In this collaborative volume, the writer and artist Paul Buck works with
the late Kathy Acker. Using as source the raw materials of their
correspondence from the early 80s, a period when Acker was writing
Great Expectations and trying to leave America for London, Buck
confronts issues of appropriation, sampling, and plagiarism, relevant
then and now. Spread Wide works to spread wide not only the thighs,
but also the page and writing itself, to expose the textual and
narrative pulsations that are fundamental to the creative process as
experienced by both of these notable practitioners. Through Acker's
letters and re-readings of her published work, Buck blurs the line
between visual arts and literature, tramps documents into fiction, and
creates a transgressive work that stretches back to the time of their
first meetings in Amsterdam and Paris, when, as editor of the seminal
magazine Curtains, he blasted French contemporary writings into the
British bloodstream. Further encounters are triggered by writer Rebecca
Stephens and artist John Cussans.