In Memoriam to Identity

By Kathy Acker

Book Overview

In this characteristically sexy, daring, and hyperliterate novel, Kathy Acker interweaves the stories of three characters who share the same tragic flaw: a predilection for doomed, obsessive love. Rimbaud, the delinquent symbolist prodigy, is deserted by his lover Verlaine time and time again. Airplane takes a job dancing at Fun City, the seventh tier of the sex industry, in order to support her good-for-nothing boyfriend. And Capitol feels alive only when she's having sex with her brother, Quentin. In Memoriam to Identity is at once a revelatory addition to, and an irreverent critique of, the literature of decadence and self-destruction.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 080213579X
• ISBN13: 9780802135797
• Release Date: August 1998
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Achingly beautiful

Acker is not for everyone, but if you're a fan or a literary fiction reader or open to Acker's wild ride through language and heartbreak and sensuality, I highly recommend this novel. Her language is never more distilled and powerful than here, if you have the ears for it. One of my very favorite Acker books, and obviously I'm a fan.

kathy acker takes on rimbaud

kathy deconstructs rimbaud, baudelaire, and faulkner in this beautiful mess of a book. it tells the tale of the ill-fated relationship between rimbaud and baudelaire and asks if being alone is better than being in a relationship that isn't supposed to be. it also retells faulkner's sound and the fury in an updated, perverse manner. 'come alive dead heart, and sing...' kathy's approach is never subtle, and is not recommended for those easily offended, but when you accept the dirtiness, all of the beauty seeps in.