I Want Everything
New York magazine|December 05-18, 2022
The Kathy Acker story tends to multiply as you write it.
JASON MCBRIDE. SIMON & SCHUSTER
I Want Everything

In the 1961 yearbook from the Lenox School, the posh Manhattan girls’ school that Kathy Acker attended, every student’s photo was accompanied by a personal motto. Acker, then in her early teens, chose Virgil: omnia vincit amor—“love conquers all.” Now the phrase seems a fitting epigraph to the writer’s too-short life, albeit one that would be complicated and torqued in the decades to come. Just as the characters in her books undergo unexpected transformations, so too did Acker in her many guises as an uptown prep-school girl, Times Square sex worker, weightlifting punk-feminist icon, darling of the London literati, and more. Through all this, as Jason McBride writes in Eat Your Mind: The Radical Life and Work of Kathy Acker, it was love— torturous and sublime, violent and enlivening—that remained at the core of her work and her way of living.

Acker, an experimental novelist, performer, and essayist, resisted the reduction of narrative. In turn, the difficulty of writing a singular story about her has shaped McBride’s book. It’s an exciting ride: critical, admiring, and fascinating if not totally revelatory. Eat Your Mind often feels chaotically jam-packed with people, texts, and fascinating but compressed social histories of the wild literary and artistic scenes of New York, London, and San Francisco from the 1970s to the ’90s. McBride also quotes Acker’s own caution against biographical curiosity from what is perhaps her most famous novel, Blood and Guts in High School (1984): “Don’t get into the writer’s personal life thinking if you like the books you’ll like the writer. A writer’s personal life is horrible and lonely. Writers are queer so keep away from them.”

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة December 05-18, 2022 من New York magazine.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة December 05-18, 2022 من New York magazine.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

المزيد من القصص من NEW YORK MAGAZINE مشاهدة الكل
Trapped in Time
New York magazine

Trapped in Time

A woman relives the same day in a stunning Danish novel.

time-read
6 mins  |
Nov 18-Dec 1, 2024
Polyphonic City
New York magazine

Polyphonic City

A SOFT, SHIMMERING beauty permeates the images of Mumbai that open Payal Kapadia's All We Imagine As Light. For all the nighttime bustle on display-the heave of people, the constant activity and chaos-Kapadia shoots with a flair for the illusory.

time-read
3 mins  |
Nov 18-Dec 1, 2024
Lear at the Fountain of Youth
New York magazine

Lear at the Fountain of Youth

Kenneth Branagh's production is nipped, tucked, and facile.

time-read
5 mins  |
Nov 18-Dec 1, 2024
A Belfast Lad Goes Home
New York magazine

A Belfast Lad Goes Home

After playing some iconic Americans, Anthony Boyle is a beloved IRA commander in a riveting new series about the Troubles.

time-read
5 mins  |
Nov 18-Dec 1, 2024
The Pluck of the Irish
New York magazine

The Pluck of the Irish

Artists from the Indiana-size island continue to dominate popular culture. Online, they've gained a rep as the \"good Europeans.\"

time-read
8 mins  |
Nov 18-Dec 1, 2024
Houston's on Houston
New York magazine

Houston's on Houston

The Corner Store is like an upscale chain for downtown scene-chasers.

time-read
3 mins  |
Nov 18-Dec 1, 2024
A Brownstone That's Pink Inside
New York magazine

A Brownstone That's Pink Inside

Artist Vivian Reiss's Murray Hill house of whimsy.

time-read
3 mins  |
Nov 18-Dec 1, 2024
These Jeans Made Me Gay
New York magazine

These Jeans Made Me Gay

The Citizens of Humanity Horseshoe pants complete my queer style.

time-read
2 mins  |
Nov 18-Dec 1, 2024
Manic, STONED, Throttle, No Brakes
New York magazine

Manic, STONED, Throttle, No Brakes

Less than six months after her Gagosian sölu show, the artist JAMIAN JULIANO-VILLAND lost her gallery and all her money and was preparing for an exhibition with two the biggest living American artists.

time-read
10+ mins  |
Nov 18-Dec 1, 2024
WHO EVER THOUGHT THAT BRIGHT PINK MEAT THAT LASTS FOR WEEKS WAS A GOOD IDEA?
New York magazine

WHO EVER THOUGHT THAT BRIGHT PINK MEAT THAT LASTS FOR WEEKS WAS A GOOD IDEA?

Deli Meat Is Rotten

time-read
10+ mins  |
Nov 18-Dec 1, 2024