SOURCE: "Kathy Acker: The Blood and Guts of Guerrilla Warfare," in Suburban Ambush: Downtown Writing and the Fiction of Insurgency, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989, pp. 47-123.

In the following excerpt, Siegle offers an overview of Acker's literary significance and a critical reading of Don Quixote.

"Reading Kathy Acker is like reading the subway walls." "If my mother saw what I was reading, she'd die." "I never thought I was a prude until I opened this book. I was reading it outside between classes and I found myself holding the book half-closed so the people sitting around me wouldn't see the illustrations." "My roommates couldn't believe I was reading this book for a course!" Well, there is some truth to these minority-opinion gasps from the fiction class to whom I assigned Acker's Blood and Guts in High School. Reading Acker does take you close to a voice not often...