Dennis Cooper Writing at the Edge

by Hegarty, Paul; Kennedy, Danny

• ISBN13: 9781845191870
• ISBN10: 1845191870
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-07-01
• Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Summary

Dennis Cooper's writing has acquired a ferocious reputation for its bold experimentation, its transgressive content, and its emotional content, which is both Romantic and touching, whilst cold and hard-edged. For over twenty years Cooper has explored the boundaries of human living, and sexuality's centrality to that living. The extreme situations he develops in his writing bring out parts of gay experience that a consensual 'community' often shies away from, likewise the heterosexual mainstream. His most important genre is undoubtedly fiction, but Cooper has also written poetry, large quantities of journalistic works, notably for 'Artforum' and 'Spin', and, recently has had great success and recognition with theatrical works. The book enters deep into the worlds Cooper fabricates -- and into the coolness of his expression. This challenging work is addressed by a group of mostly young and new critical writers and academics who provide creative responses to Cooper's artistry. The contributions, which cover the breadth of Cooper's work, develop themes and devices that advance his profound and disturbing world view. In addition to the artistic responses, the topics in the critical pieces range from sexuality in the suburbs, to neurological responses to the work, via the limits and possibilities of bodies. Others look at the implications of contemporary electronic communication as outlined in Cooper's recent work, or the use of space. Cooper's writing receives a multi-faceted contextualisation, and his literary ideas are made accessible to any reader interested in learning why Cooper is today regarded as one of the foremost writers in expressing the psychological point behind the centrality of sexual expression.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
Ugly Man	p. 13
The Boy on the Far Left	p. 13
Graduate Seminar	p. 14
Santa Claus vs. Johnny Crawford	p. 15
The Worst (1960-1971)	p. 15
Three boys who thought experimental fiction was for pussies	p. 18
Wasteland of the Free: Suburbia and Autonomy in Dennis Cooper's Try	p. 20
Skin Deep, or, Getting Inside (Your Head): My Loose Thread	p. 32
The Whole is the Untrue: Experience and Community in The Sluts	p. 52
The Immature Narrative: Ferdydurkism in Closer	p. 68
Next: Vampiric Epistolarity, Haunted Cyberspace, and Dennis Cooper's Positively Mutant Multimedia Offspring	p. 83
Summer of 92	p. 106
Summer Sigil (Bear's Invocation)	p. 167
The Under Boys	p. 108
Matthew	p. 109
Feed The Cabin Fever	p. 111
Dream Ballad of Manyana	p. 112
Colour Plates	p. 115
The Pope of Arranged Disaster	p. 119
Good Evening	p. 121
Birds and Strangers	p. 122
Young Man, Here's Trouble	p. 123
Finished	p. 124
Famished	p. 126
The Adversary	p. 128
Philosophy in the Bedroom: Pornography and Philosophy in Dennis Cooper's Writing	p. 130
Is This Text Fucking With My Brain? A Neuroaesthetic Reading of Dennis Cooper's Guide	p. 144
Plus d'un Georges: Dennis Cooper and the Work of Mourning George Miles	p. 162
The Self Contained and its Emptying in Frisk	p. 175
32 Cardinal Virtues of Dennis Cooper	p. 187
Interview with Dennis Cooper	p. 191
Index	p. 214
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