Blood and Guts in High School
{{Blood and Guts in High School}}
Basic Info
- Author:
- Year:
- Type: #primary2
Summary (brief)
-This is what I mean when I say transgressive. How do the nude drawings contribute to this work?
The funny hyperbolic breakup conversations between Janey Smith and a father she calls "boyfriend, brother, sister, money, amusement, and father."
These pages---the last to be composed---were written in the wake of her and Gordon's separation in 1978.
#Autofiction Autofiction: about her life with Gordon
Major Themes
- #trans-corporeality
- #craft/body/fragmentation
- #dreams
- #monstrous-femine
- #monstrous-landscape
- #marriage/relationships
Key Passages / Quotes
Quote 1
quote:: “Sometimes the castle's her-mind-gone she would wander through shifting / hallways”
page:: 110-111
themes:: #trans-corporeality
Genre Notes
-Autofiction"
blends real life trauma and identity with extreme, surreal fiction. She uses lived experiences as raw material to explode the boundaries of traditional storytelling (NYC Punk scene, cancer scare); shifting between modes and pictures treats memories as texts to be manipulated and rehaped. Also deliberate plagiarism. Argues private life is trapped by literature and language. Emotional intensity = emotional truth over factual truth. Psychic weight of being a woman.
Characters / Concepts (if relevant)
-Janey Smith: 10 year old protagonist and narrator; incestuous relationship to father;
-Mr. Smith: Janey's father/boyfriend. Abandons her
-Sally: 21 year old starlet whom Janey's father becomes infatuated with
-The Persian Slave Trader (Linker) kidnaps Janey in the East Village and locks her in a room to train her to become a prostitute. He releases her after discovering she has cancer
-Sahih: A slave worker for the slave trader who degrades Janey
-Jean Genet: famous French writer
Also Catullus, Propertius, and Sappho
Theory Connections
Related Texts
My Argument / Interpretation
Dissertation Relevance
How could this matter to my project?
-Acker is a pioneer of autofiction;