Great Expectations

by Kathy Acker

Book Overview

Using postmodern form, Kathy Acker's Great Expectations moves her narrator through time, gender, and identity as it examines our era's cherished beliefs about life and art.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802131557
• ISBN13: 9780802131553
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Length: 127 Pages
• Weight: 0.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

the urge to destroy is a creative urge

In this novel Acker aims her critique at the gnarly intersection of capitalism, violence, sexual dysfunction, and male dominance. In order to live out this critique, Acker jettisons most of the (male-dominated) traditions of narrative as she writes, systematically disrupting the stability of characters and setting, and rejecting the claim to authorial originality (as you might guess from the title). Some might say that this rejection is a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but I'm more inclined to say it's form following function. Exemplary.

a wonderful but difficult book

kathy acker doesn't cut any corners - ever. great expectations might shock you, might offend you, might even hurt and disturb you. but acker can deconstruct sexuality and eroticism and living like no one else can, and you might learn a lot about yourself and this rough, confusing existence.