Abstract
Kathy Acker's readers rarely account for one of her major aesthetic influences, conceptual visual artists of the 1960s and 70s. This article interprets her “plagiarized” novels as conceptual experiments of replication without transformation. For Acker, the writing of narrative through copying becomes an act of endurance. She compares this experience to bodybuilding and its methods of forced repetition that deliberately strain muscles “past failure” to encourage their growth. The article explores In Memoriam to Identity, where Acker carries out her aim to write the life of Arthur Rimbaud despite disliking what the once-visionary poet's life became. The novel's embattled characters, taking Rimbaud as model and warning, reject the false optimism of beginning anew and vow to endure their circumstances. In order to follow her own project to the end, Acker moves from exploring Rimbaud the historical figure to projecting Rimbaud into characters and themes in novels of William Faulkner, which she copies to critique further the myth of the self-made man or woman.
