The undead past in Kathy Acker’sBlood and Guts in High School

Abstract

Kathy Acker is known as a radically experimental modern writer, yet her works rely heavily on ancient authors. This article traces classical allusions and borrowings in her novel Blood and Guts in High School to demonstrate the influence of Acker’s philological education on her techniques of plagiarism and destabilized narrative voice. The main character, Janey, first translates several poems of Propertius, switching her identification between the male author, who serves as model for the desiring poet, and his beloved Cynthia, a female speaker. She then meets the ghost of Catullus, who leads her to her death; on the final page of the book is an unattributed version of Sappho fr. 16 V. Acker uses the Roman poets Catullus and Propertius to explore the relationship between author, work, and inspiration, and draws on the Greek poet Sappho to offer a programmatic statement about gender relations and literature.