Aug 28, 2024
The AGO wanted to shake things up with Wanda Nanibush. Then it balked
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The AGO wanted to shake things up with Wanda Nanibush. Then it balked
Ahhh, I got another gift from a Tumblr follower! (And yes, I will definitely mark it up.) Thank you!
What is good art? What is art good for? What knowledge exists outside our conscious minds? Where is home, and how do I get there?
She had been her own creation, an icon of unorthodoxy. Almost alone in her tenacity and nerve, she had completely reoriented our understanding of literature and what literature could do. For all of her books’ vivid vulgarity, they asked fundamental questions. How do I cope with the pain of being unloved? What is good art? What is art good for? What knowledge exists outside our conscious minds? Where is home, and how do I get there? She had the genius to make her own art the answer to these questions, but an answer that, in keeping with the difficulty of these questions, denied normalization or assimilation. To retrieve it, she kept going underground, and demanded that readers follow. [...] In her writing, Acker refused to obey laws of chronology, her books also stand outside of time. To be outside of time is to be lonely. She sacrificed so many things—even, now, it seemed, her life—in the name of her ideals and beliefs. But she had known no other way to live.
— Jason McBride, “Eat Your Mind: The Radical Life and Work of Kathy Acker“ (Simon & Schuster, November 29, 2022)
Illustration by Anoosha Syed (anooshasyed.com).
You’re probably not a child between the ages of two and five, and you may very well not be the parent of one. Maybe you’ve never seen a single eleven-minute segment of Paw Patrol, and if that’s the case, then a) please enjoy the bliss of your prestige-TV-filled ignorance and b) bear with me as I exhaustively describe the premise of the show.
Read “Inside the All-Consuming World of Paw Patrol” (December 2017) by Jason McBride at thewalrus.ca.
Eat Your Mind: The Radical Life and Work of Kathy Acker, by Jason McBride. Once I finish Kid Congo Powers’ autobiography, I’m excited to dig into this.
A familiar cycle of desire was becoming more and more detrimental: as soon as Acker got something she wanted, she immediately wanted something different or something more. Even as she recognized this pattern, she seemed powerless to break it.
Jason McBride, “Eat Your Mind: The Radical Life and Work of Kathy Acker“ (Simon & Schuster, November 29, 2022)
I wanted to see if repeating would change things
Like a musical refrain, she repeats it again, two more times, and the chapter ends. Such repetition occurs frequently throughout the first half of the book. “I wanted to see if repeating would change things,” she said. “If time was basically made up of moments. If it was qualitative or quantitative.” Also, perhaps, the repetition of moments, particularly the harrowing ones of her childhood, offered a chance to start over. Perhaps she had in mind again Gertrude Stein, who wondered if repetition existed, or whether it should just be called insistence?
— Jason McBride, “Eat Your Mind: The Radical Life and Work of Kathy Acker“ (Simon & Schuster, November 29, 2022)
What ‘was’ is never over. What ‘was’ always occurs again, the past forever imprinting itself on, transfiguring, the present.
Jason McBride, “Eat Your Mind: The Radical Life and Work of Kathy Acker“ (Simon & Schuster, November 29, 2022)