very raw about me in it" but also noting that the "only good thing" about the book is that it was "the first time I created a real character who isn't me." Finally Acker speaks at length about the books and films she is consuming in particular noting the influence of Japanese literature and cinema on her work and often relating them to her own ambitions as a writer. She quotes a long passage from William Faulkner's "Go Down Moses" and compares her work unfavorably to it briefly discusses Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" mentions reading Yukio Mishima Osamu Dazai and Yasunari Kawabata and in one letter provides a lengthy synopsis of the plot of all three films in Hiroshi Inagaki's "Samurai Trilogy" before briefly relating the themes of the film to her relationship with Wurlitzer. Of the influence of Japanese literature she notes her desire in her own writing for "simple paragraphs each paragraph an image. 1 2 3. The flow absolutely like straight line.like those incredible Japanese novels I've been reading." Autograph letters signed on 7 x 8.25 inch lined notebook paper. 23 pages rectos only. Near Fine with faint horizontal folds. Typed letter signed on 8.5 x 11 paper. Two pages rectos only. Near Fine folded twice for mailing. N.p. unknown

Royal Books · Vereinigte Staaten12.500,00 $≈ 11.145,79 €

ACKER KathyABAA

Archive of NEW YORK CITY IN 1979: to Jeannes insulted beauty

1979Best.-Nr. 22819New York: Various 1979-1991. Photocopy of typescript with one page original typescript bearing top-copy typed corrections and holograph number that page taped to verso of letterhead. 60pp. printed on recto only stapled at top right corner with neat tape reinforcement over staple on title page. Light wear to title page and final sheet tail edge of two oversized sheets rubbed. Taped revision loose from browned tape mounts. Very good. With four published appearances featuring the story also provided. A pre-publication copy of Ackers own corrected typescript for the story New York City in 1979 which went on to win the 1979 Pushcart Prize making it her first critically acclaimed work. This document gives key insight not only into Ackers writing methods but also raises interesting questions about the intended structure of the finished story and highlights the mutable interpretations regarding the published presentation of her prose writing via four different versions included herein. This copy was sent by Acker in late 1979 to friend and fellow experimental writer Paul Buck. The pages have clearly been xeroxed on several different machines with different paper stock and print qualities evident in different sections and pp. 29 is an original typescript passage with visible typed correctionz and numbered in holograph in Ackers distinctive hand which has been taped onto the verso of a sheet of letterhead for Performing Artservices Inc. 463 West St NY" an organisation that provided management and administrative services to avant-garde artists. Included with this document are four published editions of the story. The first although not always credited thus was in International Times vol. 5 no 5. January/February 1980. Run as New York City 79 over the centerspread this version is closest to the typescript form. There is persuasive indication that the editors of I.T. were working from a similar photocopy and whether instructed thus by Acker or not they took the cut-up style of the piece at face value and ran it as a series of fragments differentiated from one another by the use of typefaces and with no cohesive order. Probably due to space constraints this version is also heavily abridged however the notable omissions of the three statements about lesbians suggests that there was also a degree of selective censorship at work here. The first publication of the complete text followed in July 1980 in the pages of San Diego magazine Crawl Out Your Window Issue 7. Here the sentences which run over multiple pages in the typescript are conventionalised into standard lines. There are also slight textual differences with a couple of additional sentences added. The first stand alone publication came in Top Stories 9 1981 which incorporated photographs by Anne Turyn. These images again mutate the text and raise further questions about Ackers editorial intention; the typescript title-page bears the uncompleted subheading Photographs by but gives no further allusions to this content. The final example is the 1991 Semiotexte collection HANNIBAL LECTOR MT FATHER which shows still further textual edits. In terms of form the most marked difference between the typescript copy and the published editions that followed is the way in which the text is divided into a series of passages or episodes numbered at the head of the page. These can be full paragraphs or single sentences or for example the word syphilis which has an entire page to itself. This deliberate distribution of whitespace surrounding the single word which in later editions is returned to the conventional layout of a sentence adds nuance and valence to the story which is arguably altered in transcription. In the key collection of Acker Papers at Duke University there is a comparable copy described thus in their catalogue: 60-page photocopied typescript corrected in the photocopy with original note on the title page My Copy by Acker. We have not been able to locate an original typescript suggesting that this format with Ackers holograph corrections in the copy is as primary a resource for this text as is currently known. A revealing archive showing both Acker's working methods and intentions while simultaneously demonstrating their editorial undoing across numerous editions. [Various] unknown books

Brian Cassidy Bookseller at Type Punch Matrix · Vereinigte Staaten4.500,00 $≈ 4.012,48 €

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