| Edited by Sylvère Lotringer
and published in 1991, Hannibal Lecter, My Father gathers
together Acker's early work: raw, brilliant, emotional and cerebral
texts from 1970s, including the self-published 'zines written under
the nom-de-plume, The Black Tarantula . This volume features,
among others, the full text of Acker's opera, The Birth of
the Poet , produced at Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1985, Algeria ,
1979, and fragments of Politics, written at the age of
21 . Also included is the longest and most definitive interview
Acker ever gave, done over two years: a chatty, intriguing and
delightfully self-deprecating conversation with Semiotext(e) editor
Sylvère Lotringer-which is trippy enough in itself as Lotringer,
besides being a real person, has appeared as a character in Acker's
fiction. Also included is the full transcript of the decision reached
by West Germany's Federal Inspection Office for Publications Harmful
to Minors in which Acker's work was judged to be "not only youth-threatening
but also dangerous to adults," and subsequently banned.
Acker is the sort of the writer
that should be read first at 16, so that you can spend the rest
of your life trying to figure her out; she confuses, infuriates,
perplexes and then all of a sudden the writing seems to be in your
bloodstream, like some kind of benign virus. She's definitely not
for the easily offended –but then, there are worse things
in life than being offended. |
