ISBN 0-8021-1170-X (US hbk),,, 0-00-654612-9 (UK pbk, Flamingo, 1993)

"The doomed love affair between the poets Rimbaud and Verlaine; the rape of Airplane and her search for sexual oblivion; the child Capitol's escape from her tortured family life into the cruel and fractured relationship with artist Harry. In these three separate narratives, Kathy Acker, drawing from both classic texts and Americana to produce a startling and inventive montage of history and literature, pornography and poetry, brilliantly explores the shifting and intangible nature of the self." [jacket blurb, UK pbk, 1993]

"How to put the pieces together after defeat, how to conquer nihilism, how to keep on living, strategies for survival in the face of repeated failure... These are what Acker's fiction is all about.

"And since to survive means to maintain your unique personality against the intrusions of society and other individuals, both of whom would like nothing better than to assimilate you into themselves, identity becomes a Holy Grail, a citadel under continual assault." --Paul Di Filippo (in Science Fiction Eye , Issue 8, Winter 1991).