“I started writing books about and for my friend George Miles because whenever I would speak about him honestly like I am doing now I felt a complicated agony beneath my words that talking openly can’t handle.” For most of his life, Dennis Cooper believed the person he had loved the most and would always love above all others was George Miles. In his first novel in ten years, Dennis Cooper writes about George Miles, love, loss, addiction, suicide, and how fiction can capture these things, and how it fails to capture them. Candid and powerful, I Wished is a radical work of shifting forms. It includes appearances by Santa Claus, land artist James Turrell, sentient prairie dogs, John Wayne Gacy, Nick Drake, and George, the muse for Cooper’s acclaimed novels Closer, Frisk, Try, Guide, and Period, collectively known as “The George Miles Cycle.” In revisiting the inspiration for the Cycle, Dennis has written a masterwork: the most raw, personal, and haunted book of his career.
“[A] brilliant, triumphantly lurid writer as well as a supremely talented, elegant stylist whose prose is smart and nervy. He might also be the last literary outlaw in mainstream American fiction.” —Bret Easton Ellis Internationally acclaimed writer Dennis Cooper continues to study the material he's always explored honestly, but does so now—in stories—with a sense of awareness and a satirical touch that exploits and winks at his mastery of this world. As it has done for decades, Cooper’s taut, controlled prose lays bare the compulsions and troubling emptiness of the human soul.
In this title, Ziggy, the adopted teenaged son of two sexually abusive fathers, turns to his uncle, who sells pornographic videos, and his best friend, a junkie, in a complex tale of sexuality, abuse, and attraction.
The final novel in the award-winning George Miles Cycle. “A triumphant finale to one of the most intense series of novels ever written” (Mondo). The stunning conclusion to Dennis Cooper’s five-book cycle, Period earned its author the accolade “a disquieting genius” by Vanity Fair and praise for his “elegant prose and literary lawlessness” from The New York Times. Breathtaking and mesmerizing, it is the culmination of Cooper’s explorations into sex and death, youth culture, and the search for the ineffable object of desire. Cooper has taken his familiar themes—strangely irresistible and interchangeable young men, passion that crosses into murder, the lure of drugs, the culpabilities of authorship, and the inexact, haunting communication of feeling—and melded them into a novel of flawless form and immense power. Set in a spare, smoke-and-mirror-filled world of secret websites, Goth bands, Satanism, pornography, and outsider art, Period is a literary disappearing act as mysterious as it is logical. Obsessive, beautiful, and darkly comic, Period is a stunning achievement from one of America’s finest writers. “A fascinating, intricately crafted jewel of a book . . . It’s a book one could read over and over and never exhaust.” —San Francisco Chronicle Book Review “To read Period (a book so intricate, it comes with its own strategy guide) is to witness the idea of the novel itself imploding; to glimpse the end of language; to become aware of literature’s dizzying possibilities.” —The Guardian “An elegy to the nature of obsessive love, the need to feel . . . [Cooper] is a profoundly original American visionary, and the most important transgressive literary artist since Burroughs.” —Salon “Haunting.” —Details
“[A] brilliant, triumphantly lurid writer as well as a supremely talented, elegant stylist whose prose is smart and nervy. He might also be the last literary outlaw in mainstream American fiction.” —Bret Easton Ellis Internationally acclaimed writer Dennis Cooper continues to study the material he's always explored honestly, but does so now—in stories—with a sense of awareness and a satirical touch that exploits and winks at his mastery of this world. As it has done for decades, Cooper’s taut, controlled prose lays bare the compulsions and troubling emptiness of the human soul.
“[A] brilliant, triumphantly lurid writer as well as a supremely talented, elegant stylist whose prose is smart and nervy. He might also be the last literary outlaw in mainstream American fiction.” —Bret Easton Ellis Internationally acclaimed writer Dennis Cooper continues to study the material he's always explored honestly, but does so now—in stories—with a sense of awareness and a satirical touch that exploits and winks at his mastery of this world. As it has done for decades, Cooper’s taut, controlled prose lays bare the compulsions and troubling emptiness of the human soul.
“[A] brilliant, triumphantly lurid writer as well as a supremely talented, elegant stylist whose prose is smart and nervy. He might also be the last literary outlaw in mainstream American fiction.” —Bret Easton Ellis Internationally acclaimed writer Dennis Cooper continues to study the material he's always explored honestly, but does so now—in stories—with a sense of awareness and a satirical touch that exploits and winks at his mastery of this world. As it has done for decades, Cooper’s taut, controlled prose lays bare the compulsions and troubling emptiness of the human soul.
“[A] brilliant, triumphantly lurid writer as well as a supremely talented, elegant stylist whose prose is smart and nervy. He might also be the last literary outlaw in mainstream American fiction.” —Bret Easton Ellis Internationally acclaimed writer Dennis Cooper continues to study the material he's always explored honestly, but does so now—in stories—with a sense of awareness and a satirical touch that exploits and winks at his mastery of this world. As it has done for decades, Cooper’s taut, controlled prose lays bare the compulsions and troubling emptiness of the human soul.
“[A] brilliant, triumphantly lurid writer as well as a supremely talented, elegant stylist whose prose is smart and nervy. He might also be the last literary outlaw in mainstream American fiction.” —Bret Easton Ellis Internationally acclaimed writer Dennis Cooper continues to study the material he's always explored honestly, but does so now—in stories—with a sense of awareness and a satirical touch that exploits and winks at his mastery of this world. As it has done for decades, Cooper’s taut, controlled prose lays bare the compulsions and troubling emptiness of the human soul.
“[A] brilliant, triumphantly lurid writer as well as a supremely talented, elegant stylist whose prose is smart and nervy. He might also be the last literary outlaw in mainstream American fiction.” —Bret Easton Ellis Internationally acclaimed writer Dennis Cooper continues to study the material he's always explored honestly, but does so now—in stories—with a sense of awareness and a satirical touch that exploits and winks at his mastery of this world. As it has done for decades, Cooper’s taut, controlled prose lays bare the compulsions and troubling emptiness of the human soul.
“[A] brilliant, triumphantly lurid writer as well as a supremely talented, elegant stylist whose prose is smart and nervy. He might also be the last literary outlaw in mainstream American fiction.” —Bret Easton Ellis Internationally acclaimed writer Dennis Cooper continues to study the material he's always explored honestly, but does so now—in stories—with a sense of awareness and a satirical touch that exploits and winks at his mastery of this world. As it has done for decades, Cooper’s taut, controlled prose lays bare the compulsions and troubling emptiness of the human soul.
The author of Closer “transcends the formulaic with exquisite writing on the level of Rimbaud’s Illuminations . . . an American masterpiece” (James McCourt, Los Angeles Times). God Jr. is the story of Jim, a father who survived the car crash that killed his teenage son Tommy. Tommy was distant, transfixed by video games and pop culture, and a mystery to the man who raised him. Now, disabled by the accident, yearning somehow to absolve his own guilt over the crash, Jim becomes obsessed with a mysterious building Tommy drew repetitively in a notebook before he died. As the fixation grows, Jim starts to take on elements of his son—at the expense of his job and marriage—but is he connecting with who Tommy truly was? A tender, wrenching look at guilt, grief, and the tenuous bonds of family, God Jr. is unlike anything Dennis Cooper has yet written. It is a triumphant achievement from one of our finest writers. “This beautiful book is a first-person narration of how grief grows and morphs after a death, and its style and naked pain make the reader feel like he has suffered a concussion . . . Carefully wrought in Cooper’s trademark short, clipped sentences. There’s no room for the pain to hide, and Cooper lays it bare with humor and striking honesty.” —Time Out Chicago “God Jr. is probably Cooper’s richest, most philosophical novel to date. If the cycle were a video game, this would be its Easter egg.” —SF Gate “Absorbing . . . carefully spare, pop-cultures prose that has earned him a cult following.” —Entertainment Weekly
“[A] brilliant, triumphantly lurid writer as well as a supremely talented, elegant stylist whose prose is smart and nervy. He might also be the last literary outlaw in mainstream American fiction.” —Bret Easton Ellis Internationally acclaimed writer Dennis Cooper continues to study the material he's always explored honestly, but does so now—in stories—with a sense of awareness and a satirical touch that exploits and winks at his mastery of this world. As it has done for decades, Cooper’s taut, controlled prose lays bare the compulsions and troubling emptiness of the human soul.
“[A] brilliant, triumphantly lurid writer as well as a supremely talented, elegant stylist whose prose is smart and nervy. He might also be the last literary outlaw in mainstream American fiction.” —Bret Easton Ellis Internationally acclaimed writer Dennis Cooper continues to study the material he's always explored honestly, but does so now—in stories—with a sense of awareness and a satirical touch that exploits and winks at his mastery of this world. As it has done for decades, Cooper’s taut, controlled prose lays bare the compulsions and troubling emptiness of the human soul.
The first novel in the notorious, award-winning George Miles Cycle—”a crowning achievement in American letters [from] a master of transgressive fiction” (Tony O’Neill, The Guardian, UK). Proclaimed “the most dangerous writer in America” by the Village Voice, Dennis Cooper began his controversial novel cycle with Closer, introducing readers to the enigmatic George Miles. A physically beautiful and strangely passive teenager, George attracts his fellow students with irresistible mystery, like a wallet lying on the street. One after another, his friends rifle through him searching for love or simply momentary relief from the mindlessness of middle America. George passes through the arms of men like John, an artist who drains his portraits of humanity in order to find what lies beneath; Alex, fascinated by splatter films and pornography; and Steve, who turns his parents’ garage into a nightclub. But George remains a tantalizing blur until he’s picked up by two men in their forties. Tom and Philippe, obsessed with the beauty of death, believe George to be the perfect object for their passion. Like Jean Genet and William Burroughs, Dennis Cooper assaults the senses as he engages the mind in this “bleak and brilliant” novel that deserves recognition as “(at least) a minor classic” (John Ash, The Washington Post Book World).
“[A] brilliant, triumphantly lurid writer as well as a supremely talented, elegant stylist whose prose is smart and nervy. He might also be the last literary outlaw in mainstream American fiction.” —Bret Easton Ellis Internationally acclaimed writer Dennis Cooper continues to study the material he's always explored honestly, but does so now—in stories—with a sense of awareness and a satirical touch that exploits and winks at his mastery of this world. As it has done for decades, Cooper’s taut, controlled prose lays bare the compulsions and troubling emptiness of the human soul.
“[A] brilliant, triumphantly lurid writer as well as a supremely talented, elegant stylist whose prose is smart and nervy. He might also be the last literary outlaw in mainstream American fiction.” —Bret Easton Ellis Internationally acclaimed writer Dennis Cooper continues to study the material he's always explored honestly, but does so now—in stories—with a sense of awareness and a satirical touch that exploits and winks at his mastery of this world. As it has done for decades, Cooper’s taut, controlled prose lays bare the compulsions and troubling emptiness of the human soul.
“[A] brilliant, triumphantly lurid writer as well as a supremely talented, elegant stylist whose prose is smart and nervy. He might also be the last literary outlaw in mainstream American fiction.” —Bret Easton Ellis Internationally acclaimed writer Dennis Cooper continues to study the material he's always explored honestly, but does so now—in stories—with a sense of awareness and a satirical touch that exploits and winks at his mastery of this world. As it has done for decades, Cooper’s taut, controlled prose lays bare the compulsions and troubling emptiness of the human soul.
“[A] brilliant, triumphantly lurid writer as well as a supremely talented, elegant stylist whose prose is smart and nervy. He might also be the last literary outlaw in mainstream American fiction.” —Bret Easton Ellis Internationally acclaimed writer Dennis Cooper continues to study the material he's always explored honestly, but does so now—in stories—with a sense of awareness and a satirical touch that exploits and winks at his mastery of this world. As it has done for decades, Cooper’s taut, controlled prose lays bare the compulsions and troubling emptiness of the human soul.
“[A] brilliant, triumphantly lurid writer as well as a supremely talented, elegant stylist whose prose is smart and nervy. He might also be the last literary outlaw in mainstream American fiction.” —Bret Easton Ellis Internationally acclaimed writer Dennis Cooper continues to study the material he's always explored honestly, but does so now—in stories—with a sense of awareness and a satirical touch that exploits and winks at his mastery of this world. As it has done for decades, Cooper’s taut, controlled prose lays bare the compulsions and troubling emptiness of the human soul.
“[A] brilliant, triumphantly lurid writer as well as a supremely talented, elegant stylist whose prose is smart and nervy. He might also be the last literary outlaw in mainstream American fiction.” —Bret Easton Ellis Internationally acclaimed writer Dennis Cooper continues to study the material he's always explored honestly, but does so now—in stories—with a sense of awareness and a satirical touch that exploits and winks at his mastery of this world. As it has done for decades, Cooper’s taut, controlled prose lays bare the compulsions and troubling emptiness of the human soul.
This collection of short stories uses death to probe the meaning of life. It introduces a man who abducts, molests, and murders young boys; a trip to Amsterdam; and a teenage rock band called Horror Hospital.
“In another country or another era, Dennis Cooper’s books would be circulated in secret, explosive samizdat editions that friends and fans would pass around and savor like forbidden absinthe.” —New York Times Book Review “His work belongs to that of Poe, the Marquis de Sade, Charles Baudelaire, and Georges Bataille, other writers who argued with mortality.” — San Francisco Chronicle "There’s a stainless steel sheen to Cooper’s sentences that is as admirable as anything this side of Didion." — Salon From the internationally acclaimed author of Ugly Man and one of “the last literary outlaws in mainstream American fiction” (Bret Easton Ellis) comes a survey of his cultural criticism. From interviews with celebrities such as Leonard DiCaprio and Keanu Reeves; to obituaries for Kurt Cobain and River Phoenix; to writings on social issues—including the touchstone piece “AIDS: Words from the front”; Smothered in Hugs spans three decades of journalism from Dennis Cooper.
Narrated in a voice that may be construed as the author's own, Guide is the story of the conflict between a novelist's fantasy life and his inability to represent it in language. Remembering the clarity he felt during an LSD trip in his teens, 'Dennis' drops acid and attempts to write a novel that will make sense of his life, his desires, his friends, and his art. The fourth volume in Cooper's five-novel cycle, Guide is his most shocking study yet of the darker side of human need and the nature of desire. It reaffirms his position as a writer whose ability to transgress is matched by his literary brilliance.
Set largely on the pages of a website where gay male escorts are reviewed by their clients, and told through the postings, emails, and conversations of several dozen unreliable narrators, The Sluts chronicles the evolution of one young escort's date with a satisfied client into a metafiction of pornography, lies, half-truths, and myth. Explicit, shocking, comical, and displaying the author's signature flair for blending structural complexity with direct, stylish, accessible language, The Sluts is Cooper's most transgressive novel since Frisk, and one of his most innovative works of fiction to date.
The Dream Police collects the best poems from five of his previous books and also includes a selection of new works. From his darkly erotic early verse to the more refined, post-punk poems, to his later experimental pieces. Cooper's evolving study of the distances in romantic relationships has made him a singular voice in American poetry.
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