You’d think it was easy for a writer to write about another writer, one who’s inspired them, guided them, shown them something, perhaps, no other writer has shown them; but it’s not. It’s never easy to put into words the words of another and be certain you’re remaining faithful, doing justice, or worthy of approval. Michel Foucault cited Heidegger as the writer he would never be able to write about, despite, or because of being his favourite; for Derrida, it was Beckett. Here we have two writers, each writing about another writer: one written from a place of great intimacy and first-hand experience of the subject, the other written from perusal of the archive and a purely intertextual affair.
It took me twenty years to find the right way to write about my brush with Kathy Acker’s greatness (https://minorliteratures.com/2019/04/25/kathy-ackers-houseboy-jonathan-kemp/). In it, I made reference to Acker fucking gay men with a strap-on. One of those peg-boys was McKenzie Wark, who first met Acker in 1995, and their brief affair has been documented in the book, I’m Very Into You (MIT Press, 2015), a collection of their email correspondence. At the time Wark didn’t identify as trans, but has since made the transition from male to female and that trajectory of gender plays a powerful role in her approach to Acker’s writing, finding in it a philosophy of multiplicity, ambiguity and gender fluidity that renders it prescient and important.
The text itself, structured in three parts, transitions from an intimate account of Wark’s dealings with Acker, to a detailed and compelling reading of her work, exploring various themes and entertaining the idea of multiple Ackers, a spiderlike entity spinning philosophical skeins that not only deconstruct gender but speak of other worlds and ways of being gendered in the world. The third and final part weaves a low theory from the words of these Ackers, a theory that finds a place for the trans state of being that hovers delicately and mischievously between the two traditional genders and laughs at the idea of settling for either one of those destinies, offering instead a way of being in the world – this cantankerous, preposterous world, here and now – that is neither one thing nor the other, neither here nor there, but a potentiality of otherness that speaks to Wark’s transness and guides hope into the room. “The Acker-text is available to a trans reading in the sense of trans as fluid, hybrid, labile – that sense of transness close to queerness.”
This is theory how I like it: dirty, low, obsessed with the non-identical, upturning everything because that’s the best place to start really thinking. Vertiginous thinking. Wark makes wonderful and original use of Acker’s work – or Ackers’ work – and in the final pages especially, there’s a powerful clarity to writing that’s exciting.
Philosophy for Spiders: On the Low Theory of Kathy Acker by McKenzie Wark published by Duke University Press
Author McKenzie Wark is Professor of Media and Culture at Eugene Lang College at The New School and author of several books, including Sensoria: Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century, Reverse Cowgirl, and Capital Is Dead: Is This Something Worse? Her correspondence with Kathy Acker was published as I’m Very Into You.
I was once at a book event, in conversation with a fellow writer and a bookseller and as we discussed our current reading I mentioned Burroughs and the other writer was shocked anyone read him beyond late adolescence. Like acne, reading Burroughs was seen as a phase one should grow out of. I’m glad to say I haven’t grown out of it and I hope I never will stop giving Burroughs and his work my attention, and this engrossing little book is proof that many more writers feel the same way about him. Kelso’s done a great job and this is an absolute must-have for all William Burroughs aficionados and beyond that, anyone interested in literature and the role of the writer in society; or, in Burroughs’ case, outside society. With great aplomb and dexterity, Kelso navigates the episodes of Burroughs’ visits to and engagements with Scotland and assesses the long term influence of the man and his writing on subsequent Scottish writers and writing, including himself – the book opens with a wonderful piece of autobiography and ends with a short story featuring Burroughs as the main character written when Kelso was younger and republished here, ‘Naked Punch’.
It’s an eminently readable book about a fascinating subject.
Author Chris Kelso has written nine novels, three short story collections, and edited five anthologies. His work has appeared in Evergreen Review, Sensitive Skin, 3AM Magazine, New Coin, and many more.
Burroughs & Scotland. is published by https://www.beatdom.com/burroughs-and-scotland/
Review by Jonathan KempQueerguru London Contributing Editor Jonathan Kemp writes fiction and non-fiction and teaches creative writing at Middlesex University. He is the author of two novels – London Triptych (2010), which won the 2011 Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award, and Ghosting (2015) – and the short-story collection Twentysix. (2011, all published by Myriad Editions). Non-fiction works include The Penetrated Male (2012) and Homotopia?: Gay Identity, Sameness and the Politics of Desire (2015, both Punctum Books).
Labels: 2022, book review, Jonathan Kent, Kathy Acker, Mckenzie Wark
