• Kathy Acker — Blood and Guts in High School, Grove Press, New York, 1984. Front cover. Black ground with red border. Large red and white hand-lettered title: "BLOOD AND GUTS IN HIGH SCHOOL". Author name "KATHY ACKER" in white at top. Centre: oil painting illustration by Sue Coe — a dense, dark scene of figures, a cat-like creature in a suit, playing cards, a coffee cup, industrial machinery, and a crescent moon. Grove Press Evergreen logo upper right, price $7.95.
  • Kathy Acker — Blood and Guts in High School, Grove Press, 1984 — interior page. Full-page line drawing of a multi-armed deity figure in the style of Indian iconography — Kali-like, with multiple heads arranged in a crown, necklace of skulls, weapons and objects in each hand, standing over a prone figure. Small figures and animals at the margins. Caption in a ruled box at base: "The Devil is an image. Imagine Hell. We grab the book, and run." Cream paper, black ink.
  • Kathy Acker — Blood and Guts in High School, Grove Press, 1984 — interior page. Dense collage of appropriated line drawings: serpents, animals, figures, tropical vegetation, mythological creatures, and architectural fragments assembled into a composite field. A blank white rectangle interrupts the centre. Caption in a ruled box at base: "The Devil uses every trick in the book to win." Cream paper, black ink.
  • Kathy Acker — Blood and Guts in High School, Grove Press, 1984 — interior page. Continuation of "The World" section. Text: "This is a flower." with small floral symbol; "Golden bracelets lie around corpses' arms." with bracelet figure; "Thick black bracelets, studded with silver, around their ankles." with ankle figure; "The sun is the world." followed by a large circular sun diagram — a globe with radiating lines, figures and animals inside, rendered in Egyptian-style line drawing. Cream paper.
  • Kathy Acker — Blood and Guts in High School, Grove Press, 1984 — interior page. Section heading "THE WORLD" in bold serif type. Opening paragraph beginning "A light came into the world. Dazzling white light…" followed by a vocabulary list with small line-drawn animal symbols: wolf, dog, horse, elephant, kangaroo, snake — each labelled "This is a [animal]." with a corresponding Egyptian-style hieroglyphic figure. Cream paper, black ink.
  • Kathy Acker — Blood and Guts in High School, Grove Press, New York, 1984. Back cover. Black ground. Title and author in large red lettering. Publisher blurb in white serif type with quotes from Metro News, Cindy Patton (The Women's Review of Books), and William Burroughs. Publisher details: Grove Press, 196 West Houston Street, New York. Cover illustration credit: Sue Coe. Cover design: Roy Colmer. ISBN: 0-394-62334-7.
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Kathy Acker — Blood and Guts in High School, Grove Press, New York, 1984

Kathy Acker — Blood and Guts in High School, Grove Press, New York, 1984

£100.00 GBP
£100.00 GBP
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Kathy Acker — Blood and Guts in High School

Grove Press, New York, 1984

Softcover

Offset-printed wrappers

Approx. 165 pp.

 

Grove Press softcover issue of Blood and Guts in High School, published in 1984 after the text’s earlier fragmented circulation in the late 1970s.

 

Original illustrated wrappers by Sue Coe: black field, red titling, image as signal. Interior pages combine narrative, diagram, letter, drawing, mistranslation, transcription, and appropriated material. The book does not settle into a single literary form. It distributes itself across available supports.

 

Janey appears less as a fixed character than as a point of passage: sexual, geographic, linguistic, institutional. The body is moved through systems. The text follows by breaking sequence, importing fragments, and refusing stable address.

 

As object, the book belongs to the moment when experimental writing, punk-adjacent publishing, feminist rupture, and visual interruption enter the paperback field. A mass-market form carrying a damaged, unstable structure.

 

Condition: very good. Light surface wear to covers, minor edge softening consistent with handling and age. Internally clean.

 

Original period item.

 

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