{"id":8443,"date":"2017-09-28T19:51:03","date_gmt":"2017-09-28T18:51:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=8443"},"modified":"2017-09-29T09:24:18","modified_gmt":"2017-09-29T08:24:18","slug":"chris-kraus-launch-of-after-kathy-acker-a-biography-reviewed-by-nj-stallard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=8443","title":{"rendered":"Chris Kraus, After Kathy Acker: A Biography<\/em>, reviewed by NJ Stallard"},"content":{"rendered":"
An Evening With Chris Kraus, in conversation with Kaye Mitchell; Waterstone’s, Deansgate, September 27, 2017.<\/h5>\n

\u201cHope not 2 offend but if I die please dont let the frenemy w whom I shared a bf read my diaries & write my biog\u201d wrote artist Jesse Darling, in a recent tweet, regarding the launch of Chris Kraus\u2019s new book, \u201cAfter Kathy Acker: A Biography\u201d.<\/p>\n

In the tweet, Jesse Darling places herself in the position of Kathy Acker, the \u201cexperimental\u201d novelist who died of cancer in 1997 aged 50, and raises the problem of legacy and the always-questionable relationship between biographer and biographee, particularly for female authors: what is a biography and who gets to write it?<\/p>\n

Kraus is very much aware of these questions and problems, or at least appeared to be, in a series of descriptors of the book during a reading and Q&A with Kaye Mitchell in Manchester last night.<\/p>\n

The event is short; Kraus, who has a hearing impairment, is a generous reader but has a train to catch. She reads from the opening section of the book, describing a 23 year old Acker, divorced and living in Washington Heights. Acker performs at a live sex show at Time Square\u2019s Fun City alongside her boyfriend. Acker writes, constantly.<\/p>\n

When Kraus reads the line from Acker\u2019s diary, \u201cI\u2019m hideous with my short hair and draggy breasts\u201d, Jesse Darling\u2019s words come to mind, for a moment. The book contains chunks of Acker\u2019s writing in italicised sections. Kraus uses the first person only a handful of times, she explains, in order to stay close to Acker. \u201cI wanted it to feel like a seance,\u201d Kraus says, describing Acker\u2019s presence in the book as \u201clike a river, a life essence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reviews of the book have touched on the incestuous nature of the New York scene Acker and Kraus belonged to, or overlapped, and both Kraus and Kaye Mitchell use the word \u201cincestuous\u201d a few times in their discussion \u2013 a word that seems to represent the enormous impact of a relatively small group of people, rather than how often they slept with each other.<\/p>\n

In that setting, it\u2019s difficult to discuss \u201cAfter Kathy Acker\u201d without mentioning Kraus\u2019s own biography. When Kraus moved from New Zealand to New York in the late 1970s, beginning her career in film and performance, Acker was already an influential figure and reaching the height of her fame in the scene \u2013 \u201cChildlike Life of the Black Tarantula\u201d was published in 1973, \u201cGreat Expectations\u201d in 1983. During the subsequent decades they shared the same friends (and a boyfriend). Kraus tells multiple anecdotes from their mutual friends, including one from her ex-husband Sylv\u00e8re Lotringer: \u201cKathy once said to Sylv\u00e8re that all you need to do is to write four pages a day and by the end of the year you\u2019ll have a novel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kraus describes Acker as a prolific writer, with a strong work ethic and dedication to writing \u2013 \u201cshe was a bad girl, but also a good girl\u201d. The majority of Acker\u2019s novels came from material she wrote daily, she says, and describes her own book projects as the opposite: \u201cI\u2019m more like a good girl in my daily life, but a bad girl when it comes to work.\u201d When asked how her writing process compares to Acker\u2019s, Kraus says she approaches each of her book projects in the same way as making a film \u2013 there\u2019s a period of pre-production, in which she gathers her material, and then a period of writing for six days a week once the project begins. In between books, she barely writes at all. \u201cWhat have I got to write about?\u201d she jokes.<\/p>\n

Kraus first began the \u201cpre-production\u201d for the Acker biography shortly after Acker\u2019s death in the early noughties. She interviewed her exes, friends and collaborators, who spoke candidly and at length. \u201cI wasn\u2019t really anybody back then, so nobody really took me seriously,\u201d Kraus says, who eventually dumped the project, concerned that writing the biography so soon after publishing her own \u201cexperimental\u201d novel \u201cI Love Dick\u201d in 1999 would just make her look like a \u201cKathy Acker wannabe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nearly two decades later, it feels like either a kooky parallel or a canny move that \u201cAfter Kathy Acker\u201d is the first new book from Kraus after the surge in readership of \u201cI Love Dick\u201d over the past few years. The reasons for the revival of \u201cI Love Dick\u201d depends on who you talk to: 1) a new and for some reason unprecedented public appetite for experimental female fiction; 2) the embracing of female writers such as Kraus, Eileen Myles and Rebecca Solnit, now all in their 60s or approaching, a phenomena I\u2019ve heard described as the right recognition, too late, and, in the art world, as a \u201cgarden of grandmas\u201d; 3) my personal theory: how epistolary form of \u201cI Love Dick\u201d reflects current modes of communication, via whatsapp and other messaging services, in which we share our inner thoughts in endless, open-ended conversations with a non-physically present yet ultimately real person; 4) the title.<\/p>\n

Regarding number 1, Kraus expresses surprise during the Q&A at the praise given to \u201cI Love Dick\u201d for its revolutionary form and \u201cthe obsession with what they like to call \u2018autofiction\u2019\u201d, as she sees her writing style as heavily influenced by Acker. It was Acker who was a \u201cpioneer\u201d in challenging ideas that a woman writing in 1st person could only be understood as writing memoir, the confessional or introspection \u2013 that theory was off limits. \u201cThe transgressive thing about Kathy\u2019s work is not the fact that it\u2019s sexual, but the shmooshing<\/em> of high and low. The idea that the mind is high and the body is low \u2013 everything Kathy did was against that.\u201d<\/p>\n

After spending so much time with Acker\u2019s writing, Kraus says she respects Acker\u2019s work more than ever \u2013 a comment perhaps laced with a touch of Darling. A friend of Kraus\u2019s described \u201cAfter Acker\u201d as more like a \u201clong essay\u201d than a biography, which is a description Kraus feels happy with. She likes the title, too \u2013 also picked by a musician friend: \u201cIt sounds like a song title. But also it leaves it open to this idea of what came after her.\u201d<\/p>\n

No longer a \u201cwannabe\u201d but an influential writer documenting the life of another \u2013 although a documentation which has been questioned in some reviews \u2013 Kraus ends the evening by discussing Acker\u2019s political intuition and relevance today. She gives a final image of Acker riding a motorcycle across the United States, befriending truckers and others, as a woman acutely aware of the harsh schisms in the American mediascape \u2013 and \u201cwhat they now call alternative facts\u201d.<\/p>\n

NJ Stallard<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Evening With Chris Kraus, in conversation with Kaye Mitchell; Waterstone’s, Deansgate, September 27, 2017. \u201cHope not 2 offend but if I die please dont let the frenemy w whom I shared a bf read my diaries & write my biog\u201d wrote artist Jesse Darling, in a recent tweet, regarding the launch of Chris Kraus\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[16,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nChris Kraus, After Kathy Acker: A Biography, reviewed by NJ Stallard - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=8443\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Chris Kraus, After Kathy Acker: A Biography, reviewed by NJ Stallard - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"An Evening With Chris Kraus, in conversation with Kaye Mitchell; Waterstone’s, Deansgate, September 27, 2017. \u201cHope not 2 offend but if I die please dont let the frenemy w whom I shared a bf read my diaries & write my biog\u201d wrote artist Jesse Darling, in a recent tweet, regarding the launch of Chris Kraus\u2019s […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=8443\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-09-28T18:51:03+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2017-09-29T08:24:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"The Manchester Review\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=8443\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=8443\",\"name\":\"Chris Kraus, After Kathy Acker: A Biography, reviewed by NJ Stallard - The Manchester Review\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2017-09-28T18:51:03+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-09-29T08:24:18+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/e6deb0374609919f6e86f6ee1defe8cc\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=8443#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=8443\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=8443#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Chris Kraus, After Kathy Acker: A Biography, reviewed by NJ Stallard\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/\",\"name\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"description\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/e6deb0374609919f6e86f6ee1defe8cc\",\"name\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif\",\"caption\":\"The Manchester Review\"},\"description\":\"The Manchester Review was founded in 2008 and is published by the Centre for New Writing at The University of Manchester. We aspire to bring together online, without a paper edition, the best of international writing from well-known, established writers alongside new, relatively unknown poets and prose-writers.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?author=45\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Chris Kraus, After Kathy Acker: A Biography, reviewed by NJ Stallard - The Manchester Review","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=8443","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Chris Kraus, After Kathy Acker: A Biography, reviewed by NJ Stallard - The Manchester Review","og_description":"An Evening With Chris Kraus, in conversation with Kaye Mitchell; Waterstone’s, Deansgate, September 27, 2017. \u201cHope not 2 offend but if I die please dont let the frenemy w whom I shared a bf read my diaries & write my biog\u201d wrote artist Jesse Darling, in a recent tweet, regarding the launch of Chris Kraus\u2019s […]","og_url":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=8443","og_site_name":"The Manchester Review","article_published_time":"2017-09-28T18:51:03+00:00","article_modified_time":"2017-09-29T08:24:18+00:00","author":"The Manchester Review","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"The Manchester Review","Est. reading time":"6 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=8443","url":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=8443","name":"Chris Kraus, After Kathy Acker: A Biography, reviewed by NJ Stallard - The Manchester Review","isPartOf":{"@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website"},"datePublished":"2017-09-28T18:51:03+00:00","dateModified":"2017-09-29T08:24:18+00:00","author":{"@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/e6deb0374609919f6e86f6ee1defe8cc"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=8443#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=8443"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=8443#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Chris Kraus, After Kathy Acker: A Biography, reviewed by NJ Stallard"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website","url":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/","name":"The Manchester Review","description":"The Manchester Review","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/e6deb0374609919f6e86f6ee1defe8cc","name":"The Manchester Review","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif","caption":"The Manchester Review"},"description":"The Manchester Review was founded in 2008 and is published by the Centre for New Writing at The University of Manchester. We aspire to bring together online, without a paper edition, the best of international writing from well-known, established writers alongside new, relatively unknown poets and prose-writers.","url":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?author=45"}]}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2PuXo-2cb","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8443"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8443"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8447,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8443\/revisions\/8447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}