Comments on: Dennis Cooper’s ‘Graduate Seminar’

By: short fiction by dennis cooper « the evening redness in the west

short fiction by dennis cooper « the evening redness in the west — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 02:28:37 +0000

[...] an interesting companion piece to Brian Evenson’s story “The Installation,” as noted in this post from the great [...]

By: Pop Wilmet

Pop Wilmet — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 05:53:20 +0000

Blake, This is an inspiring write-up. Thanks. I’ve read UM, and I’m fond of all the stories, The Brainiacs and The Anal Retentive Line Editor in particular. I love the latter’s absence of true porn author. What’s the metaphor there? the editor is like the plaster mold surrounding a form that is in constant flux, and responding to the form that is being imposed on it (plus it’s hilarious). and for a laf I still love the slack charisma of the glam piece too).

Re diving into DC’s work: Just my two cents: I think that readers can start anywhere, but if you feel disturbed, enter knowing that he caresses as much as he kicks. Well, I’ll backtrack a bit–be disturbed!–it’s best to leave all your assumptions at the door as you step through. But I will say that I read Closer first, loved the voices from the get-go, and yet truly became a DC fan when I got to the final passages about George, who all horrifyingly, physically fucked up calls hesitantly out to his dad toward the end (if I remember this correctly). I had a similar (yet in some ways totally different) experience, and Closer had a response that I had never, ever, encountered, one that I found deeply troubling and complicatedly liberating. It’s not wimpy, by any means; take the last line, which, if f I remember right, is “It’s dark in here” (inspired on a number of levels). But that’s it–emotional and disturbing and true. Fuck anyone who says that the books are redundant (they’re all great) or purely exploitative. I don’t mean to make this too personal. You need not have a terrible experience to enjoy DC. I’m just saying that the terrible experiences related in his work are both fascinating and examined. And there’s a million other things to say about him. Read!

p.s. I do have kids.

By: Pop Wilmet

Pop Wilmet — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 05:53:00 +0000

p.s. I do have kids.

By: alan

alan — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:45:58 +0000

Cooper started out as a poet and it shows. His prose, though always filtered through a contemporary narrative voice, has the concision and intensity of a lyric poem. Structurally, too, while there’s always a story to follow, his fiction is as formally intricate as a sonnet. I think people tend to get distracted by the intrinsic interest of the highly charged material he works with (not to say that that isn’t important) and miss out on the beauty of his treatment.

Everyone seems to have their own favorite starting point. Personally I started with “Guide” and went on to “Try,” and those are the two, along with “The Sluts,” that I like to recommend. I think the voices in those three novels are the warmest and most accessible. But the other suggestions here are fine too, you really can’t go wrong. The pieces collected in “Ugly Man” display something of Cooper’s variety (including some fresh developments in an openly comic direction), so that might make a good taster’s platter for the curious.

By: alan

alan — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:45:00 +0000

By: Mark Doten

Mark Doten — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:23:35 +0000

Yep. Lots of very funny stuff. I mean, there’s often a certain sense of humor in his work, but this actually had a number of laugh-out-loud moments — my personal favorite story is “The Fifteen Worst Russian Gay Porn Web Sites.” Also a really weird and beautiful semi-autobiographical one called “The Worst.”

Had the same thought about the Evenson story. Actually, not the same thought, since I hadn’t really worked it out that far, but, yeah, when I read The Wavering Knife I totally thought of the Cooper story, which Cooper had posted on his blog with photos a couple years back — the photos change things somewhat; kind of intriguing to see that version:

http://denniscooper-theweaklings.blogspot.com/2007_03_05_archive.html

In terms of the where-to-start question below, I recommend Closer or The Sluts. Both relatively accessible.

By: Mark Doten

Mark Doten — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:23:00 +0000

http://denniscooper-theweaklings.blogspot.com/2007_03_05_archive.html

In terms of the where-to-start question below, I recommend Closer or The Sluts. Both relatively accessible.

By: Justin Taylor

Justin Taylor — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:19:12 +0000

david, thanks man. That King piece was a lot of fun to write. re Coop and “Ash Gray”– there’s a whole essay to be written, I think, but suffice to say for right now that I think it’s just a marvel in terms of how much it packs into such a small place. It’s a vicious black comedy, and you’d be hard-pressed to find anything blacker *or* funnier. But the piece’s real success, in my view, is that it’s an essential piece of post-9/11 literature. The premise is that there’s this gay cannibal psychic Al Qaeda operative who is living in rural Arkansas… And there’s these kids who are trying to score heroin, and one of them has this uncle who he’s sort of dating… Basically, I think the story fully absorbs the dark dark atmosphere of the post-9/11 USA, just concentrates all the hatred and loathing and hurt, and then somehow turns it bitter and strange and hilarious, and in the end produces this massively ingenius FUCK YOU. It’s a massive rejection of a cultural moment, achieved not by countering or protesting that moment, but by giving full credence to the moment’s ugliest and craziest emotions and energies, then pushing them to/past their logical extreme.

By: Justin Taylor

Justin Taylor — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:19:00 +0000

By: Adam Robinson

Adam Robinson — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:11:14 +0000

Thanks all. Very helpful. I’m going to start with My Loose Thread.