Literary Criticism
Excellence in Scholarship and Learning
Excellence in Scholarship and Learning
Dennis Cooper
Writing at the Edge
Paul Hegarty is Lecturer in Cultural Studies, Department of French, University College Cork. He is the author of Georges Bataille, Jean Baudrillard and Noise/Music.
Danny Kennedy is a research graduate in the Department of English, University College Cork, and teaches modern literature and theory.
Dennis Cooper’s writing has acquired a ferocious
reputation for its bold experimentation, its transgressive content,
and its emotional content, which is both Romantic and touching,
whilst cold and hard-edged. For over twenty years Cooper has explored
the boundaries of human living, and sexuality’s centrality
to that living. The extreme situations he develops in his writing
bring out parts of gay experience that a consensual ‘community’
often shies away from, likewise the heterosexual mainstream. His
most important genre is undoubtedly fiction, but Cooper has also
written poetry, large quantities of journalistic works, notably
for Artforum and Spin, and, recently has had great
success and recognition with theatrical works.
…Writing at the Edge enters deep into the worlds Cooper fabricates – and into the coolness
of his expression. This challenging work is addressed by a group
of mostly young and new critical writers and academics who provide
creative responses to Cooper’s artistry. The contributions,
which cover the breadth of Cooper’s work, develop themes and
devices that advance his profound and disturbing world view. In
addition to the artistic responses, the topics in the critical pieces
range from sexuality in the suburbs, to neurological responses to
the work, via the limits and possibilities of bodies. Others look
at the implications of contemporary electronic communication as
outlined in Cooper’s recent work, or the use of space. Cooper’s
writing receives a multi-faceted contextualisation, and his literary
ideas are made accessible to any reader interested in learning why
Cooper is today regarded as one of the foremost writers in expressing
the psychological point behind the centrality of sexual expression.
| Hardback ISBN: | 978-1-84519-187-0 |
| Hardback Price: | £55.00 / $74.50 |
| Release Date: | March 2008 |
| Paperback ISBN: | 978-1-84519-552-6 |
| Paperback Price: | £25.00 / $34.95 |
| Release Date: | July 2012 |
| Page Extent / Format: | 240 pp. / 229 x 152 mm |
| Illustrated: | Colour plate section |
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Ugly Man
The Boy on the Far Left
Graduate Seminar
Santa Claus vs. Johnny Crawford
The Worst (1960–1971)
Three boys who thought experimental fiction was for pussies
MARTIN DINES
Wasteland of the Free: Suburbia and Autonomy in Dennis Cooper’s
Try
DAMON YOUNG
Skin Deep, or, Getting Inside (Your Head): My Loose Thread
TIMOTHY C. BAKER
The Whole is the Untrue: Experience and Community in The Sluts
DANNY KENNEDY
The Immature Narrative: Ferdydurkism in Closer
LEORA LEV
Next: Vampiric Epistolarity, Haunted Cyberspace, and Dennis
Cooper’s Positively Mutant Multimedia Offspring
NICK HUDSON
Summer of ’92
Summer Sigil (Bear’s Invocation)
The Under Boys
Matthew
Feed The Cabin Fever
Dream Ballad of Manyana
Colour Plates
ALEX ROSE
CL MARTIN
ASPEN MICHAEL TAYLOR
JEAN-PAUL CAUVIN
The Pope of Arranged Disaster
Good Evening
Birds and Strangers
Young Man, Here’s Trouble
Finished
Famished
The Adversary
MATIAS VIEGENER
Philosophy in the Bedroom: Pornography and Philosophy in Dennis
Cooper’s Writing
PIERRE-LOUIS PATOINE
Is This Text Fucking With My Brain? A Neuroaesthetic Reading
of Dennis Cooper’s Guide
DIARMUID E. HESTER
Plus d’un Georges: Dennis Cooper and the Work of Mourning
George Miles
PAUL HEGARTY
The Self Contained and its Emptying in Frisk
WAYNE KOESTENBAUM
Cardinal Virtues of Dennis Cooper
Interview with DENNIS COOPER
The Contributors
Index
Review Quotes to Follow
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