3.0
Empire of the Senseless
ByPublisher Description
Originally published in 1988,
marked a turning point in Acker's wild, inimitable style. Considered one of her more accessible works, here Acker candidly addresses her lifelong obsessions: childhood and trauma, language and sexuality, criminality and corruption, oppression and rebellion.
Abhor (part human, part robot) and her lover Thivai (a pirate) traverse Paris in a dystopian future, in search of a mysterious drug that Thivai needs in order to maintain his ability to love. Navigating the chaotic city, they encounter mad doctors, prisoners, bikers, sailors, tattooists, terrorists, and prostitutes, while a band of Algerian revolutionaries take over, and the CIA plots to thwart them all.
Sexually explicit, graphically violent,
resists the desensitizing of cultural consciousness and the disintegration of interpersonal communication. A timeless, prescient parable, it speaks profoundly to our social and political history as well as our present reality.
"[A] complex, high-speed, intensely intellectual, intensely offensive, post-modernist, pained and painful, punk, fantastic, fictional construct and elaborate tattoo of a novel." —
"
is a family romance turned inside out, a twisted re-creation of quest sagas and Bildungsroman and TV sitcoms." —
"A world of ugly truths, beautifully expressed. If you care to learn why Kathy Acker is such an important writer, I suggest you put aside your preconceptions, stop making sense, and read this book immediately." —Alan Moore
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesEmpire of the Senseless Reviews
3.0
Halie
Created 6 months agoShare
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louisaD
Created 11 months agoShare
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“I see the value of this book existing. I read this as part of a feminist utopias reading group. It is intense, violent, horrible, and seemingly endless.
The book is so incredibly self-indulgent that I found it sickening. Every perverse impulse of the authors mind translated onto page for the purposeful effect of disgust. A few passages stand out but the rest is designedly awful. It strips meaning and pushes boundaries, certainly, but not in a way that I found to be useful.”
Nick Melloan-Ruiz
Created about 1 year agoShare
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“Favorite acker writing is still that spice girls interview”
jeffrey
Created over 1 year agoShare
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Maeby
Created over 2 years agoShare
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