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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Userlands

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03:44 / 30.01.07

I know there are a few Dennis Cooper fans on here, so I thought I'd mention this, in the hopes it might inspire others to seek it out and purchase it and devour the contents. "Userlands" (subtitled "New fiction writers from the blogging underground") was released by Akashic Books this month. It's edited by Dennis Cooper, and it features 41 short stories from a variety of mostly unknown voices. There is no real theme of sorts, rather, it's very schizophrenic and there's a lot of territory covered: Sex, drugs, humor, angst, existentialism, surrealism, you name it. It's hard for me not to sound biased here, given the fact that a.) I either know or am friends with most of the contributers and b.) I myself am one of the contributers (don't worry, it's not like I get any money for copies purchased. In fact, I don't think anyone whose story got accepted got a cent at all... the honor of being part of such a project as this was more then ample payment). It's just good literature that will appeal to fans of Cooper, Bret Easton Ellis, and other esteemed "transgressive" writers (whatever that means). Plus, the cover art is really, really cool, it features this insectoid Lovecraftian spider that looks like it's made out of bird feathers. And the book is all black, which is also cool. And it's fucking thick as hell. Like a big black brick. If you're carrying it around and you get into a fight with someone you could probably bash their brains out with it. Okay, it's a paperback so it's not THAT heavy, but still... Seriously, if you have cash to spend check it out. It should be in bookstores all over the place, but if not there's always good old Amazon. I don't know if anyone else on here has read it. If you have, let us know.

11:01 / 30.01.07

Um, out of interest, if the contributors aren't getting paid, who is?

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13:27 / 30.01.07

Well, if I had to guess I'd say the publisher. They're kind of a small indie operation so I guess they couldn't afford to pay the contributers, especially given the large number of people involved. However, each contributer did each get their own two copies of the book, so, you know, freebies are always nice.

17:39 / 30.01.07

That's more than some magazines pay, and it's a nice publication credit.

Would you say that this collection might be a good introduction to the current face of "transgressive" literature (again, whatever that means), or do you think that it's more aimed at established readers (of Cooper, etc.)?

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19:28 / 30.01.07

Well, that's a good question, to be honest, I'm not really sure. The thing to take into consideration is that as noted there are 41 writers, whose ages range from 17 to late forties, from all around the world, and in a few cases for some of the writers English isn't even their first language (in fact, IMO the best story in the book was written by one of those latter types). Certainly fans of people like Cooper or Bret Easton Ellis will probably be able to relate to it better then most, though not all of the stories deal with "extreme" subject matter (then again Cooper himself has been moving away from that field anyway, if his most recent book "God Jr." was anything to go by). One blog I read somewhere had a negative response where they said the stories came off as pale imitations of Bret Easton Ellis, which I don't really think is true. Another negative blog review griped about how the majority of the writers were men and how all the stories came off as being about "angry young men", but I don't think anger is the dominant theme. I think the stories capture a whole range of emotions: joy, despair, insanity, banality, creativity, and what have you. But when I said it would appeal to fans of what mainstream society deemed to be "transgressive" writers I didn't mean to imply that the anthology is representative of transgressive writing (though certainly a few of the stories would fall into that category). I merely meant to imply that it would probably be best enjoyed by, you know, the Chuck Palahniuk crowd.