Customer Reviews

Closer

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

this is one of the most painful books i've ever read. it hurts to read it, but it's still one of my favorite books. cooper has an ability to show situations that are both horrific and beautiful. that really hit home for me because i think that's how life really is. it's like children singing in hell.
i read this one right after _Frisk_ and liked it a lot better. i could identify more with the George character, than i could with anyone in the other book. the portrait of the kid who gets exploited by everyone around him in different ways is just amazing. i couldn't sleep the night i read it. it's one of those books that makes you sad and contemplative. if you want to do that, definitely pick it up. if not, it might not be a good idea.

I intially got into Cooper by mistaking his work for another writer, but found myself happily surprised after reading some short stories he had written.
This book is pretty much standard for Cooper, not to say it is bad. It is always fascinating to read about the sorts of things people think about but never admit to. Or the things which ahppen in life no one wants to talk about. Specifically very dirty sex and murder. And this book will cover all of that.
It's rather hard to explain the plot since I don't think there is one in any normal sense. Dennis Cooper ust isn't that kind of writer. Instead, we have vignettes all orbiting around one character, George Miles, a teenager sort of confused by and removed from the world. This quality he has allows numerous tortures to be enacted upon him and he takes it, not really seeming to feel any deeper sort of pleasure. A character it is easy to project upon by the other characters.
It's been a few months since I've read this, but it still seems fresh in my head. This is the sort of stuff which will seriously affect you, but some will find it too shocking and repulsive for their taste.

The fact that it is told, mainly, from the perspective of those using this young man, who is looking for love and understanding after the death of his mother, makes every act of cruelty (the emotional even more so that the physical) stab at your heart so much more.
Dennis Cooper manages to infuse hope, love and compassion in with the loss, cruelty and sex. Making this a really brilliant work.
If you have a heart, read this book!
I think a lot of readers get it wrong when they say that Cooper's work is sado-homo-erotic. It's too human and emotional for such a narrow definition.
Dennis Cooper and his works are a perfect example of why I love to be a reader and wish I was a more eloquent reviewer.

I've just finished this book, my third so far by Dennis Cooper, the other two being "Frisk" and "Guide". Cooper seems to be covering the same issues of sadomaschoism, death, murder, homosexual rape, etc...In this book as compared to the other two the reader can see his development as a writer,which in the later books he is more controlled in his prose. This was one of his first books, while the other two were written later. It's a good novel with some similar characters but it left me with a coldness inside.

This book took me by surprise. Throughout this very quick read, we get to know several unforgettable characters, each of whom could possibly have been the central character, had this book taken a different direction. Cooper's writing style is remarkable. After finishing this, I quickly ordered later books of his. A must read for fans of unique, twisted gay fiction.

Few contemporary authors possess such zeal in examining the lives of tortured gay teenagers. Cooper is a lustful writer, a stylist virtuoso whose stories at once sicken and delight. Closer details a youthful gay boy named George Miles who is used so thoroughly by those lecherous freaks he comes across, he almost ceases to be a human being. This includes prolonged descriptions of scatophelia and worse...much much worse. Presented in clipped, adjective-light sentences, Cooper has written a vile book that makes up for its lack of heart/general human emotion, with what seems to be a never-ending stream of human misery, self-desctruction, calloused blundering, evil, evil characters. It is not what you might call family-friendly. Really this is some of the sickest "literature" available (though not as protracted as Ellis' American Psycho) though it doesn't come off as trying to shock just for shock's sake (ala Palahniuk)...most of the time. Sometimes George is forced to endure such heinous things as anal basement surgery (a man wants to saw him apart to get off...) that we flinch and sort of pull away, wondering to ourselves if "stuff like this really happens in our real world." Now as I write this I listen to birds chirping outside and the sun is bright and hot, alluring. This book is the anthesis of a sunny day. It is a catastrophic dungeon of a read, a hobbled, pitch-black, brutal little ditty (clocking in at almost novella length) that shows, from many points of view, the way a young mind can be destroyed. It is not a book for teenagers, or those with weak stomaches. Similar to the Marquis de Sade, whom I'm told Cooper drew much of his influence, it might leave you loathing humanity as a whole. At the same time, however, it is really difficult to put down (if you enjoy writers I've mentioned). You might hate yourself for liking it, but there is a kind of weight to it in the absence of hope and light. There is a kind of disparity that is difficult to comprehend, but at the same time enlightens. Like you feel after falling down a long stairwell. The blur at the bottom, in the grime, every muscle contracting, flushing sweat, the breath you draw in feels electrified. That feeling is Dennis Cooper. A mythical breath of human degradation, something near art but not quite. More like a deleriously-entertaining horror show you feel sort of guilty recommending to people.

"Closer", the first in a five book series of short novels, is hypnotic and disturbing. Dennis Cooper's spare and elegant prose documents the lives of young people in our society who are constantly being exploited. With no support, no sense of themselves, and no real hope for anything better, the characters in this novel stumble toward bleak and sometimes gruesome fates. Dennis Cooper's novels are a wake-up call to a society that is traumatizing its children.

While I know disembowelment, evisceration, torture and excrement are all the rage in the gay studies departments of our ivy league schools, this is just poor writing.

I was not shocked at all by this, I was bored and had to force myself to finish it.

Plot:

1) all teenage boys are gay, have anal sex in abandoned buildings, and love murder
2) George Miles is so beautiful that he cannot be described.
3) he lives with his mom and dad but is an enigma (?)
4) he gets serial murdered by a killer-friend's killer-friend

The end (of the book and of my interest in Cooper)

I always promise myself that Dennis Cooper will not be able to shock me again; yet, he somehow manages to do so. For most readers, the majority of this book -start to finish- will be quite shocking, especially to those unfamiliar with Cooper's work. I was appropriately mortified along the way, but it wasn't until near the end, in the last chapter, when I was genuinely surprised and disgusted. The story is about a boy, George, who bounces from lover to lover, being used to fulfill others' needs. Even the "love" that he finds in the end is getting his rocks off on the side, and this, beyond any scatological or blood play, is what disgusted me most.

Dennis Cooper, Closer (Grove, 1989)

It's a good thing that someone saw the potential to grow into a good writer in Closer, because Dennis Cooper has gotten a whole lot better as he's gotten older. Closer is a couple of steps on the right side of unreadable, but they're small steps.

The main problem with Closer is its relentless monotony. Adults are never to be trusted; even those who sympathize with the kids who make up the bulk of Cooper's narratives will eventually turn on them in the end. The kids all live in a haze of drugs, alcohol, and sex, usually needing liberal applications of all three just to make it through the day. And no one in Cooper's stories isn't gay (or at least 90-10 bisexual). All of which can be done, of course, in ways that will make it interesting, compelling reading. Cooper seems particularly unconcerned with doing so, as if he'd adopted Henry James' (in "The Dead") technique of writing about boring people in as boring a way as possible.

About the best thing I can say about this book is "don't use it as a barometer of Cooper's talent." *