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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Dennis Cooper

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

07:42 / 04.03.03

Just finished "My Loose Thread", Dennis Cooper's latest novel, written in the aftermath of the Columbine shootings. Anyone else here a Cooper fan? If not, why the fuck not?

He's like a serious Palahniuk, or a gay Brett Easton Ellis. And "Period", despite its flimsiness, is an incredibly dense novel which does some great things with the form (and incidentally made me worry about how much time I spend on this board).

Mild spoiler alert...

Anyway, "My Loose Thread" is somewhat different, as it's his first novel to have a main character who "isn't" gay. Or at least is in serious denial. "I had sex with my brother. That doesn't mean I'm gay." he insists to a friend who also "hates" gay people, and who he has earlier aided in his rape of a male student.

It also, like pretty much all his books, made me spend it thinking "Hmm... it's good, but not his best", until I finish them and realise the impression they've made on me.

Question- has anyone read his "Horror Hospital Unplugged" graphic novel or "All Ears: Criticism, Essays and Obituaries"? Are they any good? I've read all his novels, and "Wrong", his short story collection, and (not to diss "Wrong" or anything- it is bloody good) novels seem to suit him best. I'm interested to see how he copes with other forms.

09:07 / 04.03.03

Huge, ravening Dennis Cooper fan since the day my 17yo self threw Frisk across a room and walked out because I couldn't stand to be in the same space as it any longer. (I came back, naturally.)

Will talk about My Loose Thread in more detail when I have time: for the moment, just: yes, he's in a completely different league. (Mind you, I thought that with his last 2 novels as well -Guide and Period).

Yes - he seems to be remarkably underhyped given that he (a) must be among the best living English-language writers and (b) writes mostly about raping and murdering small boys, which you'd think someone would kick up a fuss about. (Though I did hear that Alex from Blur refused to interview him after finding out the plot of Guide....)

I haven't read Horror Hospital Unplugged but I have got All Ears, which is good but not great. He does his best thinking through fiction, I think. Worth checking out his interview with unfamous indie-star Leonardo DiCaprio (before Titanic, obviously), though.

09:10 / 04.03.03

And he is way, way better than Brett Easton Ellis: partly because of the force with which he allows other voices than the narrator's to come through in his novels (even the first-person ones) and secondly because, it appears to me, he never lapses into pornography. Brett Easton Ellis is a master of turning the reader's guilty sticky pleasure back on itself, but he doesn't have the unflinching, rigorous examination of pleasure and theory that Dennis Cooper does. I mean, I guess in a lot of ways they're doing very different things, but I prefer the thing that Dennis does. (Also, they're very single-sex novels, which I have always preferred since my early conditioning by Malory Towers ...)

ONLY NICE THINGS

11:16 / 04.03.03

There's a thread sort of about this - the "better writers than Jonathon Coe" thread, in fact, where Denis Cooper features - will try to dig it up.

And yes, *much* better than Easton Ellis a better comparison might be the British writer PP Hartnett.....anyone?

Goodness Gracious Meme

13:37 / 04.03.03

In answer to your abstract: Yes, he does.

And am astonished that we've not had a DC thread before.

And like Deva and Haus, I don't think this

He's like a serious Palahniuk, or a gay Brett Easton Ellis

does him any favours, he's a damn sight better than both of them. (put together. Ugh. scratch that thought.)

I've read the Frisk, Closer etc series, and want to read more. Oh, and the short stories, and agree with you, Stoats, his being a better novelist.

The DC take on love, violence, desire, transience, passion, is wonderfully concieved *and* written, and manages to be incredibly explicit and examine fantasy/'reality' borders without pandering to the audience/lapsing into wank material.

I find his writing about love, possession and desire to be some of the most accurate and beautiful I've ever read. And his writing *performs* his characters' desire to skip between really visceral 'reaching into the guts' stuff and writing that skims the surface. Often it's the little details.

PP Hartnett is comparable, though I find it fascinating the way the US/UK cultural divide plays out. I'd probably bung JTLeroy in there as well. I also connect his work with that of Neil Bartlett and Kathy Acker but I'm really not sure why atm. Will have a think and come back.

But I'd say the closest comparision is probably with Bob Flanagan(they knew each other and worked together in Flanagans' early poet incarnation), especially in how they work with and view desire, pain, violence, love, relationships, fantasy, the body, borders, performance etc.

And in the way these concerns have informed/inform their entire output, how one can trace a maturing/mellowing, perhaps a more nuanced understanding of pain and desire as their careers progress(ed)

Regrettable Juvenilia

14:08 / 04.03.03

I have to say, as an admitted Breat Easton Ellis apostle, the "less ambiguously gay, superior Easton Ellis" comparison that always crops up with Cooper pisses me off no end. I understand that lazy journalists are always going to do it, but Cooper fans seem to do it frequently as well, before admitting that the two writers are actually doing very different things (cf Deva's post, which lists only two differences in approach, not quality). If he's not actually that much *like* Ellis, why bother keeping up the comparison, except out of a slight annoyance that one is a little more well known? It really does put me off, y'know...

Having said which, on a less scratchy front: which is the best Dennis Cooper novel to start with? I'm only vaguely familiar with Guide, which struck me as something of a novelty book on a first skim...

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

14:33 / 04.03.03

I have to point out, when I mentioned Easton Ellis (and, for that matter, Palahniuk) I meant more in terms of style and idiom than content. Cooper is indeed far superior to both, and more affecting- they (well, BEE in particular) tend to make a big deal of surface- Cooper reads as if he's doing so, but it's all about what's not being said.

I'd say "Frisk" is a good start- not his best book, but his most easily classifiable/definable, and as such probably a pretty good guide to Cooperland.

Goodness Gracious Meme

17:36 / 04.03.03

It's worth remembering that Cooper is, aside from being a fine fiction writer, a curator, festival/artspaces director and art/cultural critic. This broad creative background and familiarity with/immersion in performance practice and theory informs his novels and short stories.

Eg at Beyond Baroque he curated shows containing work by Flanagan and Mike Kelley and presnted performance artists like Eric Bogosian and Jessica Hagedorn. Pretty sure Kirby Dick (filmaker, director of Flanagan biopic Sick was part of this crowd as well.) I think it's useful to see his work in this cross-discplinary context.

(The intro to NYUs collection of DCs papers has a useful biog. Oh to get a look at those.)

17:55 / 04.03.03

Deva's post, which lists only two differences in approach, not quality

Sorry, should have been less ambiguous: I think that "lapsing into pornography" is a failing in BEE, not simply a difference in approach approach, which DC does not display (see BiP's more articulate and lovely post), and also that BEE's insistence on keeping to one POV/not allowing other voices into his writing is another flaw, making his work burrow into itself inescapably and making it, um, top-heavy or something. I've only seen Dennis fans "keep up the comparison" to BEE when other people make it, never make it themselves, myself.

Oh, and BiP, I think he and Kathy Acker were friends: or at least there was a conference on their work a few years ago, so it's not just you that makes the connection.

Regrettable Juvenilia

19:34 / 05.03.03

Ah. Well, in that case, I suppose I'd have to start a new Ellis thread to disagree (putting aside my reluctancy to do so, that arises largely from... oh, let's not invite the self-fulfilling prophecy).

So go on, someone, recommend me a Cooper to start with.

Goodness Gracious Meme

21:40 / 05.03.03

what *are* you talking about?

I've only seen Dennis fans "keep up the comparison" to BEE when other people make it, never make it themselves, myself.

Ditto. And I guess I connect Cooper and Acker, for their concern with source materials /quotations/intertexuality... A thing I think they both work with really well.

Tell you what, Fly, and yeah, I reckon Frisk is a good starter, you recommend me a BEE to re-read (have read Less Than Zero, Rules of Attraction and Am.Pyscho but not for a while.) and we'll have a chat about them?

I think he's an interesting writer, just that I remember finding him a lot more one dimensional, and *easier* (in the sense of less troubling/dislocating to one's own subjectivity/less of a deeply-reaching encounter) to consume on one's own terms, and thus to assimilate comfortably than Cooper.

--

17:16 / 12.03.03

I was in the gay book section of the local Borders and they had Dennis Cooper's "Closer". Remembering this thread I got the book, only $11 bucks. haven't read it yet, but if I like it I'll order some maybe.

08:01 / 13.03.03

"Closer" is probably his worst, Sypha, so if you don't like it much don't be put off.

Interestingly, my Borders doesn't put his books in the gay section; which is sort of annoying since he is the only person I ever have to go into the "literary fiction" shelves for (mostly I stick to gay, children's, and gay children's [oh, if only]).

--

16:27 / 13.03.03

Well, I finished "Closer" yesterday. It was okay, a little short. I was thinking it would be erotic but I can't really say I found it very erotic at all. One of the few books where gay sex scenes don't do anything for me, but maybe that's the point? I thought I was alienated but compared to some of these characters I almost seem normal. The sex was loveless for the most part. Still, there was some good parts. The whole thing made me feel kind of dirty, much like Poppy Z. Brite's "Exquisite Corpse".

22:19 / 14.03.03

deva writes: the force with which he allows other voices than the narrator's to come through in his novels (even the first-person ones) and secondly because, it appears to me, he never lapses into pornography

and b.i.p. writes: his writing *performs* his characters' desire to skip between really visceral 'reaching into the guts' stuff and writing that skims the surface. Often it's the little details.

Those are two pretty good descriptions of what it is about his writing that's so good. It obvious on the surface of it that's he's got style & can write, what's more difficult to explain is how somebody can write book after book about bored, pale, thin, dark-haired boys in this incredibly flat, cold voice and still engage you. I think the first thing I read of his was that little story in the liner notes for Sonic Youth -- Sister, I believe. One of the moments that grabbed me was the scene in a novel where somebody's peering in a window at a boy kissing his shoulder & dreaming of a girl, the voyeur knowing that what he's really watching is a young person kissing their own skin. It's a small moment, very cooly observed, that opens up in the space of perhaps two or three sentences a number of other things you might know: about young people and what they tell themselves about their own bodies, about how voyeurs impose meaning on the scenes they view, about the blurred line between the two.

23:52 / 07.07.03

If you've got any pressing questions you want asked of him, please post them as I'll be attending a reading tomorrow night with discussion (I think) to follow.

07:30 / 08.07.03

Oh My God.

Um... eep! Tell him I love him! Ask him if he's read any Potterslash! (Sorry, I was telling a friend who hates Harry that "he would be really cool if Dennis Cooper wrote him", and she stared at me and said "If Dennis Cooper wrote him, he would be dead.") Don't ask him that. Just - touch him with your hand and then touch something else and send it to me! Ask him when he's coming to Britain (or, come to think of it, Australia)!

God, it's *really* lucky I'm not going to this thing, I would faint. I'm practically hyperventilating now.

14:09 / 08.07.03

Oh- bloody hell, can't think right now...

Funnily enough, I just browsed through a book of essays by the man, in Borders earlier today– it looked fascinating. There was an interview with Bob Mould, which I read in the shop, an obituary for Burroughs and some other stuff. Still- £9.99 for rather a slim volume, an afternoon’s reading at best- yowch

15:56 / 09.07.03

For the record, DC is pro slash.

21:04 / 10.07.03

Meme - The book you're referring to is "All Ears" and it's definitely worth the money, great interviews and essays.

Is Dennis Cooper on a tour or something? (please please please). I don't know why the guy doesn't have some kind of website. The closest is that fansite "Closer" which is never updated.

Except of course, the article that I wrote about him for a nameless website who refused to pay me for the work after they raped my piece.. but that's another story.

17:42 / 11.07.03

Not, I think, on tour. Has a new book in progress, as yet unfinished, and wanted to try out the first chapter on an audience. Didn't have a discussion period or a formal signing.

19:06 / 11.07.03

Wanted to try it out on an audience but didn't have a discussion panel.. that's kinda weird.

Any info you can give us on what this new book sounds like? Standard Cooper fare?

00:00 / 12.07.03

I'm not sure what you would consider standard. It's not another George Miles book, certainly. The family at the center of this book is normal relative to some of the others that people his previous books. The Cooper voice is there though, clear and strong, and this work is so far much funnier than I recall him being before. A friend suggested that this was a sort of attack on a publishing industry and buying public that have not properly rewarded his efforts, which he denied (but he said he'd have to think about it).