After Kathy Acker: A Literary Biography

"How do you recount the life of someone who obsessively cultivated a self-mythology? Kathy Acker was an author of the punk literary scene who seemingly rubbed shoulders and bumped uglies with everyone before she died in 1997. I tore through this biography as if it were a mystery novel. Chris Kraus pieces together Acker’s story through the evidence left behind: her books, her letters, her financial records and the memories of her contemporaries. It’s hard to tell whether Kraus uncovers the events of Acker’s life or the fable she left behind – it’s a slippery matter, and perhaps, in the end, they’re one and the same."