A lesser known, but brilliant Kathy Acker work. Split across seven chapters Acker begins in Paris where Toulouse Lautrec, apparently female, hopes for love, hangs around a brothel, recounts the life of her friend Van Gogh, and attempts to solve a murder. Meanwhile, the love affair of Janis Joplin and James Dean is derailed by his career, which requires that he not be a real person, and Henry Kissinger's war politics drive U.S. economics on their course into ever-higher inflation and dangerous financial instability.