- Paperback: 128 pages
- Publisher: GROVE/ATLANTIC (Jan 2 2001)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0802137830
- ISBN-13: 978-0802137838
- Product Dimensions: 20.9 x 14 x 0.9 cm
- Shipping Weight: 159 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,068,303 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Cooper's fans will not be surprised, but the uninitiated may balk at his new novel's macabre world of disaffected young men engaging in Satanic sacrifice, gang rape, cutting-edge pornography and nonchalant mutilation and murder. Undaunted readers will find a subversive brilliance and considerable wit behind this darkly comic ride through the looking glass of marginal youth culture. Cooper (Closer; Frisk; Try; Guide) imbues the fifth and final novel in his "Sex and Death" series with a mythic tone, centering the action in a remote, nondescript town and a mysterious house, all black on the inside except for a large mirror. Events take place on both sides of the mirror in two (or more) equally dangerous worlds that reflect and affect one another. But that is only the beginning of the mirror imagery. The main characters are a string of young men who eerily resemble each other, including voyeurs Leon and Nate, pothead Dagger, and Nate's boyfriend Bob, who's obsessed with dead-ex George. And there is a novel called Period within this novel, which a Satanic band called the Omen have popularized among their Goth followers. A cabal of pornographic Webmasters and their online audience likewise celebrate the inner novel, which also features a cast of interchangeable young men, a nondescript town and its mysterious house. As the two narratives, the characters and locations mirror each other, it eventually becomes clear that reality is only a series of endless reflections. Cooper plumbs themes of obsession, love, identity, authorial paradox and communication breakdown with virtuosic narrative technique. And he succeeds in wringing insight and even humor from abhorrent visions of sadism and blackness. (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
In the final volume of his five-book cycle Gain, Cooper not so much explores but repeats the obsessions of his other works: teenage white boys, sexual fetishism and violence, murder, drug abuse, and exploitation. Here, he adds these elements to the mix: Satanism; a maraudering Goth band; Dennis, a character who is - you've guessed it - just like the author and meant, no doubt, to raise lit-crit issues about authorial responsibility; and, finally, Internet chat, tiresome but certainly realistic. Although always lacking traditional narrative momentum, Cooper's earlier workds, especially Try, had unmistakable power and intensity. Not so here. There are too many characters, and the writing is too fractured and too self-conscious. If the point is that we don't care about these kids, it's swiftly made. Cooper has committed his last transgressive act: boring the readr to death. . A delight, no doubt, for Cooper's many fans; others should skip it.
Brian Kenney, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Brian Kenney, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Copyright 2000 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
A little town made up of rickety shacks largely hidden away in some humongous oak trees that this thick fog enclosed almost all day sometimes so most residents stayed at home though a handful might walk up the dirt road each morning and buy some supplies while this strange deaf-mute teenager sat on the steps of the general store writing things in his notebook and glanced around worriedly every once in a while with this scrawl in his eyes thinking who knows what circuitous shit. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt
A little town made up of rickety shacks largely hidden away in some humongous oak trees that this thick fog enclosed almost all day sometimes so most residents stayed at home though a handful might walk up the dirt road each morning and buy some supplies while this strange deaf-mute teenager sat on the steps of the general store writing things in his notebook and glanced around worriedly every once in a while with this scrawl in his eyes thinking who knows what circuitous shit. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
horrified? heartbroken? confused?,
By erin a. caldwell (VA, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Period (Hardcover)
'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.
5.0 out of 5 stars
horrified? heartbroken? confused?,
By erin a. caldwell (VA, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Period (Hardcover)
'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.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Difficulty Defining and Destroying Desire,
By njr (Detroit, MI) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Period (Paperback)
"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.
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