- Hardcover: 144 pages
- Publisher: Serpent's Tail (Jun 15 1992)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1852422785
- ISBN-13: 978-1852422783
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.6 x 1.2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 100 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,453,915 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Cooper says, "I present the actual act of evil so it's visible and give it a bunch of facets so that you can actually look at it and experience it. You're seduced into dealing with it. ... So with Frisk, whatever pleasure you got out of making a picture in your mind based on ... those people being murdered, you take responsibility for it." In unsparingly confessional mode, Cooper leads the reader into a confrontation with what they get out of fantasized scenes of violence. A brilliant novel -- not a genre horror work but, rather, a critique of the power of genre.
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Cooper has produced edgy works of fiction ( Safe ; Closer ), but this novel is his most disturbing. The narrator of this study in brutal sexuality and psychosis is an emotionally detached, intelligent man named Dennis. Cooper traces key episodes in Dennis's life over two decades, following his interest in gay pornography. In the '70s, Dennis and his lover, Julian, engage in three-way sexual encounters with strangers. One of their partners is a drugged-up young man who turns out to be the model in faked snuff photos Dennis discovered as a teen. When Julian accidentally knocks the youth's head against a table, the incident triggers in Dennis an ongoing obsession--the perverse imagining of murdering anonymous lovers after sex. Cooper immerses us in Dennis's conflicting thoughts, which he articulates with frightening lucidity. The book is drenched in homoerotic desires of several varieties, from Dennis' fascination with Julian's psychologically disturbed younger brother to his intellectualized encounters with Pierre, a hustler who listens as Dennis airs his murderous thoughts. After Dennis takes off for Amsterdam, he writes Julian a detailed account of his erotic killing spree, but with a surprise twist. Horrific as these passages are, they testify to Cooper's exceptional boldness.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
"Wild." Henry knew it. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
"Wild." Henry knew it. Read the first page
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Concordance
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
Enough,
By
This review is from: Frisk: A Novel (Paperback)
Frisk is the gay American Psycho, and like that horrendous novel it revels in grossly repellant violence, and just like American Psycho, you have to ask yourself what the point is. And it's hard to say. Ellis's novel was supposed to satirise the yuppie greed-is-good 1980s. Okay, it does. But the violence towards women in that book goes on for page after page after page. And after say 15 pages, the reader is justified in saying Okay Brett, I Get The Point Already!! But on and on the violence goes. And so I get to figure that what's happening is that Ellis actually LIKES writing this stuff. Otherwise why go on at such length? And why does he like it, all that describing women being chopped up and tortured in so many disgusting, amusing ways? Well, I have to leave that to each reader to answer, and likewise answer why the reader likes reading it as well, and why so many many readers (vastly male it seems from the Amazon reviews) think American Psycho ROCKS! So, Dennis Cooper writes about gay sadomasochistic sex and murder. And in this book, plenty of coprophagy. The style he uses to do this is uniformly dull, lifeless, enervated, flat, affectless. It's... oh, I dunno, whatever. One critic describes it as "cool, immaculate prose [which] manages to convey intense romanticism alongside the macabre temptations of taboo." Yeah, right. Does that make it good, this breaking of taboos? Dennis Cooper does step out of his cool, immaculate style and gets quite excitable when he gets to the part about carving up teenaged boys. But then he lapses into a kind of boredom again. And the Los Angeles Times Book Review critic says in the blurb on the front "destines to classic status". And I say, these critics are degenerates. This book serves no purpose, except maybe, you know, if people like to read about torturing boys to death. I mean, some people might. So to them, it's good. Might even be a classic, I guess. Do I have the right to say that people shouldn't get their fun reading about pain and death and sadistic torture for page after page?
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Chewy,
This review is from: Frisk: A Novel (Paperback)
Clinging to his memories of fake snuff photographs, the mysterious narrator named Dennis explores the dangers and taboos of sexuality. Finally, in Holland, he finds himself free of restrictions and is able to act upon his dark fantasies. A fascinating tale of fetishes and deep desires that disturbs as it compells the reader onward. While not as lush as Poppy Brite's "Exquisite Corpse" or as satirical as Ellis's "American Psycho", "Frisk" charts its own course along similar territory, coming up with a new revelation. And I have to agree that Cooper's writing style can easily put off readers, and I found "Frisk" to be the most readable of his books I've read.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Cooper vs. Brite,
By
This review is from: Frisk: A Novel (Paperback)
I found this to be confusing, due to the narration. It jumps from 1st person to 3rd to 1st again. By jumping like that, it pushed me away from the story rather than be pulled in. This book is reminiscent of Poppy Z. Brite's Exquisite Corpse which is much more brutul and tantalizing than this book.
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