Penguin Random House, Kathy Acker, and Jean Baudrillard

plus why Vialibri is the best website left standing

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Over the weekend, while looking for used books in weird places, I fell down a Kathy Acker rabbit hole. A year or so ago, when I was in a similar hole, I bought some first editions of her better known books. On this descent, I learned about her earlier self-published works, including this series of xeroxed and stapled chapters of The Childlike Life of the Black Tarantula, which was later published by TVRT Press.

Acker’s bibliography itself tells a story about publishing, from self-publishing the above, which was later published by TVRT Press (about which I would like to learn more), to another book from Diana’s Bimonthly Press, then Rumour Publications, through to a bunch of other very small presses (tbh the researching and link-finding for them all is time-consuming!), and then to Great Expectations and what might be called her breakout, Blood and Guts in High School, published by Grove in 1984, which is the one I read and was blown away by in college.

In truth it’s exhausting summing up Acker’s bibliography, because so many of her books were published by one press and then another, and another, and another, as her work attracted the attention of more conventional presses as her reputation grew, but she kept her indie cred front and center and did not take that overly-trod path path from small to corporate press.

When I got up to 1991 in her bibliography I did a double take, because I hadn’t I registered before (or probably did but then forgot entirely), that Semiotext(e) published her as well.

I’ve been working on a newsletter abut Semiotext(e), the press that absolutely transformed so much of American academia, and whole adorable little books I owned, was assigned to read in the ridiculous number of theory courses I took back in the day, and often did also read, but sometimes only pretended to. Semiotext(e) is still out there doing the work, and I’ve been poking about to find out what’s been written about the press per se (there were some great pieces published upon the death of the founding publisher in 2021).

One sigificant change to Semiotext(e) is (unsurprising drumroll) its distribution: first distributed by the radical Autonomedia, they later moved to MIT Press, which in turn shifted to being distributed by Penguin Random House. This is why you can buy a copy of Semiotext(e)’s first book, the insanely influential Simulations by Jean Baudrillard, on the PRH website.

So much funnels up to PRH indeed; and yes, PRH is also this week’s main character, as it just fired about the only two people working in Big Five publishing whose names are well-enough known outside the industry as identifiable individuals doing interesting things. Both Reagan Arthur and Lisa Lucas were people whose careers I followed, and of whose acquisitions I took note.

People have all sorts of theories about why these two women were fired. I have no idea the real reason, if indeed there is one. Maybe it was just about moving pieces about an abstract board, or maybe it was intensely personal. Whatever the rationale, it is strange, seemingly jarring, and depressing.

Meanwhile, you guys are reading such good books! The comments on last week’s newsletter about how you found the books you enjoy are incredible (thank you SO MUCH for participating!. The results seem to reveal absolutely no pattern whatsoever, other than the proverbial word of mouth? Now, I haven’t crunched the comments, but it does seem that libraries beat out bookstores, and reviews lost to newsletters and podcasts. If you haven’t yet, please add a comment of your own to the chorus, and if you are interested in how people find out about books (or, indeed, work at a job where such info is important), take a minute to read them through.

Oh and hey— this is my last chance to pimp my upcoming course here, so this is your last chance to tell people about how it starts in one week and will be really cool.

1. The indispensable source for finding weird books online