Fear and Loathing on Melrose Place

I’M AT BOSSA NOVA CIVIC CLUB in Bushwick when I notice that Jack Skelley has followed me on Instagram. I’m sitting at a booth with Julia and Wex and Maria and Noel near the cucumber-infused water station, which is somehow also the part of the club that smells like vomit. We’re talking about “scene politics,” about cliques, about snubbing, about “cool-guying,” about getting dubbed. I’m telling them about this review I’ve been trying to write about Jack Skelley’s novel The Complete Fear of Kathy Acker, which is only just being released in its full form now, even though Skelley has been publishing excerpts of it since 1984. Yes, I’m telling them about Fear of Kathy Acker and how it swallows Skelley’s scene whole, panning around Los Angeles from Torrance to Venice to Chinatown to Hollywood and then back to Venice, cutting from parties to hangovers to smoke sessions to punk shows. Early in the novel, Jack—Skelley’s nearly autobiographical narrator—attends a party in the hills and stands by himself in the corner, looking over at some “Hollywood hair punks” who are “guffawing their colored spiky heads off in the next room.” Later on, at Club Lingerie in Hollywood, Jack gets turned away by “J. Jerkfuck . . . that English guy at the door with cap and glasses,” but finds a way to sneak in with the band. Constantly “lost in wild bummers,” fumbling his way through his late twenties, Jack is like some manic tour guide beamed from the alternate universe that is 1980s underground Los Angeles. With appearances from bands such as Sonic Youth, Fishbone, and Half Japanese, as well as Skelley’s own band, Lawndale, Fear of Kathy Acker often reads like the novelized version of a club guest list.