You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed, or you are the only animal, who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hi, this is Michael Silverblad, and welcome to Bookworm. Today, my guest is Kathy Acker,

and I'm very happy to have her here because I've been reading her for years. I think the first time

I encountered her work, I was in the 8th Street bookstore, now burned down, and I found a copy of

the childlike life of the Black Tarantula, and I've been reading her ever since.

These books have gone from their limited press editions to major presses, published first in large version by Grove and now by Pantheon.

The most recent collection is Portrait of an Eye, which consists of three

of her early works, and Pantheon is also published in paperback, her recent novel in Memorium

to Identity.

Well, let's begin.

I notice that in Memorium to Identity takes many of its themes from Faulkner's Wild

Palms. Right. It takes it from three different Faulkner books, actually. And Wild Palms is

itself a book that alternates between two completely different stories, juxtaposing them. And that seems

to be juxtaposition, fragmentalization,

the context your work takes place in. Could you talk a bit about that? Sure. Not when I started to

write, but when I started to write as more than, I don't know what, I'd say a student, but a sort of eager, young, open-mouthed, fish-mouthed female,

my first model was William Burroughs because I was in the poetry scene that time and I was looking for prose writing that had the same authenticity,

if I can use that word, as the poetry scene.

And I only had two models of larger authors, not only larger in who read them, but larger

in scope, larger in endeavor.

And that was Karowac and Burroughs.

...