Portrait of an Eye

I'm afraid that had I read these novels first, I might have been too frightened to progress to the more mature novels (_Blood and Guts in High School_ is my favorite). Still, these books make thought-provoking reading.For me, the least successful of the three was the _The Childlike Life of the Black Tarantula by the Black Tarantula_. Call this one three stars. In BT, Acker takes scenes from the lives of famous murderesses and from pornographic novels and inserts herself into them. Interesting idea, but too much repetition. It felt too much like a formal experiment.My favorite was _I Dreamt I was a Nymphomanic: Imagining_. I found it really sweet for Acker, although the chapters were a little too disjointed for comfort. For me, her best work tempers the anger with a kind of dreamy happiness, and this is one of her best works._The Adult Life of Toulouse Lautrec by Henri Toulouse Lautrec_ has been anthologized elsewhere. It's definitely worth a read (Lautrec as a lonely woman in a whorehouse) or a re-read if (like me) you'd read it before.I got a lot more out of reading these early works having read the other novels. I could appreciate where she was going in a way that I'm not certain that I could have had I read them cold. Start with Blood and Guts or _Empire of the Senseless_ if you're an Acker newbie.

This is a wonderful introduction to Acker...to all the major themes, motifs and techniques she would continue to explore through the rest of her life. I've had trouble with her work in the past, but these 3 short novels pulled me into her mindset enough to get a handle on what she is about and made me want to re-read her later work. These works are highly experimental, using a fractured collage technique and jarring jump-cuts to new points of view, so they are not for the relaxing subway ride home. Also contains a high exploration of gender roles, sexual identity, sexual deviancy that is touching and thoughtful, but may insult or frighten more conservative readers.

Three stories which venture into madness, murderesses, and sex. One of the more sucessful parts develops when Acker interweaves her personal history and historical accounts of murderesses