Dennis Cooper = !!!
In honor of his brand new collection ‘Ugly Man‘ (which I am all kinds of excited for), a couple of video interviews with Dennis Cooper about the book and his career, publishing, and punk, from Harper Perennial’s Olive TV videos.
How could you not love this man?
Quick roundup & then I’m outta here
By this time tomorrow I’ll be at JFK airport, probably getting grilled about my associations by humorless Shin Bet agents. That’s right, kids, they’re sending me to Israel, so this is your last mess of links to my regular obsessions until at least the 15th. Keep my side of the bed warm, wouldja?
MOBYLIVES announces new occasional feature on “unusual book events given by something other than the usual suspects” to be written by MHP-author Zachary German. I’m not sure what any of that means, exactly, but Zachary’s first post is about Dennis Cooper’s conversation with Tony O’neill, which took place at the Bryant Park Reading Room the week of BEA. Also, Time Out New York digs Ugly Man. Also^2, Dennis posted some really good vintage gay porn on his blog yesterday.
Pieces from Mathias Svalina’s “Play” are now available at This Recording. Other pieces from “Play” are available in the current issue of The Cupboard Pamphlet. A future issue of TCP, btw, will feature Joshua Cohen, who has an essay in the current issue of New Haven Review (heads up it’s a PDF): Hung Like an Obelisk, Hard as an Olympian: An alphabet of English-language literature in Paris.
A few weeks ago Dave Eggers gave a talk in NYC wherein he promised to personally email a reassurance that print isn’t dead to anyone who wanted one. He didn’t count on that promise getting leaked to the web, and then being flooded with emails. So personally sort of fell out of the question, but he did send a pretty amazing mass email out, about the future of indie publishing and newspapers. Someone else on this site should/will spend some more time parsing what he said, but in the meantime, Gawker has the full text of his letter.
Finally, the NYT asks “Is Slam in Danger of Going Soft?” There are two possible answers: First, obviously, is “who cares?” The more nuanced approach, however, would be to say, “well, if the Times is covering it now, then the answer must be ‘yes–two and a half years ago.'” Either way, there’s really no good reason to click that link.
Later, kids.
Google Searches & Maurice Blanchot
At his blog, Mathias Svalina’s many screen-captures offer a better argument for Flarf than it ever dreamed of making for itself.
And over at his blog, today Dennis Cooper is all about the amazing Maurice Blanchot.
My speech is a warning that at this very moment death is loose in the world, that it has suddenly appeared between me, as I speak, and the being I address: it is there between us as the distance that separates us, but this distance is also what prevents us from being separated, because it contains the condition for all understanding. Death alone allows me to grasp what I want to attain; it exists in words as the only way they can have meaning. Without death, everything would sink into absurdity and nothingness. (Blanchot, The Work of Fire, 323-24)
Today at Coop’s Place: Modern & Contemporary English Language Fiction Judgment Day
Here’s something everyone here should be able to get down with fighting about. Today at The Weaklings, Dennis put up a long list of writers and invites you to name each of their best and worst work. You can add your lists to his comments section if you want his response, or to ours if you want ours–or both, I guess. He’s smarter and better-read than all of us put together (that’s a guess) but there’s more of us and we have cat-like reflexes (those are science facts). Anyway, here’s his list:
Burroughs: B, The Wild Boys. W, The Western Lands
Faulkner: B, The Sound and the Fury. W, The Town
D. Williams: The Stupefaction. W, This Is About the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate
Vidal: B, Myra Breckinridge. W, Hollywood
De Lillo: B, The Names. W, Cosmopolis
Woolf: B, Mrs. Dalloway. W, The Waves
Foster Wallace: B, Infinite Jest. W, Oblivion
Ellis: B, Lunar Park. W, Rules of Attraction
Amis: B, Money. W, Yellow Dogs
Wharton: B, The House of Mirth. W, The Glimpses of the Moon
Joyce: B, Ulysses. W, Dubliners
White: B, Nocturnes for the King of Naples. W, The Farewell Symphony
Morrison: B, Beloved. W, Love
Sotos: B, Selfish, Little. W, Special
Roth: B, Portnoy’s Complaint. W, Everyman
Gaddis: B, JR. W, Agape Agape
Brautigan: B, Revenge of the Lawn. W, An Unfortunate Woman
Updike: B, Couples. W, Gertrude and Claudius
Rechy: B, City of Night. W, Marilyn’s Daughter
Beckett: B, Watt. W, Ill Seen Ill Said
McCarthy: B, Blood Merdian. W, Suttree
Moody: B, Purple America. W, Garden State
Nabokov: B, Lolita. W, Ada or Ardor
Tillman: B, American Genius: A Comedy. W, Cast In Doubt.
Dick: B, Ubik. W, The World Jones Made
Palahniuk: B, Fight Club. W, Lullabye
Hemingway: B, The Sun Also Rises. W, The Garden of Eden
Acker: B, Great Expectations. W, Kathy Goes to Haiti
King: B, Pet Sematary. W, Hearts in Atlantis
Vonnegut: B, Slapstick. W, Hocus Pocus
Capote: B, The Grass Harp. W, Summer Crossing
Didion: B, Play It as It Lays. W, Run, River
Pynchon: B, Against the Day. W, Vineland
Barth: B, The Sot Weed Factor. W, Sabbatical: A Romance
Mailer: B, The Naked and The Dead. W, Ancient Evenings
Welsh: B, The Acid House. W, Porno
Gibson: B, Neuromancer. W, Mona Lisa Overdrive
Delaney: B, Hogg. W, Madmen
Ballard: B, The Atrocity Exhibition. W, The Kindness of Women
Faulkner: B, The Sound and the Fury. W, The Town
D. Williams: The Stupefaction. W, This Is About the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate
Vidal: B, Myra Breckinridge. W, Hollywood
De Lillo: B, The Names. W, Cosmopolis
Woolf: B, Mrs. Dalloway. W, The Waves
Foster Wallace: B, Infinite Jest. W, Oblivion
Ellis: B, Lunar Park. W, Rules of Attraction
Amis: B, Money. W, Yellow Dogs
Wharton: B, The House of Mirth. W, The Glimpses of the Moon
Joyce: B, Ulysses. W, Dubliners
White: B, Nocturnes for the King of Naples. W, The Farewell Symphony
Morrison: B, Beloved. W, Love
Sotos: B, Selfish, Little. W, Special
Roth: B, Portnoy’s Complaint. W, Everyman
Gaddis: B, JR. W, Agape Agape
Brautigan: B, Revenge of the Lawn. W, An Unfortunate Woman
Updike: B, Couples. W, Gertrude and Claudius
Rechy: B, City of Night. W, Marilyn’s Daughter
Beckett: B, Watt. W, Ill Seen Ill Said
McCarthy: B, Blood Merdian. W, Suttree
Moody: B, Purple America. W, Garden State
Nabokov: B, Lolita. W, Ada or Ardor
Tillman: B, American Genius: A Comedy. W, Cast In Doubt.
Dick: B, Ubik. W, The World Jones Made
Palahniuk: B, Fight Club. W, Lullabye
Hemingway: B, The Sun Also Rises. W, The Garden of Eden
Acker: B, Great Expectations. W, Kathy Goes to Haiti
King: B, Pet Sematary. W, Hearts in Atlantis
Vonnegut: B, Slapstick. W, Hocus Pocus
Capote: B, The Grass Harp. W, Summer Crossing
Didion: B, Play It as It Lays. W, Run, River
Pynchon: B, Against the Day. W, Vineland
Barth: B, The Sot Weed Factor. W, Sabbatical: A Romance
Mailer: B, The Naked and The Dead. W, Ancient Evenings
Welsh: B, The Acid House. W, Porno
Gibson: B, Neuromancer. W, Mona Lisa Overdrive
Delaney: B, Hogg. W, Madmen
Ballard: B, The Atrocity Exhibition. W, The Kindness of Women
Selby Jr.: B, Requiem for a Dream. W, The Willow Tree
Barker: B, The Books of Blood. W, Coldheart Canyon
Brite: B, Exquisite Corpse. W, Plastic Jesus
Oates: B, them. W, Bellefleur
Today at Coop’s place: a post about wrecking your couch (also, Bookforum)
So I thought it was long past time we checked in with Dennis Cooper’s blog, and it just so happens that today there’s a guest-post by Steven Trull, who is also something of a somewhat regular reader/commenter on this blog. Trull presents “The Kill Your Couch for No Reason Post.” As you’ll notice when you get over there, the title is preceded by “Steven Trull presents (part one)” which seems to me to suggest that there will be more Trull posts coming, possibly on topics unrelated to couch-killing. But for now: COUCH-KILLING. Click on over and watch the YouTube-culled videos of couches being burnt, run over with a station wagon, and otherwise KILLED.
So that’s all well and good, but else has been going on at Coop’s?
Well yesterday we looked at Notable Male Escorts of the World for March 2009
And the day before that was a Varioso Day (#18), which contains–among other things–an animated adaptation of James Tate’s poem “The Search for Lost Lives.”
And this picture of a Tom Friedman piece:
And a link to this Mary Gaitskill interview in the new Bookforum. It’s a short interview, but a good one, and it contains the possibly news-to-you that MG has a new collection out (it was news to me). So once I had clicked over there I got to browsing, and have the following further Bookforum recommended readings: William T. Vollmann on the ethics of photography, David Gates reviews the new Antonya Nelson, David Haglund reviews Andrew Porter, Mark Sarvas on John Haskell, and Wendy Lesser takes on both the O’Connor bio AND the Library of America Collected O’Connor.
Also…
Justin, get your ass back to HTMLGiant and get to work.
(Our own Justin Taylor has a post up at Dennis Cooper’s blog, The Weaklings, about X-ing Books.)
(A prize package to anyone who can correctly guess the significance of the image on top of this post. Books and stuff.)
“Slush” by Joshua Cohen
Not sure if anybody’s noticed, but I’m a bit of a creature of habit. I like getting turned onto new stuff, sure, but once I’ve found something I like I tend to stick by it like a truly neurotic compulsive or perhaps like a faithful hound. So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that I was very happy to learn that Joshua Cohen, whose multi-part Nextbook essay about Kafka’s office writing I covered here, has a new piece of short fiction up at The Fanzine, which is a very cool site and probably not as widely known as it ought to be. So do yourself two favors: first, check out Cohen’s story, “Slush,” and second, start checking on Fanzine more often than you’ve been. (if you want to do yourself a third favor, pink up a copy of The Weaklings, Dennis Cooper’s most recent collection of poems, which Fanzine published in a special illustrated limited edition of unlimited awesomeness.) Here’s the beginning of “Slush.”
Dear Aaron Priestly,
Thank you for letting us take a read on your manuscript. STORY OF MY LIFE was bold, and compelling, but ultimately I was not convinced that I was the right person to represent it. I just did not find this a must read. It did not click, I regret to inform. Nor did it hold ME. I find your premise lacking, quite. Good luck elsewhere (*I can no longer accept queries from writers who have not been previously published or who have not been referred to me by a colleague*).
Please accept my very best wishes for the success of STORY OF YOUR LIFE. Though I did not fall in love with your story enough to continue reading it, I pass. We must pass. Obviously not for me, obviously. He, she, it, passes.
newest installment of Dennis Cooper’s online writing workshop
Coop writes,
This is the third in a new series of days on the blog where writers who are part of the blog’s community will present work-in-progress in search of the opinions, responses, advice, and critiques of both readers who don’t normally post comments here and local inhabitants of this place.
Initially I had held off from blogging about these workshops, because even though the stories are obviously posted in a public forum, the workshop seemed like a community/family project. But I talked to Dennis about it, and he’s 100% in favor of anything that gets the presenters’ work more widely read and commented on, so I’m encouraging people to go over there and check out what’s happening. Read the story, leave a comment, etc. And also, please keep in mind DC’s advice re how to play nice:
Obviously, the closer your attention and the more you’re able and willing to say to the writer the better. But any kind of related comment is welcome, even a simple sentence or two indicating you read the piece of writing and felt something or other about it would be helpful. The only guideline I’m going to give out regarding comments is that any response, whether lengthy or brief, praise filled or critical or anywhere inbetween, should be presented in a spirit of helping the writer in question.
This weekend’s story is called “The Routine,” by George Wines.
Random / Comments Off on newest installment of Dennis Cooper’s online writing workshop
December 21st, 2008 / 11:45 am
December 21st, 2008 / 11:45 am
Some of our favorite Weaklings: Recent highlights from Dennis Cooper’s blog
Today is “DC’s obscure porn search and rescue mission #8: Suck Cock America! (1972)
Every picture in this post except for this one came from this funny-creepy instructional website about activities for kids that I found while looking for "newspaper hat" pictures for the Pound post earlier. Instead of using MS Paint, why didn't they just give the kids emo haircuts?
i took the two and smashed them together until they became a solid piece of total beauty
Today at Dennis Cooper’s Den of Awesome, we learn all about the poet Steve Richmond.
Hey
Hey, I woke up today!
And there was the sun again
shooting in through the shades
and spearing me in the eye!
And the clock! Still alive!
and the rug was not on fire!
and the lawn! The trees! The gutter!
All there! Once again!
Today!