PositiveFull StopKraus, a nobody during Acker’s lifetime but now an author with fame comparable or even in excess of hers, is acutely sensitive to the expectations of her readers and Acker’s: our preconceptions are a powerful fog that envelops the work and pre-empts its revelations … Kraus engages with Acker’s myth, breaking it down and renewing it in ways that echo Acker’s own practice. In her life and writing, Acker engaged in experiments that allowed her to constantly fabricate new identities for herself: Kraus’s book in some ways builds on this endeavor, constructing yet another version of Acker...Kraus’s Acker is one calibrated to the contemporary moment and is portrayed as a vulnerable, somewhat lost, and not always likeable female artist desperately trying to make it in the world.
