Customer Reviews

My Loose Thread

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

To say that Dennis Cooper's "My Loose Thread" is a tough read would be an understatement. In fact it would be a gross understatement. For "MLT" is a story about Larry, a whacked-out teenager heading for his own destruction at the speed of light: both unaware and seemingly uncaring about his own descent into oblivion and ultimately death.
"MLT" tells the story of the deep underbelly of suburban, privileged teenage life: a life that many of us would rather not hear about. But, to Cooper's credit he does not shy away from the realities of this life and just like the drawing on the book sleeve, we emerge psychically bloodied from the experience of reading about it.
The bare bones of the story involve Larry, his brother Jim, friends named Rand (dead at the beginning of the novella), Jude (Larry's erstwhile Girlfriend) and Gilman-a skinhead who has hired Larry to murder a fellow student (known only as "the boy") for no reason other than for Gilman to possess the boy's notebook. There are also a couple of reporters called the "Franks"" who are following Larry and Jim ("I guess she's writing about guys in high school and depression.")
Larry is the narrator and it is very difficult at times to follow his thoughts which he expresses through a kind of adolescent, valley-boy stream of consciousness:" ...she can see depressed guys like we're ghosts. We don't have to move. We don't even have to talk to her first. She says my problem is rage mixed with some bigger word, so I don't interest her...at first I was thinking she'd save me from Jim if she used the right words, but he's too complicated so far. That's her thing...I used to care what was wrong with Jim too, he made it seem that what I did to him helped, but I guess I was sick, and it didn't."
Larry, like most teenage guys is having some problems with his sexual identity: "He was my best friend. I think he was in love with me, but I wasn't gay, so he turned into a drug addict. Now all my friends are messed up guys who are in love with me."
"So you fell in love with one of them?"
"It's more like I worry I will." Larry also has problems with alcohol: "When I stopped getting drunk, I turned into a liar. That's the only way I could stop."
Dennis Cooper has written a difficult, unsparingly cold look at what it is to be a teenager among a very specific group of young adults. Be forewarned that he pulls no punches, leaves no stone unturned. It's going to take me a while to get this book and it's inhabitants out of my mind.

Dennis Cooper, My Loose Thread (Canongate, 2001)

My Loose Thread is above all a difficult book to read. Not just because Cooper is obviously a born-and-bred postmodern writer, but because this is not subject matter that's going to sit well with most folks, and the confusion engendered by both the style and having a narrator who gives new meaning to the word "unreliable" can make this book into something of a chore. However, once you get down to the meat of the novel, it's worth it.

Larry is a teen who is, shall we say, somewhat messed up. He's having problems dealing with confusion. A whole lot of problems, in fact. Not only is he struggling with his emerging homosexuality (he denies, to himself and others, that he's gay, but it's pretty obvious to the reader he's in denial), which comes out in part in a sexual relationship with his younger brother, but also with the death of his friend Rand after the two of them fought. Even though Rand seems to have died of natural causes, Larry can't help but blame himself, for relatively obvious reasons. Thanks (we gather) due to the new mystique surrounding Larry in certain circles as a result of Rand's death, he's been approached by Gilman Crowe, head of the school's Nazi sect, to kill a fellow student and get the kid's notebook. (Whether Larry is then supposed to turn the notebook over to Crowe or destroy it is a piece of the puzzle which shifts throughout the novel.) As the book opens, Larry is doing the deed with the help of his on-again off-again girlfriend Jude and her other lover Pete; Larry comes into possession of the notebook, reads it, and finds his world tilting even further askew. Why this is, we never quite find out, but some conclusions can be drawn by the rest of the novel's events.

The first point of artistry the reader is likely to notice here is that Cooper never actually quotes from the kid's notebook-- it achieves a sort of iconic status as the novel progresses, but the reader can only infer the vaguest details about its contents. It's the literary equivalent of the nameless thing-in-the-trunk in Pulp Fiction; no one knows what it is, but everyone who comes into contact with it is in some way changed. The second point is that despite Larry's inability to be honest with himself (and thus the reader, as the book is told from Larry's POV), we emerge with a relatively complete picture of him. We can never quite be sure what he's doing, but by the end of the book, we have an idea of why he's doing it. The act of getting to know Larry is the reader's basic task with this novel, and rest assured, you'll have to work for it. If you succeed, however, you will definitely feel as if the time you've spent mulling over the events here was well worth it. Definitely not a book for everyone (if gay incestuous themes turn your stomach, for example, you'd do well to stay away), but the balm of Gilead for the few.

every time i read a dennis cooper book, i think, "good god. he can't do anything better than this," and then the next book always makes me revise it. this one did that again, but in a farm more sophisticated way.
in the first part of the book, i wondered if this was going to be a different version of _frisk_, in which the reader is made to secretly enjoy the atrocities performed by the protagonist. while i like that idea a lot, it doesn't really make a book that i'd cherish, like i did _closer_ and _try_.
but dennis did something that is both fantastic and harrowing. he made the protagonist into a beatiful person who i could love. i saw pieces of myself and others in him and found myself excusing his actions toward other people.
the parts that stand out the most are the recurrent paragraphs in which cooper reveals a little more about what happened with Rand, the failed interactions between the protagonist and his brother (the snap on the jeans... wow), and the description of the boy (curling up on the couch in particular). cutting, crying during sex, someone not realizing they yelled until after they did it, and so on... this book is incredible.
maybe it's shock fiction, but it isn't *just* shock fiction. it's something more. there's a very humyn core that's beautiful and painful. the real visceral effect of this book comes from the emotions that it inspires with subtle waves of the hand and smirks... flashes of the horrific real winking at you. that makes it a million times as subversive as other shock books. this is real transgressive fiction.

Dennis Cooper is a writer who is creating his own niche in literature. He is eloquent while being brutal, comprehendable while writing about insanity, tender while describing the most perilous of situations, and a master at living inside the heads of troubled youths. MY LOOSE THREAD is more like an epic poem in dialogue than it is a novel. There is story here - grand Guignol story - but the madness of the narrative comes solely through the voices of the participants in this far from normal setting. And like an epic poem, this story begs to be read in one sitting. The dialogue is intense but the depth of meaning behind even short phrases requires deep concentration on the part of the reader.

Some people may be put off by the style or the subject of this book - Cooper climbs inside the psyches of young gay boys and tries to sort out the confusion and challenges of the real versus the fantasy. But get past whatever might disturb you about the story and you will be witness to a major talent. It will be invigorating to read a long novel by this gifted writer.

One thing you can say about Dennis Cooper's writing is he intends to shock and alarm us with his subject matter, and he certainly is successful in that respect. You might even call it "high risk literature". He is a born writer who writes with short, tight, tense sentences that keeps the reader glued to the story from the beginning to the end. You can feel the emotions and feelings of each of his characters. That's why I have read all of his novels. The subject matter may not be appealing but Cooper is a daring, literary master with words. Cooper's writing has often been compared to another literary artist, William Burroughs.

Cooper's latest novel is about a high school student named Larry who is offered $500, by an older student, to kill a fellow student at his school and retrieve the guy's notebook. It seems like a easy enough task for Larry to do, but many unexpected complications arise. After the student is killed, Larry decides to read the notebook out of curiosity. What it reveals is totally unexpected and shocking for Larry. Larry's life is changed from this point on in the story. Larry at the same time, is also wrestling with his own sexuality and a sexual relationship with his younger brother. These young characters seem to be in a permanent state of emotional upheaval. There seems to be so much violence, stress and sexual abuse in their lives. Everyday is a matter of life and death for these kids. This story is not one that will uplift your spirits, and it's not for the easily shocked.

Shocking? Yes. Sexually tense and violent? Yes. It almost seems like a "teenage hell". As I said, "The subject matter may not be appealing but Cooper is a daring, literary master with words. Be prepared!!!! Cooper's done it again. Recommended.

Joe Hanssen

In "My Loose Thread", Dennis Cooper creates one of the most disturbed, fascinating and realistic characters I've ever seen in fiction. The main character, Larry, is much more than your average troubled, misguided youth. He is truly psychotic, and on the brink of a major meltdown with horrifying consequences.

The death of his friend Rand, who dies of natural causes after Larry punches him, starts Larry on a downward spiral. He gets absolutely no help from his alcoholic mother or his cancer-stricken father, and even his detached, condescending psychiatrist fails to help him. Larry eventually finds himself involved in a murder plot instigated by a wannabe skinhead named Gilman, and that's when everything starts escalating into a true bloodbath.

After the Columbine tragedy, there was a lot of fingerpointing going on, but I've seen few people really dare to try to get inside the head of a young person disturbed enough to turn to such extreme violence. Dennis Cooper, as usual, dares to explore the dark corners of the human psyche that most of us are too afraid to venture into.

This is the first Dennis Cooper novel I've read so I cannot compare it to what he has written before. But I think it's the most honest and emotionally intense fiction I've ever read. I've read it four times and it made cry every time. It makes me feel speechless. It's brilliant.

Several years ago, I picked up a few Bret Easton Ellis books and really wanted to like them, but found that they simply weren't my thing. My Loose Thread reminded me strongly of Ellis' work in both style and subject.

The extreme violence may put off some, although I would argue that the imagery is relevant in understanding Larry and the world as he sees it. But it is the chaotic narrative that challenged me. While I suppose it is a device to underscore the confusion and insanity of the main character, we only jump into situations as an observer in Larry's head with the reality or Larry's perceived reality at that moment is what we experience. Larry, as the narrator of the book, never treats the reader as a trusted confidant and doesn't help us pull the pieces together in a way that help really understand who he is and what his motivations are. I believe that is probably intentional, but is a writing style that does not work for me.

If you've made it here, you know what the book is about. It's not as shocking as it is horrifying. Cooper has touched a raw nerve here, the elephant in the living room, the huge problem endemic to our society: kids that grow up with little or no love and less imagination. There's no emotion or feeling in anything these kids do. Drugs and disaster provide the only forward motion in these kids' lives. And don't say that it's an unreal portrait. It is too real.

This novel is very of-the-moment. It's unlike anything I've read recently. No postmodern,...admiring flim flam. Just a story about youth that ought to scare the bejeezus out of middle America.

Reading "My Loose Thread" can be infuriating. It is very simple on the surface. But if you slow down and take it in bit by bit, savoring the language, there are great rewards. Cooper has taken his usual minimalism and put it in deep-freeze, contrasting the approach by using it to describe passages of great emotion and psychological confusion and pain. The main theme of the novel seems to be how we lie to ourselves to construct our mental reality; and how we try to impose this mental reality on our lives, to hide other things.
Emotions teeter on the edge of the narrative. Dialogue constructs the action, and revelations about the characters. Labeling Larry, the central character, as either hero or anti-hero does not quite get it. Larry is an everyboy, even if his actions are extreme in their violence, physical and emotional, to others and to himself.
Cooper opens up the world of highschoolers in this age where school gunmen are prevalent. He does this with equal sympathy, disgust, and panache. Cooper's usual explicitness is not in play here. The thoughts and actions of his characters are extreme enough.
The novel touches on incest, struggles growing up homosexual, the pathetic attempts of adults to communicate to - let alone raise - their children, the possibility of amorality in the young, and the violence that arises out of the segment of society rearing the next generation.
The book is bleak, no question. However, although Cooper does not employ much of his adept dark humor in these pages, the writing evolves and opens over the short course of the book. What begins as clipped, barely-penetrable phrases turns into intermittent flashes of incredible poetry and sympathetic passages...even managing a credible sort of cliff-hanger quality as secrets are revealed, twisted, and brought to light as the end approaches.
Cooper has changed his writing to some degree from his famous George Miles cycle. "My Loose Thread" may not be totally new, but is a fine, fine example of what sort of literature will become classic in the near future. Cooper is a writer of very high caliber. This one is certainly worth the trip for fans. Newcomers will find much to enjoy, if they have open minds and reserve judgement until Cooper's themes do their work on the subconscious. This one begs to be thought about, discussed, and reread.