BLOOD AND GUTS IN HIGH SCHOOL

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by Kathy Acker (1984)

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Janey Smith decides that it’s time to act. She just goes because nothing here is working out to her satisfaction and she has needs and desires and why isn’t it happening in the way she imagined it would? Just like how people need to travel to get away from this so that they can become that: the next version of themselves which cannot reveal itself in present company and surroundings. Janey is horny and needs sex and also love. How to get both? Janey also needs money to survive – who doesn’t? – but Janey doesn’t want to become dead inside like so many already are, yet every time she steals a moment on the job some petty bitch steals it right back from her. Along the way, cancer tries to hurt Janey, but cancer doesn’t know that Janey is too tough and too smart to be hurt by cancer. Cancer is shit, but Janey knows that life can be this way too. Powerless but learning about the true nature of power, Janey makes her evolution arrive through revolutionary action. Sexist power. Sexual power. Raw class power. And the power to leave the one situation that is keeping her stuck. Janey Smith gets it. Janey Smith flies. Fiction. 165 pages.

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DETAILS:

Title: Blood and guts in high school

Year: 1984

Author: Kathy Acker

Pages: 165

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Book review by Keith Salter