Customer Reviews

Period

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Few novelists pursue their chosen themes with such morbid enthusiasm as Dennis Cooper. For more than a decade his quintet of novels - Closer, Frisk, Try, Guide and now Period - have obsessed over sex, child pornography, drugs and dismemberment. Undeterred even by death threats, Cooper has played out his violent fantasies in these novels with a disturbing purity of vision. His new novel Period marks, as its title suggests, the end of the cycle. He's claimed that it's both a `disappearing act' and a `suicide note.' Considering the spectral and sparse quality of the book both comments seem particularly appropriate.

The quintet began back in 1989 with Closer. Yet it was Cooper's 1991 novel Frisk that really stirred controversy, deliberately blurring the line between fantasy and reality and securing its author a place at the cutting edge of contemporary American literature. Period draws out the same themes and concerns as the preceding novels, charting the bored angst of gay West Coast adolescents and their middle-aged paramours as they drift into experiments with drugs, Satanism, sex and ultimately murder. Like grim parodies of Enlightenment anatomists, Cooper's protagonists believe that dismembering the bodies of their lovers will reveal the truth of existence, bringing them closer to an absent God and saving them from the demystified consumer culture that surrounds them.

What has always been so impressive about Cooper's work is his dedication to narrative forms that replicate the violent content of the books. His prose has sought to cut into the flat surface of the conventional pornographic or horror text through the use of flashbacks, narratives-within-narratives, and stream of consciousness techniques. In Period this relationship between form and content reaches its peak, creating a fragmented and confusing novel that refuses easy definition. It's certainly the sparsest of Cooper's books, a skeleton thin, episodic narrative that's like the decomposed body of one of the story's victims. Indeed, the novel is so cut up that the reader has no choice but to follow the advice of the epigraph and `keep watch over absent meaning'. Shifting between different characters' viewpoints, radio phone-ins, Internet chat rooms and diaries Cooper creates a disturbing hall of mirrors through which we're left to wander without a guide. Although Period's obliqueness is slightly dissatisfying it appears ultimately inevitable, for what else but a self-reflexive `period' could end this set of books?

Period confirms Cooper's growing reputation as the most exciting and transgressive of contemporary American novelists. However, as last year's publication of Cooper's journalism and essays - in the collection All Ears - has demonstrated, his work has much more scope than this obsessively brilliant cycle of novels. He's currently working on a book based upon the recent spate of American High School shootings and has also expressed a desire to experiment with a novel of physical comedy (he cites the films of Jacques Tatti, Jerry Lewis and Jackie Chan as a potential source of inspiration). Whatever path he may choose his next offering will be awaited eagerly on both sides of the Atlantic.

The photo of 'Walker Crane' (a take on Wes Craven, of 'Scream' fame??) at the back of the book looks like an uglier, more descript version of Tim Robbins, but maybe it's just the lighting. The character Henry is my favourite in this book. He's so obssessive that all of his victims begin to look the same and their continued existence comes to depend on a trivial yet all important event in his past. The idea that physical beauty helps us deny what we are is an important theme here. The surface is just gift wrapping, but even the 'deep, incontrovertible' truth of blood and sinew is mute and meaningless. This is the best book ever written on the pointlessness of desire. Highly recommended.

this one's even foggier, you just don't know what's going on, hardly any of the ultra detailed descriptions of, say, Guide, instead you're left with voices, diary entries and 'anonymous' internet chat, while the 'plot' just vanishes inside this multi mirrored projection hall. we're not really in the city anymore either, it's a small town, then a forest, then a house in a forest, and then someone gets lost in this house. Blair Witch? this is even scarier, I suppose, as we're left with traces, memories, voices and the usual all consuming dance of death and desire. Where next? we can't leave that house anymore, so we have to go back to 'Closer' and one of its characters, and we have to start a website with some strange photos of some distant looking boy, who we're slowly getting obsessed with...did i understand? are these still lifestyle choices? actually these are probably 5 stars, for at least 5 books. goodnight.

"Period" is likely to anger many Cooper fans due to its spare qualities in narrative, character, form. Cooper has always written about desire, particularly it's darkest manifestations and results. Cooper's books are short, extreme, and demand that they roll around the subconscious of the reader. "Period" is no different, but here everything Cooper has worked toward in the 4 previous novels in this cycle is reported flatly, obscurely, and sometimes causes great aggravation in the reader.

However, interviews with Cooper have revealed that "George Miles" was a real person who left deep emotional marks in Cooper. His mutilation in "Closer," the first in the cycle, seems like an attempt to exorcise the author's feeling for his object of obsession. George's absence (or mere mention) in the next 3 books makes it seem like the author was successful. Those 3 books ("Frisk," "Try," "Guide)all deal in some way with the attempt to vanquish desire. Exploration of the extremes in human thought and behavior distance the obsession over something the author, who is always a character in some fashion in the cycle, cannot have.

Interviews say that Cooper found that the real George Miles committed suicide, years after their relationship. "Period" takes that as a cue to move everything toward death - desire, the author himself, any characters that happen to appear in the midst. This book mirrors Cooper's others, but leaves us in the end only with ourselves and interpretations. The book has a formal structure where the prose is allowed to mirror itself foremost, the other books in the cycle secondly, and ourselves - probably most disturbingly.

Under all the sex, gore, minimalism, and luridness of Cooper's novels is a profound meditation on who we are, what relationships mean, how expression cannot contain reality, and the various meanings of love.

This is strong stuff. "Period" is not the place to start for a novice. But it's one hell of a book-long poem about desire, and therefore a fitting end to the five book cycle. What Cooper does next is already an intriguing subject. He might just be the last American writer with any guts. A master; a masterwork.

Cooper's "Period" is a fitting finish to his cycle of novels which examine the extremities of human desire. It is a sparse, elegant, poetic mind game that references its 4 predecessors, while giving a final spin to Cooper's themes. Cooper has always taken great risks with his extreme subject matter, and that's no different here. "Period" might be graphic and disturbing, but the writing is so fine that the book cannot be dismissed as mere sexualized horror fiction. "George," the main character in the first novel of the cycle, re-emerges as a focal point; yet he and many of the other characters seem oddly one and the same. The book uses a doppelganger device, via a rather humorous introduction of teens dabbling in Satanism and also a sort of magic mirror, to allow characters' identities to swap back and forth. The author himself is present in the story, as in the previous novels, though not with the name "Dennis" this time. In fact, there are two artists/authors in the narrative, further exploring ideas of what makes up identity. Cooper has great fun with this idea, in his typically morbid fasion. Reality and fiction blur constantly, as the novel winds through its unnamed town where boys prey on each other, a goth-rock band gathers human victims for its "art," and the artist/author builds a spooky memorial for "George" in the form of a pitch black house haunted by memory, longing, and desire. Cooper is really writing about love in all its power, and he does this using things that usually conjure up the opposite of love. The fact that he accomplishes all this in just over 100 pages, with spare prose that evolves into poetry at unexptected times, makes this novel, and the entire cycle, an absolute classic. Fans of the previous novels should love "Period." However, for the uninitiated, the density of the mind game Cooper plays out here makes this one definitely not the place to start. "Period" is a book that resonates in the mind long after the last sentence is read. It is worthy of high praise and attention, but is surely not for the squeamish or easily intimidated. It will be exciting to see where Cooper takes his writing after this.

This was my first Dennis Cooper book. I have since read all of his books. And I must say that none of them can ever hold up to this, my first experience. All of his books are terrific, especially Try and Guide. But the atmosphere that Cooper has been building on, for years, culminated in this apex which was at once sharp with everything Dennis' literature reveled in and completely ambiguous as if a cloud had descended over him and us in a blanket of glossy melancholia. This book is brimming with classic modern approaches towards writing but it gives them a new birth, the freshness of the prose is terrific. Cooper seems to have completely detached himself from the rest of the literary world and whereas in his earlier novels he slid through pop cultural references, he has abandoned his postmodernity for something purely modern and abstract. This work reads like the classics of high modernist fiction with the subtlest references to popular culture. It's basically a long fragmented dialogue, poem, list. Satanism and death metal abound, but whereas old-Cooper would have cheekily referenced an actual band or made up alternative names for people who obviously stood for public personas (i.e. guide) he creates these blurry characters who simultaneously mimic the very void they inhabit. These people can be anyone and they absorb whatever you project onto them, the only thing that remains constant is their glowingly gloomy environs. This is a very fragmented read, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who has no appreciation for modernist literature or no patience for it, as it would come across as a pretentious and indulgent artifact. But if one has the time to digest something as subtle as this progressive writing, one can be greatly rewarded. The violence and sexuality in this novel doesn't compare to anything else by Cooper. Many people are drawn to Cooper's literature simply because of that violence and sexuality. But this novels lack of this is completely understandable considering the nature of this vague little book, the amount of detail needed for such grotesqueries would be completely inappropriate for the style in which Cooper brilliantly channels. I read this in one night, and the feeling that Cooper created honestly seeped out of the book. I could feel the isolation of the place he had created. I distinctly remember sitting in my bed and remembering those characters and the place that they lived, which seemed to be any town and unlike any town or not even a town at all but a specific locale of the psyche, airy, uncharted, and very sad. Cooper has revealed the very depths of his being in this book, and it's the saddest and most mysterious place I have ever glimpsed. Cooper is honestly the most progressive writer that I know of, he deals with the same subjects that many progressive writers dwell upon but he steps it up a notch stylistically with his absolutely genius way with words and thoughts. This book is very important to me.

I must say i was surprised to say the least when i read this book and got out of it nothing i would have expected. Although many people dimiss cooper as an overindulger in morbid homosexuality, I honestly didnt think this book was as frightingly grotesque as cridicts tend to label it as. The sex, although undeniably intigrated into the stories main point (if there even is one) is fleeting, nondescript, and sometimes if you skip past a single sentence you wont even know anything even happened. Which brings me to the next point of this book. Its so very confusing. I finally understand the phrase smoke-and-mirrors, thanks to cooper's brain-rattling insane prose that for some odd reason thinks it should call itself a book. But its apparent that he possess an ultimate ablity to trick the reader beyond belief, and to leave you sitting there wondering whats real and whats not. And all done so as if he isnt even taking credit for any of these events he just happens to be writing.

This is one of the most unique stories i have read in years, addictive, deceptive, sometimes unrelentless, buy always good.

'Period' by Dennis Cooper is at times horrifying, heartbreaking, or just confusing. Horrifying becauses of it's violent implications and stronghold to truth. Heartbreaking because of the overwhelming feeling of desire and missed chances. His dialogue and syntax keep reading interesting, if not hard to comprehend. He jumps around a lot, but that just adds to the whole darkness of the book. Without having read the other novels in this "cycle" , it takes awhile to figure out what's going on. 'Period' is a book that the reader will either read cover to cover three times, or set on fire after reading the first few paragraphs.

This is about the kids...no money to party, no date for the prom...crystal meth brewing in the bathroom, death metal on the stereo, raising demons in the woods...What they gotta live for?...Does this book offer the answer? Gary Indiana? How many serial killers do you know; six, seven?...these kids are into double digits. The author draws a line under his previous work - gone are the naturalistic settings; this book is supernaturally charged and stripped to the bone. The symmetry of life and afterlife that cleaves 'Period' (Leon/Noel) leaves you wondering if George Miles is better off alive or dead. This is genuinely terrifying, a freeform world of drift and skid that leaves you clutching at shadows. A sly evocation of the earliest work of the Buljang Brothers, Dennis Cooper takes us through a dark mirror into the hellmouth.

This book was awful. The story line was hard to follow, and the book didn't make sense at all, a waist of money.