Our Next Book is Blood and Guts in High School by Kathy Acker

Jamey lived in the locked room. Twice a day the Persian slave trader came in and taught her to be a whore. Otherwise there was nothing. One day she found a pencil stub and scrap of paper in a forgotten corner of the room. She began to write down her life...

Kathy Acker, whose work has been labeled everthing from post-punk porn to post-punk feminism, has created a brilliantly subversive narrative built from conversation, description, conjecture, and moments snatched from history and literature.

Come discuss Blood and Guts in High School Saturday July 17th at the Main Library in the 3rd Floor Program Room at 11am. Feel free to bring food and drink.

Some thoughts about Billy the Kid...

- Who is the narrator of this book?

- My copy had blank photographs in it. I had the knee jerk response to an experimental form, "is this a typo?" What were the blank photographs, or whatever they were, about?

- Ondaatje started his career writing very nonlinear texts like Billy but slowly his works came to have more straight forward narratives. Are artists by nature more daring at the beginning of their careers?

- It feels to me that Billy the Kid has lost some of his mystique since the 19th century. Does the American West have the same appeal as it used to, or have we deconstructed it beyond "repair"? Do we have any contemporary figures that youth simultaneously look up to or are afraid of in equal measure?

- Can you define "cowboy psychedelia"?

Come discuss The Collected Works of Billy the Kid Saturday May 15th at the Main Library in the 3rd Floor Program Room at 11am. Feel free to bring food and drink.