Genet said of a French writer who shall here be nameless: 'He does not have the courage to be a writer.' What courage does he refer to? The courage of the inner exploration, the cosmonaut of inner space. The writer cannot pull back from what he finds because it shocks or upsets him, or because he fears the disapproval of the reader.
~ ~ William S. Burroughs [1]

Dennis Cooper is the last literary outlaw in mainstream American fiction.
~ ~ Bret Easton Ellis

Never heard of Dennis Cooper? Not surprising, considering he's probably banished under the "Gay Fiction" section of your local bookstore, assuming they have such a section and he happens to be there.

Dennis Cooper (b. 1953) is one of the few writers living today who is not only transgressive, but has a distinct style of writing that is completely his own. He is dichotomous - his voice is lyrical and poetic, yet stripped down and succinct, unembellished sentences cutting through to naked meaning. Cooper smears his brain across the page, giving us a glimpse inside, as he explores his fascination with the lines between sex/murder, worship/torture, obsession/indifference. He penetrates the mechanics of human desire and motivation through a drug-induced/evolved clarity via ob/subjective observation of others in relation to his personal madness.

Heir to Burroughs?

Even though he doesn't like being compared to Burroughs ("I like Burroughs' early work," he told Neid7, "but I don't feel like my work has much in common with his, apart from both of us being homosexual, obsessive, and interested in writing about sex"), they both make great use of subtle humor and write from a perspective outside of mainstream society. I felt the same excitement when I started reading his novels as I did when I found Burroughs. Although Cooper writes about same themes throughout his signature five book cycle, he doesn't feel as repetitive as Burroughs sometimes is. He ventures further out and works at a more visceral level. He brings us beauty in the form of truth, projecting his demons onto the page.

The Daemonic Beauty of Personal Madness

"'Fuck. Oh, fuck'." Chris forced his eyes open a slit. His testicles were resting three feet away, in the dwarf's tiny palm. He tried to get into their primitive beauty. 'Shut up.' The dwarf stabbed Chris's thigh. He was trying to grasp death's complexity or something. Chris's shock was so dense and complex that it collided with the world's very different complexity, sort of like what happens when a very strong light hits a very big jewel." [2]

"'Luke, Luke, Luke,'" Mason says in this singsongy voice. He's making his 'I know you' face. I'm way too fucked up to describe it at the moment.

'Luke's going to ask if he can crash here,' he adds, over-meaningfully. Then his eyes become two thrift-store-painting-like takes on my emotions re Luke that are so much cheesier than the thing they depict that they're sort of like souvenirs you’d pick up at Niagara Falls or wherever." [3]

Rites of Passage: Amsterdam, Zines and Cultural Renegades

Inspired by the early punk scene in the mid-1970s, he rebelled against the sterile mainstream presses by founded the Little Caesar Press, which spawned a zine of the same name. Cooper published 25 poetry chapbooks between 1979 and 1982, and interviewed cultural renegades including Graham Parsons and Johnny Rotten.

In the mid-1980s, Cooper moved to Amsterdam, where he matured as a poet and prose stylist. Some of his visceral short stories are collected in Wrong: Stories (New York: Grove Press, 1993). There are also several volumes of Cooper's brooding poetry, including The Dream Police: Selected Poems, 1969-1993 (New York: Grove Press, 1996).

The Little Caeser Press stint and the Amsterdam period were 'rites of passage' that crystallized Cooper's personal obsessions and thematic imagery. He learned to 'play' with his persona, through collaborating with artists like Keith Mayerson and Mike Kelley. Cooper's daemonic interest in contemporary visual art is evident in projects like Jerk (New York: Artspace Books, 1993) and Horror Hospital Unplugged: A Graphic Novel (Los Angeles: Juno Books, 1996).

When Cooper and Richard Hawkins curated Against Nature: A Group Show of Work by Homosexual Men (Los Angeles: Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, 1989), they expanded the Queer political voice far beyond anti-AIDS activism, by including the artwork of Larry Johnson, Nayland Blake, Arnold Fern, Doug Ischar, Stashu Kybartas, Isaac Julain, and Jack Shear.

The Gonzo Journalist as Stoic Philosopher

Cooper's prolific journalism career remains neglected by literary critics, who only focus only on the "surface layer" of sex and violence in his novels. He has written for numerous publications, including Art in America, Artforum, Spin, The Village Voice, Nerve, and The Advocate.

His journalism and cultural-crit collection, All Ears (New York: Skull Press Publishers, 1999), revealed that Cooper has an affinity with Arthur Rimbaud and Hunter S. Thompson. While interviewing Leonardo DiCaprio, Courtney Love, Keanu Reeves, Stephen Malkmus and Bob Mould, Cooper unmasks their celebrity persona, offering a glimpse of the urgent needs that had remained hidden. Cooper is passionate about defeating the AIDS specter, about the revitalizing power of youth culture and contemporary art. And he is searing about the legacy of River Phoenix, Kurt Cobain and William S. Burroughs.

"Literary Nigger"?

Cooper doesn't write safe, boring gay fiction. He has received criticism, consequently, from both sides of the fence, including death threats made by "Queer Nation" members after his book Frisk (New York: Grove Press, 1991) was released. It is in this way that he is like a modern day heir to Burroughs; he is a "literary nigger," writing outside of the lines with brutal honesty. But even Burroughs never received death threats.

The Quintet that Devoured Itself

Frisk is the second novel in the "George Miles" quintet, which began with Closer (New York: Grove Press, 1989), and slowly devoured itself with Try (New York: Grove Press, 1994), Guide (New York: Grove Press, 1997) and the stark finale, Period (New York: Grove Press, 1999).

The quintet is one of the finest works from the "Transgressive Fiction" movement, a literary genre identified in 1993 by Los Angeles Times critic Michael Silverblatt. Alongside Cooper, the movement also includes David Sedaris, Scott Heim, Gary Indiana and Kevin Killian. Visual motifs include eye-catching covers, italicized texts and undersized formats. Atlantic Monthly journalist Anne H. Soukhanov gave this apt definition of "Transgressive Fiction," which could also describe Cooper's writing:

A literary genre that graphically explores such topics as incest and other aberrant sexual practices, mutilation, the sprouting of sexual organs in various places on the human body, urban violence and violence against women, drug use, and highly dysfunctional family relationships, and that is based on the premise that knowledge is to be found at the edge of experience and that the body is the site for gaining knowledge. [4]

Rebel Personae

In an interview with Kim Nicolini, when asked how he sees his work in the world of homosexual art and literature, he responded: "To use a cliche, I guess you could say a thorn in its side." He has also defined his writing as part of a "growing anti-assimilationist Queer movement."

Cooper explained his ambivalent feelings about the Queer movement to Outcast Magazine in a November/December 2000 interview. "They go to the movies or they watch Queer As Folk on TV. So now it's the renegade kind of gay people who read my work. That makes it much easier for me."

Unfortunately, just as a deeply closeted homosexual reacts with homophobia, the Borg-like Gay and Lesbian collective recoils in horror from anything that doesn't fit into their established paradigm.

A Thousand Points of Hatred

Cooper is listed by some critics, ironically, as an influential "Queercore" writer. But the mainstream literary contingent remains dismissive of Cooper's dark vistas. An Alt.Culture.com profile quotes British journalist Elizabeth Young on Cooper: "Georges Bataille trapped in Disneyland." Edmund White opined that "Dennis Cooper is reciting Aeschylus with a mouthful of bubble-gum." At least Cooper can write novels with brevity, something that White still has not mastered.

Art is fundamentally a prism of perception. "Weird" Outsider art exposes us to perspectives that can change our worldview, while inspiring those of like mind. Dennis Cooper does a fantastic job of both.

Sources: