Reading the Lack of the Body: The Writing of the Marquis de Sade

At the opening of her article, Acker writes, "I am using this essay to do two things. To read a short passage from Philosophy in the Bedroom by the Marquis de Sade. To read one of his tales. The more that I write my own novels, the more it seems to me that to write is to read." The two main divisions in the text bear the following headings: "To write in order to lead the reader into a labyrinth from which the reader cannot emerge without destroying the world" and "Reading a tale by de Sade: writing or reading whose only purpose is to destroy itself."