the lit bit - june 2o26

After Kathy Acker (2017) - by Chris Krause

I don't do bios very often.  Maybe one to two a year, on average.  No real reason other than mental hygiene.  Fiction's my thing.  I try not to learn too much about my fave creators.  Because scuttlebutt may be part of art but it shouldn't be a primary point of access.

This was finished two days ago.  Normally I wouldn't carry over, and leave this last month, but...  Hell, it's the scuttlebutt aspect.  Kathy Acker knew Neil Gaiman.  Or was it Neil who knew Kathy?  There's an ambivalence in the text to this, in a book replete with tales of Who Fucked Whom.  In the light of Neil's troubles, and the fact that he could afford to throw lawyers at Todd McFarlane (with help from Marvel), it's near impossible not to speculate.

See, Kathy was in the London S&M scene, and she bought & sold 3-4 different flats around London & Brighton.  As Neil puts it, it's the resale of one of these flats that caused their friendship's elision.  He thinks.  Kathy was notoriously flighty with her friendships, and her passions, if they weren't one and the same.  And they rarely stayed stably in any of the three categories:  friendly, fucking, and friends who fuck.  It was pretty well known how she handled her intellectual & amorous affairs, which is why the reluctance around Gaiman's appearances stands out...

There was a specific lover who Kathy called "the German", and he's distinct from Gaiman in terms of having a proper name and different vocation, but there's some overlap in The German's m.o. in how he & Kathy conducted their affair.  The German, like Gaiman, was married.  Like Gaiman--  reputedly  --The German loved power games, headfucky semi-public scenarios, and thrilled to theatrical cruelty.  While it's possible they didn't ball, similarities between The German's amorous m.o. & testimony from Gaiman's accusers about the games he played are remarkable.  Maybe she told Neil about her adventures with The German, and he decided to re-enact those games with later partners.  Perhaps?

The ambivalence in Krause's narrative around the period these two are onstage with Acker is extremely curious; there is a sense of overlap between the characters for several pages, then the affair ends, quite abruptly, and Kathy sells her flat, fleeing London, optimistically, for a return to New York.

Gaiman doesn't show up again until the final two chapters, and that's when their friendship drifts out.  Over a real estate favour, where Gaiman was somehow responsible for selling her then-recently acquired but never-lived-in Brighton digs.  Gaiman himself sounds uncertain about what happened.  "I didn't sell it fast enough, I suppose," he mulls.  There is no further speculation.

And--  here's a thing  --there is not so much as a single mention of Delirium.  Or Kathy's reactions to being depicted in Sandman.  Which would have come up, as Delirium's development in the comic series occurred as she was living, and in those years Kathy was in her multimedia phase, moving from spoken word recordings to live shows with The Mekons and playing at scriptwriting...  Kathy being Kathy, all-about-Kathy, it's positively bizarre that there's no mention of her reacting to having a comix avatar over at DC.  She would have known.  She would have talked about it.  She had seven years to talk about it!!!

Sandman ended the year before she died.

I am not saying I smell lawyers circling the outer research waters of this book.  Because that would be actionable, and Neil has Miracleman on his side.  They were friends.  What more need be said.

See why I don't read biographies?

High Risk: An Anthology of Forbidden Writings (1991) - edited by Amy Scholder & Ira Silverberg

Bought this two years ago for an essay by William S. Burroughs.   Contains Kathy and Dennis Cooper and all the other belles of the big gay lit ball.  Since I needed a breather between, embarked on a short story by Gary Indiana, who I've never read before.  Gary was friends (frenemies?) with Kathy Acker & David Wojnarowicz.  Which has sweet fuck all to do with his cred as a writer.  This is strikingly well-written, clear-eyed work, with excellent atmosphere.

 

I'll pursue more Indiana soon.

Cruising (1970) - by Gerard Walker

Another carryover from last month.  Siegfried just finished reading it.  From everything he said about the plot, Friedkin worked to incorporate as much as possible into its film adaptation.  So I'm genuinely curious now.  Started first chapter last night.  Apparently the author was a fan of Samuel Fuller...?  Like, he namechecks Hitchcock, Kubrick, and "Sam what's-his-name, the B-movie guy whose mysteries are so big in France."

As I'm reading the sentence I finishing it aloud, and my husband's like "Knew you would fill in the blank.  Nerd."

The House of Impossible Beauties  (2018) - by Joseph Cassara

Next up!