Delirium [Hardcover]

Douglas Anthony Cooper (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1998

The critically acclaimed author of "Amnesia" presents his second book--the first novel ever serialized on the Internet--a thrilling story of ideas than spans continents and centuries, a psychological tour de force encompassing murder, the history of architectural modernism, and the nature of evil Online promo. NYC publicity .

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Billed as "the first-ever novel to be serialized on the World Wide Web," Cooper's ambitious but unfocused second novel (after Amnesia) delivers a jumpy narrative more suitable for cyberspace than for the traditional page. Aging architect Ariel Price dominates his colleagues and companions all his life until, traveling in Israel, he receives the first chapter of a hostile biography undertaken by obscure Canadian academic Theseus Crouch. Unwilling to submit to exposure in print, Price decides to murder his biographer. Fragmented from the beginning, the narrative moves in short scenes full of archly exotic characters, chief among them Price's deformed former assistant and the innocent, abused waif whom he befriends. Both Price and Crouch return intermittently to center stage but never long enough for their conflict to gain steam. Intentionally labyrinthine (references to mazes dot the text), the plot never quite lives up to its high concept, while Cooper's polished sententiae (on architecture, the nature of thought, urban life) strain for solemnity at the expense of character and place. Lacking the human sprawl of a similarly moralizing, untidy work like William Gaddis's The Recognitions, this undeniably intelligent but slow little book devolves too often into what seems a rather forced jeu d'esprit.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

The desire of architecture to impose order, and the repercussions of artistic ``overreaching,'' are given dramatic and often cryptic symbolic expression in this unusual second novel (``the first-ever to be serialized on the Web'') from the Canadian- born Cooper, who's a comic-surrealist crossbreed of the late Lawrence Durrell and William S. Burroughs. Several different stories are told by a narrator whose eventual revelation of his identity links this novel closely to its predecessor, 1994's Amnesia (with which Delirium should probably be read in tandem). Famous architect Ariel Price (born Preuss), who had dreamed of creating a Toronto that would match the structural marvels of Paris, has instead constructed ``a tombstone growing from the heart of a labyrinth'' in the eyes of those who judge him, and must face the consequences of his exploitation of a young street waif (Bethany), and his resolvebased on his insistence that ``no life bears scrutiny'' (a refrain repeated throughout)to murder Theseus Crouch, his putative biographer. And, in a series of ``Parallel Lives,'' which pair up other characters in disastrous combinations, Cooper teasingly explores (often obscure) connections among art, human aspiration, ``whoredom,'' and punishment. A further puzzling dimension is added by Ariel's ``discovery'' of the submerged city of Gomorrah; by the relationship between his daughter Arianna and Izzy Darlow (from Amnesia), who's researching the architecture of biblical cities; and by the implicit likening of Bethany's self-abasement to the tortuous reformation of Mary Magdalen (here identified with a prostitute, ``Saintes-Maries,'' and perhaps also a masochistic performance artist, Scilla, who enchants businessman Tom Sorrow, who works in Ariel Price's most celebrated office building). The compromising of visionary ideals by contact with sublunary lust and greed is clearly a central theme in a baffling, fascinating fiction that seems part of a multivolume work still in progress. One wonders what will succeed Amnesia and Delirium. A further descent into the maelstrom, or some promise of recovery? -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 232 pages
• Publisher: Hyperion Books; 1st edition (February 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786863412
• ISBN-13: 978-0786863419
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 5.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,755,820 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars only dead people write this well, September 22, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Delirium (Hardcover)

so weird that this guy is young and lives in new york. really doesn't seem like the kind of novel people still know how to write. not in new york, anyway. no brand names, no gossip, nothing "relevant." just smart words, beautiful ideas, serious writing. off to buy AMNESIA...

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Distressing, but beautiful, July 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Delirium (Hardcover)

This is a writer who seems to care more than anything about how his sentences come together. I am glad, because if it were not for the sheer beauty of the prose, this novel would be terrifying. I do not think I have encountered a story this brutal and relentless in years. An important book, I think.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars DELIRIUM is a fine febrile follow-up to AMNESIA., May 9, 1998

By 

metajag (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Delirium (Hardcover)

I find Cooper's second novel impressive on several levels. AMNESIA enthralled me with its inventive atmosphere of foreboding, its relentlessly strange signifiers, its peculiar mix of street wisdom and arcane erudition. I got distracted toward the end, some of the changes didn't feel right, although the final sprint recovers the momentum. DELIRIUM kept me going all the way through. Playing Prospero, Cooper controls the dazzling word play and the multitude of parallel tales, as his characters struggle toward identity in a contemporary yet gothic, decimated landscape. Since this is an installment in a series it might be too early to call major themes, but this book raises the questions about dynamic levels of prostitution and just what requires redemption. What could possibly be more pertinent to our time? The primary joke here is that a sort of universal evil emanates from a Philip Johnson/van der Rohe-like architect, the consummate whore, strewing his pernicious monoliths across the globe. On the simplest plane there's a chase going on, leading to a classic comeuppance, but Cooper makes it mean much more - he takes his time and he cares about the ghosts which are haunting him here. I like this odd book a lot and look forward its successors.