Intervention
Literary Need 2: The Childlike Life of The Black Tarantula, by The Black Tarantula and other stories and other stories

Kathy Acker's first book appeared, in at least one version, as The Childlike Life of the Black Tarantula by The Black Tarantula (in 1975, as published by Viper's Tongue Books). It might be hard to know how to italicize that title, so here's what the cover looks like:

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It may be difficult to know how to italicize that title. And this one's nearly impossible:

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The first story in the book is called, properly italicized "'The Island of Doctor Death' and Other Stories." Note that the doubled inverted commas are not italicized: they set off the title of the story which is itself the name of a book, and which is therefore italicized. All the stories in the book are great, by the way, including the more easily cited "The Death of Doctor Island" and "The Doctor of Death Island." (Later, I hear from Waggish, he wrote a story called "Death of the Island Doctor.")

Easier, of course, is a collection of stories by William Gass:

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The title story is wonderful, but the title itself less interesting per se than the others I've been citing, less interesting even than this one, perhaps, whose transcription is left as an exercise to the reader:

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What do these titles have to do with literary need? I think they're all, in one way or another, illustrations of the opening lines of Bishop's amazing poem "Casabianca" (or I might want to say: Elizabeth Bishop's "Felicia Hemans' 'Casabianca' "):

Love's the boy stood on the burning deck
trying to recite "The boy stood on
the burning deck". Love's the son
stood stammering elocution
while the poor ship in flames went down.

Love's the obstinate boy, the ship,
even the swimming sailors, who
would like a schoolroom platform, too
or an excuse to stay
on deck. And love's the burning boy.

All these titles, all these moves, are "filled with [their writers'] intent / to be lost" in the literary works they name.

They meet the need they describe: they meet it by describing it, since the only way to meet a need to belong to a fictional world is by describing it (as I'll try to show in my next).

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