“The Last Days of Kathy Acker”

Until the last week of her life, Acker was still convinced she would survive, and everyone knew not to say otherwise. But by the week of Thanksgiving, her condition rapidly declined. She stopped breathing and was resuscitated, and thereafter could no longer breathe unassisted. She stopped eating solid foods. Her body shrunk even more. In one of her last lucid conversations with Viegener, they talked briefly about her literary legacy. “I’ve said I what I needed to say,” Acker said. “I can accept dying. I want to stay in the world, but I’ve made the work that was in me to make. I’ve accomplished something.”

Jason McBride, the author of the forthcoming Kathy Acker biography, has an essay on Hazlitt today about Kathy’s last days in Mexico. It is an excellent and difficult piece that you should take the time to read.