You Private Person: An Interview with Richard Chiem
I interviewed Richard Chiem on the occasion of his first book, You Private Person, published by Scrambler Books. Photos via Frances Dinger and (the above) Matthew Simmons.
What was your favorite book when you were younger? What books have made you lol or cry or feel excited?
I think I read a lot of Goosebumps books and Animorphs books, and I was trying to collect the whole series for each. If I think about 1995, there were many times of me just waiting by myself inside a Safeway, because you could find them in the book aisle. I could read one of those books in about two and a half hours, so it became an easy addiction, since I wanted to know everything, to know the whole story. I would stack up my stacks of books next to my video games and my comic books in towers. They were each numbered like episodes, and in different colors. It seemed perfect to me at the time to have them all. I would save up six or seven dollars, everything other week or so in 1995, waiting in line at a Safeway. I recognized a particular need to read. But they never made me cry or laugh. I don’t really remember what exactly I was feeling when I was eight years old, in third grade, but I remember those simple horror and adventure stories, and I can still talk about them.
I turn on subtitles when I watch movies now. Some of my friends hate it and some really like it. It was adding another dimension to every movie and it quickened the pace of the viewing experience for me. And I watch a lot of movies. I always write after watching
a movie when everything still feels really alive about the story.
“To do this Biennial justice would require an encyclopedic, Baudelaire-style ‘Salon’ review”
Last week’s New Yorker (3/12) covers the Whitney Biennial. One passage that caught my eye:
“See, for instance, Gisèle Vienne’s mechanized boy mannequin wielding a hand puppet, with a chilling soundtrack by the Los Angeles poet and novelist Dennis Cooper. ‘I’m not dead,’ the boy muses, ‘unless this is death.’ The sinister-voiced, twitching puppet comments on things that the boy imagines, in what sounds like a game of exquisite cadaver: ‘decapitated head upon severed arms upon mutilated trunk-like logs and branches in a fireplace.’
‘Because I said so is the fairly witless way most images get you to look at them,’ the poet and performer Ariana Reines writes in an essay that complements, rather than addresses, the grotesque montage photographs and assemblages, satirizing high fashion, by the artist who styles herself K8 Hardy.”
My fear arouses me: an interview with Dennis Cooper
The odds are decent that you know Dennis Cooper better than I do. After hearing about his work for years and constantly promising myself that I would try a little someday, I found myself graduated from the MFA program with time to read books of my own choosing again, and so I finally started reading his novels, and I haven’t stopped in the few months since. You’ve already read in this space about his latest book, The Marbled Swarm, a ludicrously powerful book that you really need. After reading The Marbled Swarm I had to send him some painfully earnest fan mail, and he received this note with a grace and generosity that will surprise no one who has read his blog. I asked if I could interview him. He said yes. His answers are more than worth your time; the book demands it.
So I had a really frustrating experience buying The Marbled Swarm at a local independent bookstore. I saw that they had two copies of Blake Butler’s There Is No Year shelved where you would expect, and I figured it would be easy from there because a) you share a press and b) “Butler” is alphabetically pretty close to “Cooper.” After a long search, I had to go ask one of the bookstore employees. She said that your book was supposed to be shelved in gay fiction, with a question mark at the end of her statement. (I was there with my wife; the employee seemed skeptical that I would want a book from the gay fiction section. I was sort of furious about that whole interaction.) And it was there! Do you like being shelved under the category of gay fiction? Do you think it’s been helpful for your work, commercially or otherwise?
I’m always surprised and disappointed when my books are cordoned off like that. I can’t speak to the reasons why that store in particular shelved The Marbled Swarm there, obviously, but, in general, I think it’s the result of a longstanding habit.
When I published my first couple of novels in the late 80s and early 90s, there was this vogue among critics and publishers regarding the notion of ‘gay literature’. I think that was the point where literary arbiters first cottoned onto the idea that there was a historical trajectory involving the work of authors who happened to be gay that had been largely unexplored and was ripe for a thinkfest. Also, there was apparently a decent sized gay male readership of fiction at that time. I remember people in the publishing industry saying that any gay-themed novel was pretty much guaranteed to sell around 5000 copies, so quite a number of writers who happened to be gay were being swept up by major publishers and given small advances based on the logic that the books would at least earn back if not even make everyone involved a bit of money. I’m not sure if that was actually true or not. READ MORE >
Stuff I Loved in 2011
That’s the feeling I look for, right? In whatever I’m eating, be it real food, or entertainment, art, people. The major event. A safe, manageable portion of the inner land or map blown away, torn out and away, dissolved or smoked. I only know a couple people who really seek that, or when they say they want that destruction it’s a good lie, and maybe they’ve said it enough so it’s shared and indistinguishable from truth. Regardless, it’s a common myth, a familiar dragon to chase, that of the Art That Changes For Good. I rarely recognize the mountain exploding in realtime, while reading something or watching a movie, it’s felt live that way maybe four times in my adultish life. Mostly it’s just feeling the echo of the boom a time later. Still, standing mountains aren’t terrible, and are often really nice. But sometimes you get lucky (pictured, pictured). Here’s what my year looked like:
Blake Butler—
The newest edition of Brad Listi’s Other People podcast features an hourlong & particularly wonderfully personal interview with Dennis Cooper.
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The Marbled Swarm swarms now
Today is the release of Dennis Cooper’s latest, The Marbled Swarm, and it’s truly something else, even for someone you expect to knock your head off every time.
I reviewed it here for Fanzine; Ken reviewed it here on HTML.
You can buy it now.
Portrait of the Artist as the Books He’s Loved
This is an experimental blog post. The experiment is over when I hit “post.” The success of my attempt is undetermined, but as the history of our world goes, success cannot be achieved until it is attempted.
I’ve railed here & other places against the idea of the established & (fairly-)homogenized literary canon that dominates, in the West at least, our culture of the written world as a whole. The Canon, with a capital “C” here in order to demonstrably placate that hierarchy that the hegemony tends to assume a Solid Reality, is, of course, often considered a collection of works that can be held up as benchmarks of what exactly it means to be great literature. But, of course, as we know, meaning is differential, and the greatness of a work of art, whether it be found inside of the realm of the text or the painted image, is an entirely subjective experience. Even the Canon, held up as a standard, has essentially grown and been developed throughout the 20th & 21st century by (undoubtedly) men in High Places, arguing for the prevalence of a work.
The necessity of a canon, in my opinion, is a moot point. Jonathan Rosenbaum, an American film-critic than many people who write & think about cinema often hold up as a pinnacle of contemporary (American) film-criticism (one who I only find interesting at best, but that’s better than not being interesting at all, right?), has a book called Essential Cinema: On the Necessity of Film Canons, which posits the idea that “canons of great films are more necessary than ever, given that film culture today is dominated by advertising executives, sixty-second film reviewers, and other players in the Hollywood publicity machine who champion mediocre films at the expense of genuinely imaginative and challenging works.” The sentiment here is fine, and I’ll be honest, I haven’t read the book, most in art and in life I am far more interested in a heterogeneous existence than a homogenized one– I don’t want to live in a world where everyone is obligated to acknowledge that Citizen Kane is “the greatest film of all time” (wrong), or even a world where everyone is institutionally obligated to at least admit that it’s a great film, whether one likes it or not.
Frankly, we all still live in Plato’s cave, there are no absolutes: all we have, personally, is experience and subjectivity. For a second let’s forget this idea that there are objective standards in art (the principles & elements of design, for instance). Yesterday (and tomorrow) on Dennis Cooper’s blog, fans & regulars in the blog’s comment section are having lists of their favorite books posted. I love lists. I was immediately sad that I neglected that send a list in to Dennis to have posted. Then I thought, “oh, I’ll just do it on HTMLGiant and link to the posts at Dennis’s,” which is more or less what I’m doing.
READ MORE >
Secrecy, speed, affect: The Marbled Swarm
The Marbled Swarm
by Dennis Cooper
Harper Perennial, November 1st, 2011
$10.19 / Buy from Amazon
1. A precursor: the often repeated and often obvious dictum from authors: if one could summarize the idea or express the idea elsewhere, it would not be a book.
2. Another precursor: I have to use numbers for this review. The accumulative force in The Marbled Swarm has made me nervous to write about it. These numbers should help. Related: numbers are very rarely used in the book; we are maybe twice given them as markers, as soft attempts at erasure, but more so as another meter to remember. I understand the absence of counting in the book.
3. Formal book reviews mostly feel homogenous to me; some young limping component of an old structure; sutured to print? The format seems off, or rather: very rarely off. I’m pretty often baffled, too, by the claim that some argument must be lodged and pushed through to agree a reader; maybe I discredit the militaristic form of rhetoric, or of establishing a reading. To me, the reviews, the books too, that are interesting and alive feeling do not seem camped or aimed, yet open and transfixed.
4. I read The Marbled Swarm for the first time on a plane. Enclosed by a tube, moving very fast through different pressured air, hoping for a smooth passage. Fantasizing about puncture. READ MORE >
13 Comments
September 30th, 2011 / 8:00 am
September 30th, 2011 / 8:00 am
Ken Baumann—
Anybody who’s remotely interested in the art of/work of writing should pick up the current issue of The Paris Review and flip to Dennis Cooper’s interview. It is pure inspiration.
Blake Butler—
Dennis Cooper is interviewed in the new issue of the Paris Review (“I’m as interested by what sex can’t give you as by what it can.”)(as is Nicholson Baker)(as is a story by the rad Kerry Howley).
Dennis Cooper & Keith Mayerson’s Horror Hospital Unplugged
Finally the gorgeous and psionic (and previously OOP) graphic novel Horror Hospital Unplugged, written by Dennis Cooper and illustrated by Keith Mayerson, has been rereleased by Harper Perennial. “If Antonin Artaud and Keith Haring took the wrong drugs and collaborated on a kids cartoon show.” Wish I could plaster the walls of my house all over.
More excerpts available at DC’s blog, as well as in the ‘look inside the book’ feature on Amazon.
What is Experimental Literature? {Five Questions: Dennis Cooper}
According to his official bio, Dennis Cooper was born, he grew up, he wrote, he attended, he transferred, he was expelled, he met, he attended, he then attended, he studied, he founded, he lived, he moved, he began. And now he currently spends his time between Los Angeles and Paris. Harper Perennial will release his newest novel The Marbled Swarm in November 2011, and next month they will be republishing Horror Hospital Unplugged: his 1997 graphic novel collaboration with artist Keith Mayerson. He blogs at denniscooper-theweaklings.blogspot.com.
Ken Baumann—
Putting this here before I go somewhere: an interview with Zachary Mason about computational mythology, building art, AI, etc. ::::: help S. B./iamaparty.com build an infinite epic poem :::::: Errol Morris has got a new five party essay up :::::::: really dig this post on Snuff Film Aesthetics from Johannes ::::: Dennis Cooper’s blog has been great the last few days : bye
Try + Mechanics Giveaway
Try by Dennis Cooper and The Mechanics of Homosexual Intercourse by Lonely Christopher are up for grabs. These are courtesy of the super talented & friendly Joel Westendorf, whose photography and design work are wow. Email satorpress (at google’s mail thing) your address and I’ll pick one winner for each. NOW CLOSED.
The xerox machine: printing press of the people
Karen Lillis is currently serializing a memoir about working at St. Mark’s Bookshop called Bagging The Beats At Midnight: Confessions of an Indie Bookstore Clerk over at Undie Press. Her recent installment, titled “People Who Led Me to Self-Publishing,” discusses the inspiring and energetic figures she encountered, people who took artistic matters into their own hands by making sloppy, lo-fi xeroxed booklets that were sold on a special consignment rack at St. Mark’s. Karen reminds us that writers such as Anais Nin, William Blake, Walt Whitman, Kathy Acker, Gertrude Stein, and others all self-published at one point. There’s a certain magic about it—the immediacy of it, the openness, the way any wing nut or fanatic or obsessive outsider can be given an equal hearing on the consignment rack. No filtration or editorial process—just print, copy, distribute.
In a recent email I sent to Al Burian, I wrote that I was interested in bridging the gap between the small press/indie publishing world and the self-publishing/zine world. Al is kind of a cult figure in the self-publishing world, but is probably virtually unknown to small press and indie lit readers (although he did get some kind of honorable mention in The Best American Nonrequired Reading series one year). I’ve been reading his zines since I was 13 and I’m still totally obsessed with them. Since Al Burian was my favorite zine writer, over the years I let everyone I knew borrow his writings—teachers, friends, family. Some instantly became obsessive fans of his work as well. Since last month Al’s out-of-print collection of early zines, titled Burn Collector, is finally back in print after being republished by PM Press. (You should check it out—I’ve probably read it more times than any other book in my life.) Al’s zine Burn Collector and others like his inspired me to start self-publishing when I was 15.
Mike Young—
Have you ever had a dream with characters from a book you read? Do you want to talk about this dream and win a free copy of Dennis Cooper’s Smothered In Hugs for doing so? Go here. Making dreams up is > okay.
Mess Section (umm)
Lynch LSD Walks Sprawl Tour
Our #3 face is sexy, we are almost 3. That's close to 7.
1. @ Montevidayo, Johannes Göransson posted an excellent consideration of Nathan Lee’s consideration of a few books on David Lynch’s work.
2. @ DC’s, Dennis Cooper posted an excellent roundup of fun and interesting oddity, including re: Drawing on LSD, Kathy Acker’s last work, an Urs Alleman interview, and lots of else.
3. @ Thought Catalog, Franklin Bruno wrote up a thoughtful consideration on Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch’s fantastic Ten Walks/Two Talks.
4. Next Friday, September 24, if you are in Chicago there is a launch party for Danielle Dutton’s brilliant new novel Sprawl, 7:30 PM at the Women and Children First Bookstore, also featuring Kate Zambreno.
5. In celebration of their about to be released second issue, Artifice Magazine is going on tour! A magazine on tour seems amazing.
Seventh Mess Section
1. GIVE HER DRUGS / LET HER GO
2. “Watching porn’s usually like watching a melancholy documentary to me, a documentary about sex as a failed utopia or something, I don’t know.” –Dennis Cooper
3. Similarly, identity becomes fluid: Weems is Ellen is Caden is Weems etc. –an excellent sound-guided review of Synecdoche, NY in a great all-sound issue of Reverse Shot
4. They pierced the envelope of the earth. Or at least found some exit. –from Thy Son Liveth
6. What we call deflation, an earlier culture might have called, “God abandoning the world.” –Sacred Economics, by Charles Eisenstein
