Customer Reviews

Early Feminist Hyperreal Novels: Best of a New Genre in Fict - By: , 10 Jul 1997
Kathy Acker has become known as the queen of punk feminist fiction. With Literal Madness she solidified that position. Three short texts unrelated to each other but connected by the quest metaphor. Of the three, Kath Goes to Haiti -- a pseudo-biographical piece -- calls for the most sustained interest. It is ostensibly a travel book adventurein the third world, but ultimately its quest is the undermining of linear narrative. Acker is a storyteller of the postmodern, disjuctive type. She short-circuits the narrative linein order to call the reader's attention to the discontinuous nature of our lives in/as fiction. She creates a hyperrealityin Haiti, transforms place into text, & thereby questions the so-called reality principle. When her alter-ego "Kathy" discovers that Haiti is more a state of mind than a Caribbean island, the disjuncturein the text becomes sensible & senseless at the same time. The effect is surreal; but hyperreality (Jean Baudrillard's term) & surreality havein common elments of discontinuity & therfore serve to disorient the reader. Anyone looking for a 'good, old-fashion story' will have to look elsewhere because Acker's book satisfies none of the traditional reader's desires for linear regularity & certain expectability as to what stories do. Labeled pseudo-pornography, Kathy Goes to Haiti & other texts by Acker certainly do contain pornographic elements. But it soon becomes clear to the careful reader that what is at workin her fiction is the question of what pornography "means," especially for women. Can it be a tool to deconstruct itself? Can women themselves use it -- as Acker does -- to undermine its negative effects for women? Literal Madness is a great introduction to these questions for those willing to suspend their need for normal narrative development & to follow Acker through an acrobatics of word & scene, an at times insane juxtaposition of seemingly disparate materials that echo the disparity of our everyday lives & of our dreams. R. L. Mazzola, Robercind@aol.com