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George Miles Cycle #5
Period
Period - the end of the sentence, and the final statement of Dennis Cooper's five-book cycle. Provocative and controversial, Cooper has charted a fearlessly radical path exploring the themes of sex and death, youth culture and the search for the ineffable, perfect object of desire. Period is the culmination of that exploration and features strangely irresistible but interchangeable young men, passion that becomes murder, the lure of drugs, the culpability of authorship, and the inexact, haunting communication of feeling, all set against a backdrop of secret websites, Goth bands, pornography and Outsider art.
109 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2000
About the author
Dennis Cooper
106 books1,432 followersDennis Cooper was born on January 10, 1953. He grew up in the Southern California cities of Covina and Arcadia.
He wrote stories and poems from early age but got serious about writing at 15 after reading Arthur Rimbaud and The Marquis de Sade. He attended LA county public schools until the 8th grade when he transferred to a private school, Flintridge Preparatory School for Boys in La Canada, California, from which he was expelled in the 11th grade.
While at Flintridge, he met his friend George Miles, who would become his muse and the subject of much of his future writing. He attended Pasadena City College for two years, attending poetry writing workshops taught by the poets Ronald Koertge and Jerene Hewitt. He then attended one year of university at Pitzer College in Claremont, California, where he studied with the poet Bert Meyers.
In 1976, he founded Little Caesar Magazine and Press, which he ran until 1982. From 1980 to 1983 he was Director of Programming for the Beyond Baroque Literary/Art Center in Venice, California. From 1983 to 1985, he lived in New York City.
In 1985, he moved to Amsterdam for two and a half years, where he began his ten year long project, The George Miles Cycle, an interconnected sequence of five novels that includes Closer, Frisk, Try, Guide, and Period.
His post-George Miles Cycle novels include My Loose Thread, The Sluts and God, Jr.
Other works include the short-story collections Wrong and Ugly Man, poetry collections The Dream Police and The Weaklings, as well as the recent Smothered in Hugs: Essays, Interviews, Feedback, and Obituaries.
Dennis Cooper currently spends his time between Los Angeles and Paris.
He wrote stories and poems from early age but got serious about writing at 15 after reading Arthur Rimbaud and The Marquis de Sade. He attended LA county public schools until the 8th grade when he transferred to a private school, Flintridge Preparatory School for Boys in La Canada, California, from which he was expelled in the 11th grade.
While at Flintridge, he met his friend George Miles, who would become his muse and the subject of much of his future writing. He attended Pasadena City College for two years, attending poetry writing workshops taught by the poets Ronald Koertge and Jerene Hewitt. He then attended one year of university at Pitzer College in Claremont, California, where he studied with the poet Bert Meyers.
In 1976, he founded Little Caesar Magazine and Press, which he ran until 1982. From 1980 to 1983 he was Director of Programming for the Beyond Baroque Literary/Art Center in Venice, California. From 1983 to 1985, he lived in New York City.
In 1985, he moved to Amsterdam for two and a half years, where he began his ten year long project, The George Miles Cycle, an interconnected sequence of five novels that includes Closer, Frisk, Try, Guide, and Period.
His post-George Miles Cycle novels include My Loose Thread, The Sluts and God, Jr.
Other works include the short-story collections Wrong and Ugly Man, poetry collections The Dream Police and The Weaklings, as well as the recent Smothered in Hugs: Essays, Interviews, Feedback, and Obituaries.
Dennis Cooper currently spends his time between Los Angeles and Paris.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 97 reviews
June 9, 2024
The final part of the George Miles Cycle vividly illuminates how Cooper's psyche is haunted by the love of his life whom he lost to mental illness and subsequently suicide: In a spectacle of mirror images, the story revolves around a writer who builds a literary fun house of worship for one George Miles, who as a fictional character then roams this house in various iterations. While this aspect of the text is rendered in a somber, longing tone ruminating youth, loss, and pain, there is a juxtaposing arc which, for once, satirizes the obsessions that determine the pentalogy: The novels in the cycle show extreme sexualized violence, drug use, alienation, loneliness, and depravity, so for a change, "Period" introduces a Satan-worshiping rock band on a murder spree whose members spit out pseudo-existentialist cringe content - it's a meta-commentary that counters the psychosexual imagery Cooper has up to this point employed to fictionalize his pain regarding the loss of George.
The five-part George Miles Cycle is more than the sum of its parts, and the more books I read, the deeper I understand how Cooper is using the novels as an exploration of an alienated consciousness and subconsciousness. Often, reality and hallucination / fantasy fall into each other, and the transgressive nature is not unsettling because of the extreme scenes that are depicted in detail (not so much in "Period", but oh boy the other parts), but because of the exploration of a disturbed mind under duress.
"Period" entails poetry that can be read in context of A Season in Hell (Cooper is an Arthur Rimbaud fanboy) and, like Guide, partly foreshadows The Sluts. As it is the mirror piece to Closer, it also tackles obsession with some parallel narrative methods. Still, the heart of the pentalogy, Try, is my favorite part, as it ponders one of Cooper's main concerns, friendship, in such a heartbreaking way.
20 years after the George Miles Cycle, Cooper published a more autobiographical text about his beloved George, I Wished, which appears as a coda to the cycle. Of course I'll read it next.
The five-part George Miles Cycle is more than the sum of its parts, and the more books I read, the deeper I understand how Cooper is using the novels as an exploration of an alienated consciousness and subconsciousness. Often, reality and hallucination / fantasy fall into each other, and the transgressive nature is not unsettling because of the extreme scenes that are depicted in detail (not so much in "Period", but oh boy the other parts), but because of the exploration of a disturbed mind under duress.
"Period" entails poetry that can be read in context of A Season in Hell (Cooper is an Arthur Rimbaud fanboy) and, like Guide, partly foreshadows The Sluts. As it is the mirror piece to Closer, it also tackles obsession with some parallel narrative methods. Still, the heart of the pentalogy, Try, is my favorite part, as it ponders one of Cooper's main concerns, friendship, in such a heartbreaking way.
20 years after the George Miles Cycle, Cooper published a more autobiographical text about his beloved George, I Wished, which appears as a coda to the cycle. Of course I'll read it next.
November 19, 2013
Five stars for the book, five stars for the 5-part cycle it closes.
Writing in another thread, I just realized that The George Miles Cycle, may very well be a definitive work on the cultural experience of the end of the 20th century. Taken as a whole, little else in recent memory is able to so fearlessly and complexly process its times -- media saturation, desire, alienation. Mirrored across so many formats, experience is reduced and repackaged as image and representation, divorced from context and realistic fulfillment, leaving us plunging in isolation after ideals left warped or unattainable. Even that the cycle is entirely framed in a minimalist pop melange of 90s youth subculture and celebrity worship actually strengthens the argument: what now has a deceptive gloss of frivolity may form a crisp insight and self-diagnosis for future anthropologists. Even the striking rawness (emotional, moral, descriptive) of Cooper's vision may be more readily and widely processed as time passes (though I hope nothing subsequent can entirely rob this of its inherent danger).
But whatever the future, Cooper is here and highly relevant now, and the George Miles Cycle may be his keystone work. Though his subsequent novels continue to evolve into arguably further complexities, this is his comprehensive vision. And it deserves to be read now.
Closing the cycle symmetrically across from Closer, this is the other book to deal directly with George Miles. But is it the same George Miles, or a mirror-world varient, as Period itself mirrors across its middle into symmetrical chapters, reversed arc, shadow duplicates of its characters as they fail to find resolution in either form. Cooper has suggested in interviews that Miles is the real inspiration behind his work, "the only one [he] would have wanted to protect", but in the subtle confusion of fact and fiction throughout the cycle (a confused and compromised authorial "Dennis" appears twice, in different forms, in parts 2 and 4, for instance) can even that be believed? In particular it seems too perfect that "George Miles" should so closely resemble "Georges Melies", that progenitor of the filmed version of represented image so relevant here and to the entire work.
The actual plot here, as with any Cooper, is harrowing and grippingly engaging. A ghostly fog-bound town, murderous Satanists, a novel of hypnotic obsession, mysterious brutalities, amnesia, mirror-worlds. Cooper's books can seem to consist of little but plot in fact, until it becomes clear that every lurid genre element contributes to an elegant conceptual map that underpins the whole.
It's short, but dense. It's the last part, but bites its own tail in endless ourobouric renewal. As such it's a fine starting point. In any event, it's amazing.
Writing in another thread, I just realized that The George Miles Cycle, may very well be a definitive work on the cultural experience of the end of the 20th century. Taken as a whole, little else in recent memory is able to so fearlessly and complexly process its times -- media saturation, desire, alienation. Mirrored across so many formats, experience is reduced and repackaged as image and representation, divorced from context and realistic fulfillment, leaving us plunging in isolation after ideals left warped or unattainable. Even that the cycle is entirely framed in a minimalist pop melange of 90s youth subculture and celebrity worship actually strengthens the argument: what now has a deceptive gloss of frivolity may form a crisp insight and self-diagnosis for future anthropologists. Even the striking rawness (emotional, moral, descriptive) of Cooper's vision may be more readily and widely processed as time passes (though I hope nothing subsequent can entirely rob this of its inherent danger).
But whatever the future, Cooper is here and highly relevant now, and the George Miles Cycle may be his keystone work. Though his subsequent novels continue to evolve into arguably further complexities, this is his comprehensive vision. And it deserves to be read now.
Closing the cycle symmetrically across from Closer, this is the other book to deal directly with George Miles. But is it the same George Miles, or a mirror-world varient, as Period itself mirrors across its middle into symmetrical chapters, reversed arc, shadow duplicates of its characters as they fail to find resolution in either form. Cooper has suggested in interviews that Miles is the real inspiration behind his work, "the only one [he] would have wanted to protect", but in the subtle confusion of fact and fiction throughout the cycle (a confused and compromised authorial "Dennis" appears twice, in different forms, in parts 2 and 4, for instance) can even that be believed? In particular it seems too perfect that "George Miles" should so closely resemble "Georges Melies", that progenitor of the filmed version of represented image so relevant here and to the entire work.
The actual plot here, as with any Cooper, is harrowing and grippingly engaging. A ghostly fog-bound town, murderous Satanists, a novel of hypnotic obsession, mysterious brutalities, amnesia, mirror-worlds. Cooper's books can seem to consist of little but plot in fact, until it becomes clear that every lurid genre element contributes to an elegant conceptual map that underpins the whole.
It's short, but dense. It's the last part, but bites its own tail in endless ourobouric renewal. As such it's a fine starting point. In any event, it's amazing.
June 21, 2017
Dennis Cooper is a fucking genius. Shooting yourself in the head midway through anal sex never sounded so divine. A total puzzle of a novel, and I’ll never fully solve it - but who fucking cares? Pure bliss.
March 13, 2024
I was very entertained and inspired by the abstract quality of this book. I can say I was quite confused but I think I got the overall general sense of it. I enjoyed the poetry and the style, and the overall feeling of suburban ennui. I am reading the George miles cycle out of order so maybe I’m missing bits. This is a unique book- I’ve never been exposed to something like it.
August 8, 2021
[UPDATE: All five of my "George Miles" reviews, including this one, are now collected and available as a standalone book at Amazon!]
2021 reads, #47. This is volume #5 of my five-book read this month of the classic LGBTQ "George Miles" cycle by Dennis Cooper, one of the heralded "New Transgressive" authors of early Generation X that also included Poppy Z. Brite, Kathy Acker, Bret Easton Ellis and others (but for a lot more details, see my review of book #1 in the series, 1989's Closer; book #2, 1991's Frisk; book #3, 1994's Try; and book #4, 1997's Guide). Here as we finally finish out the series, it's worth asking why the entire cycle is titled after some unknown person named George Miles in the first place, given that he never actually appears as a character in any of the books, and that all five of the volumes seem to be about entirely different sets of people living entirely different sets of lives that never overlap? The answer, as Cooper divulged at the end of the previous novel, and has since elaborated on in numerous interviews, is that Miles was actually a very real person from his actual true life, a 13-year-old he knew back when he was 17 who he developed a debilitating yet chaste crush on, not returned by George although apparently they did have some sort of weird awkward tryst once when both of them were almost thirty years old, a decade later. Cooper's young feelings for Miles were intense and scary to him, influenced by being exposed at an early age to violent pornography, which he found himself responding to physically even though emotionally and morally he was repulsed by it (apparently having a recurring fantasy that we see pop up in these books again and again as well, that George was so impossibly and angelically beautiful that the only way Cooper could respond was with this deep desire to physically destroy him, as a way of internalizing this beauty into himself in much the same way Jeffrey Dahmer did); and apparently all five of these novels were attempts by Cooper to work out these feelings and try to come to some sort of resolution about them, which years later he admitted in further interviews that he simply failed at, now in his sixties still as confused about these intense feelings as he was way back when he was 17.
That's all fine and good, and in the first four novels of the cycle, they at least feel somewhat connected, in that all of them take place in the vacuous suburbs of Los Angeles, and all of the characters are described as looking virtually identical (think Keanu Reeves circa mid-1980s, or the bassist from Blur circa mid-1990s, two specific references that Cooper himself makes in the novels), and all of their drugs of choice vary within the limited range of marijuana, downers and heroin, and all of them are vaguely into the same '90s Generation X pop-culture (zines, Husker Du, Guided By Voices, outre artists like Joel-Peter Witkin, etc.), and all of the books are written in a fairly straightforward style, some clearer than others but all of them at least traditional narratives that take us from point A to B and then C. So that makes it all the more baffling, then, that to close out the series on the cusp of the 21st century, Cooper takes this huge left turn into uncharted territory, and sets this last novel among rednecks in the Deep South who all take crystal meth and fashion themselves as Satanists. And not only that, but now the narrative isn't straightforward at all, but rather deliberately artsy and super-pretentious, a sort of unsatisfying blend of bad poetry and bad prose that makes these circular loops in logic and plot, featuring literally unreadable tripe on every other page like abstract poetry presented as timecoded transcripts of an insane person talking to themselves, and sometimes pages and pages and pages of pure looping dialogue in the spirit of something like Waiting for Godot, to say nothing of the sections whose margins have been squished so far in that the text now only exists as this barely readable one-inch ribbon right down the center of the otherwise blank page. To be precise, it doesn't feel like a George Miles novel at all, but that Cooper just happened to be halfway through a brand-new, much more experimental book, then suddenly decided one day that he just wanted to be done with the subject of George Miles altogether for good, and that the turn of the millennium seemed like as symbolically good a time as any to do so, so he just arbitrarily declared this "the last George Miles novel" then ran off to cash his advance from Grove Press before the check bounced.
It's important to remember, though, that Cooper was actually a widely published poet for an entire decade before he ever published prose for the first time; and not just a poet, but a poet who loved the abstract, arty nature of the avant-garde, writing in his young years for such publications as Artforum, curating evenings of performance art in the hippie California town of Venice, and once devoting an entire issue of a self-published magazine to the work of Arthur Rimbaud. And it's also important to remember that Cooper was almost 50 when he finally published this last book in the cycle, now a pop-culture figure himself whose previous two commercial hits had made him a mainstay among hipsters at SPIN magazine and MTV, and as far as I can tell was feeling quite ambivalent at that point about the brain-dead morons who kept snapping their fingers and demanding more of the kiddie-porn snuff-film dog-and-pony show that he had become somewhat cartoonishly known for by then. (Clap clap! "Make with the Tarantino already, Cooper!" Clap clap!) As someone who's in my early fifties right now myself, and who has been similarly going through a period of weary ambivalence about the monetization of creativity, I can attest how tempting it is at this particular age to really take a step back and reconnect with the pretentious yet earnest teenaged artist you once were, public reaction be damned and public paychecks be damned; so I think it's entirely fair to assume that a certain amount of that was going on with Cooper at this point in his life too, and that the switch into much more abstract and challenging writing here can be largely attributed to that, especially given the fact that we talked about last time, about how nearly all the New Transgressive authors during this time period went through spiritual crises as they approached the new millennium and the end of their cartoon sex-and-violence popularity, and how all of them came out the other side of 9/11 suddenly talking about Jesus and Buddha and Hillary Clinton needing a village, and so forth and so on.
Still, though, that doesn't necessarily make a novel good; and let's be honest, this is a real stinker, really only the size of a short story once you remove all the masturbatory abstract poetry that Cooper has the gall to expect you to read like it's a three-act plot. It's very much a case of this series ending with a whimper instead of a bang; and it's telling, I think, that Cooper has only published four more traditional novels in the 21 years since, now spending the vast majority of his time and energy on avant-garde plays, experimental fiction projects, and collaborations with various musicians and filmmakers, including his own imprint through the beloved Akashic Books that has helped introduce an entire new generation of transgressive authors to a general audience. You can very much see the start of Cooper running out of enthusiasm for traditional novels here in this book; and to be honest, I don't really think it should be required reading at all for those who are interested in the first four novels in the George Miles series, especially since he so nicely wraps up the mystery of who Miles is at the very end of the previous book, which feels much more like a natural bookend to this series than this frustrating mess of a fifth volume. Although I'm glad I went to the trouble of finally reading all these books for the first time in my life, after him being such an oft-referenced pop-culture figure in my own Generation X '90s youth, I can pretty honestly say that I'll never pick up a Dennis Cooper book again; an interesting journey that taught me a lot about the rise and fall of transgressive literature at the bizarre, chaotic end of the Postmodernist era, but a series of novels that ultimately I just did not enjoy as simple reading experiences in any way whatsoever.
2021 reads, #47. This is volume #5 of my five-book read this month of the classic LGBTQ "George Miles" cycle by Dennis Cooper, one of the heralded "New Transgressive" authors of early Generation X that also included Poppy Z. Brite, Kathy Acker, Bret Easton Ellis and others (but for a lot more details, see my review of book #1 in the series, 1989's Closer; book #2, 1991's Frisk; book #3, 1994's Try; and book #4, 1997's Guide). Here as we finally finish out the series, it's worth asking why the entire cycle is titled after some unknown person named George Miles in the first place, given that he never actually appears as a character in any of the books, and that all five of the volumes seem to be about entirely different sets of people living entirely different sets of lives that never overlap? The answer, as Cooper divulged at the end of the previous novel, and has since elaborated on in numerous interviews, is that Miles was actually a very real person from his actual true life, a 13-year-old he knew back when he was 17 who he developed a debilitating yet chaste crush on, not returned by George although apparently they did have some sort of weird awkward tryst once when both of them were almost thirty years old, a decade later. Cooper's young feelings for Miles were intense and scary to him, influenced by being exposed at an early age to violent pornography, which he found himself responding to physically even though emotionally and morally he was repulsed by it (apparently having a recurring fantasy that we see pop up in these books again and again as well, that George was so impossibly and angelically beautiful that the only way Cooper could respond was with this deep desire to physically destroy him, as a way of internalizing this beauty into himself in much the same way Jeffrey Dahmer did); and apparently all five of these novels were attempts by Cooper to work out these feelings and try to come to some sort of resolution about them, which years later he admitted in further interviews that he simply failed at, now in his sixties still as confused about these intense feelings as he was way back when he was 17.
That's all fine and good, and in the first four novels of the cycle, they at least feel somewhat connected, in that all of them take place in the vacuous suburbs of Los Angeles, and all of the characters are described as looking virtually identical (think Keanu Reeves circa mid-1980s, or the bassist from Blur circa mid-1990s, two specific references that Cooper himself makes in the novels), and all of their drugs of choice vary within the limited range of marijuana, downers and heroin, and all of them are vaguely into the same '90s Generation X pop-culture (zines, Husker Du, Guided By Voices, outre artists like Joel-Peter Witkin, etc.), and all of the books are written in a fairly straightforward style, some clearer than others but all of them at least traditional narratives that take us from point A to B and then C. So that makes it all the more baffling, then, that to close out the series on the cusp of the 21st century, Cooper takes this huge left turn into uncharted territory, and sets this last novel among rednecks in the Deep South who all take crystal meth and fashion themselves as Satanists. And not only that, but now the narrative isn't straightforward at all, but rather deliberately artsy and super-pretentious, a sort of unsatisfying blend of bad poetry and bad prose that makes these circular loops in logic and plot, featuring literally unreadable tripe on every other page like abstract poetry presented as timecoded transcripts of an insane person talking to themselves, and sometimes pages and pages and pages of pure looping dialogue in the spirit of something like Waiting for Godot, to say nothing of the sections whose margins have been squished so far in that the text now only exists as this barely readable one-inch ribbon right down the center of the otherwise blank page. To be precise, it doesn't feel like a George Miles novel at all, but that Cooper just happened to be halfway through a brand-new, much more experimental book, then suddenly decided one day that he just wanted to be done with the subject of George Miles altogether for good, and that the turn of the millennium seemed like as symbolically good a time as any to do so, so he just arbitrarily declared this "the last George Miles novel" then ran off to cash his advance from Grove Press before the check bounced.
It's important to remember, though, that Cooper was actually a widely published poet for an entire decade before he ever published prose for the first time; and not just a poet, but a poet who loved the abstract, arty nature of the avant-garde, writing in his young years for such publications as Artforum, curating evenings of performance art in the hippie California town of Venice, and once devoting an entire issue of a self-published magazine to the work of Arthur Rimbaud. And it's also important to remember that Cooper was almost 50 when he finally published this last book in the cycle, now a pop-culture figure himself whose previous two commercial hits had made him a mainstay among hipsters at SPIN magazine and MTV, and as far as I can tell was feeling quite ambivalent at that point about the brain-dead morons who kept snapping their fingers and demanding more of the kiddie-porn snuff-film dog-and-pony show that he had become somewhat cartoonishly known for by then. (Clap clap! "Make with the Tarantino already, Cooper!" Clap clap!) As someone who's in my early fifties right now myself, and who has been similarly going through a period of weary ambivalence about the monetization of creativity, I can attest how tempting it is at this particular age to really take a step back and reconnect with the pretentious yet earnest teenaged artist you once were, public reaction be damned and public paychecks be damned; so I think it's entirely fair to assume that a certain amount of that was going on with Cooper at this point in his life too, and that the switch into much more abstract and challenging writing here can be largely attributed to that, especially given the fact that we talked about last time, about how nearly all the New Transgressive authors during this time period went through spiritual crises as they approached the new millennium and the end of their cartoon sex-and-violence popularity, and how all of them came out the other side of 9/11 suddenly talking about Jesus and Buddha and Hillary Clinton needing a village, and so forth and so on.
Still, though, that doesn't necessarily make a novel good; and let's be honest, this is a real stinker, really only the size of a short story once you remove all the masturbatory abstract poetry that Cooper has the gall to expect you to read like it's a three-act plot. It's very much a case of this series ending with a whimper instead of a bang; and it's telling, I think, that Cooper has only published four more traditional novels in the 21 years since, now spending the vast majority of his time and energy on avant-garde plays, experimental fiction projects, and collaborations with various musicians and filmmakers, including his own imprint through the beloved Akashic Books that has helped introduce an entire new generation of transgressive authors to a general audience. You can very much see the start of Cooper running out of enthusiasm for traditional novels here in this book; and to be honest, I don't really think it should be required reading at all for those who are interested in the first four novels in the George Miles series, especially since he so nicely wraps up the mystery of who Miles is at the very end of the previous book, which feels much more like a natural bookend to this series than this frustrating mess of a fifth volume. Although I'm glad I went to the trouble of finally reading all these books for the first time in my life, after him being such an oft-referenced pop-culture figure in my own Generation X '90s youth, I can pretty honestly say that I'll never pick up a Dennis Cooper book again; an interesting journey that taught me a lot about the rise and fall of transgressive literature at the bizarre, chaotic end of the Postmodernist era, but a series of novels that ultimately I just did not enjoy as simple reading experiences in any way whatsoever.
June 2, 2012
Bill & Ted's Serial-Killing Adventure, a blandly-written attempt at meaningless shock, gesturing toward banal ideas. To contrive some interest in the zero-dimensional characters and cliched, slack writing the author attempts a number of half-baked tricks with mirror-worlds of reality/fiction and reversed names, stories-within-the-story, blurring mythology and factuality, the loss of identity in the anonymously virtual world of the internet (a new-ish thing, when this was published)... all to zero effect, except on undemanding critics who have wasted too many hours in seminars about Bataille and Blanchot. Cooper himself is the untalented, incompetent artist noted on pg.95, and his fans are the Goth kids who confuse "intricacy as enlightenment" (pg.57). Like Stewart Home, a chancer embracing non-conventional modes because he has no skill and nothing to say.
December 29, 2023
copper’s autobiography at its most fractured and detached until it becomes straightforwardly poetic. the most beautiful and profound eulogy i’ve ever read
July 31, 2023
absolutely insane ouroboros of a novel/cycle. nothing will ever come close
— "I get sick of fiction.
I’ll be sick of George
too, I’m sure, but
never of myself. I
hate how that works."
— "I get sick of fiction.
I’ll be sick of George
too, I’m sure, but
never of myself. I
hate how that works."
July 19, 2021
And just like that, the George Miles Cycle collapses in on itself, leaving nothing behind but ghosts. Period is a beautiful, poignant, haunting close to the sequence of novels that preceded it, an exceedingly mysterious and enigmatic text that Cooper has referred to as “a disappearing act”. While Period contains the superficial indicators of Cooper’s work (apathetic and lovelorn teenage boys, gay sex, murder, death wishes, metal music, etc.), the content has by this point been so exhausted by the other books in the cycle that it’s hollowed itself out, lingering as an insubstantial afterimage: only the skeletal structure remains. It’s like an eerie, enigmatic poem, rife with uncanny imagery and secrets hidden deep within its formal hall of mirrors; more than that, though, it’s a painfully sad elegy to the love of the author’s life, a memorial in words that tries fruitlessly to resolve Cooper’s feelings for George. The resounding impression is one of immense grief and failure. It’s astonishing, and deeply moving.
A fitting end to a series of books that has meant the world to me.
A fitting end to a series of books that has meant the world to me.
December 20, 2011
I am uncomfortable with the fact that I read this and other Dennis Cooper in high school. Reading it now, I might be able to intellectually engage with the text on a level I couldn't at the time, but I really don't want to. The stuff he deals with is just scary (more so in other books than Period), no matter his "disquieting genius" of a literary style. Goodreads describes Period as an exploration into youth culture, and as a youth reading it, I used it as a way to explore the darker limits of what a human being is capable of creating. Having read Cooper's work, I can no longer bear any of the "dark voyeurism" that is so popular nowadays - Dexter, Criminal Minds, all those other myriad books and shows and movies about serial killers and violence - it is unsettling to experience, and equally so that people are so open about enjoying this disturbing media, clearly for that voyeurism of seeing how horrifically terrible another person can be. I guess I can be thankful that I at least got over that phase in high school, though I am ashamed that people I knew at the time saw me reading books like Cooper's, and who knows what they thought I was getting out of it.
December 26, 2023
”The sun’s creepy, a hard piece of scalding red shit that has no consciousness of its own, so Nate can’t tell it anything real like, Go away. Everything should have a mind. So he could communicate with it. So he could say, Grass, get taller and cover me better. Or … School bus, stop there, right this second, and dump all your passengers on the road so I can fuck, rob, or kill them. He wouldn’t mind if the bus said, No way, you’re too fucking lowly a jerk to waste time on. Or if the sun said, Oh go ahead and burn up, you asshole. Or if he could say to this road, Hey, can you glisten a little? ’Cos that would look so unbelievable. And it would glisten for Nate, to be nice. Then it might say, Okay, now you walk on my surface awhile. And Nate would, even if it got him arrested. ’Cos the road is so peaceful or something.”
December 28, 2023
?????? I think this was incredible ??????
its like if Cooper wrote a novelization of Mulholland Drive. a novel whose form is perfectly mirrored, reflective.
unlike Cooper's other novels, Period's experimental, dreamlike narration doesnt have a real world referant. you cant peel back the layers of fantasy and definitively say "this is what happened." instead, fantasy and desire circle and circle each other and make a dream world with its own mythos where nothing is real but beautiful young boys and the wish to love them by destroying them. a perfect end to the George Miles Cycle.
its like if Cooper wrote a novelization of Mulholland Drive. a novel whose form is perfectly mirrored, reflective.
unlike Cooper's other novels, Period's experimental, dreamlike narration doesnt have a real world referant. you cant peel back the layers of fantasy and definitively say "this is what happened." instead, fantasy and desire circle and circle each other and make a dream world with its own mythos where nothing is real but beautiful young boys and the wish to love them by destroying them. a perfect end to the George Miles Cycle.
September 15, 2023
horrific and beautiful and all-consuming. the best of the best.
December 9, 2022
“Maybe the sun’s an incompetent artist like him, who drew the world in hopes of replicating some idea a million times better. Maybe they were drawn on the earth in hopes of nailing some love too profound or psychotic. Maybe he’s a sketch of someone he doesn’t start to resemble, being too crude relative to the sun’s imagination. Maybe…”
January 25, 2024
"So there’s someone exactly like you. In that mirror. Am I right? Another you. You like you were before that awful thing happened."
What if we all killed ourselves during sex
What if we all killed ourselves during sex
August 10, 2013
Well, I read this really fast, and never read the other (4?) books before it in the series. I'd say it would make more sense if I hadn't read it that way, but I doubt it. It made enough sense for me anyway. This book gave me one of the closest approximations to the feeling of semi-dreaming right before you wake up. When you're not asleep and dreaming anymore, but you're not in touch with your surroundings, either. Minus the killings, granted. Definitely minus the obsession with some connection between killing, sex, memory and photography, which seems to run through this book.
I noticed that the whole thing has a sort of tone, rhythm and perfect/crazy word-choice that's more poetry or songy than novely. Parts of it sound a lot like Coil lyrics. Through the whole opening (which I love is entitled "Chapter 1" when every other chapter has some specific name), I was hearing "Bad Moon Rising". And when I think about it, it's clear that the themes, even that tone is pretty damn close to those songs ("Brave Men Run", "Society Is A Hole", etc). Which was nice, for me.
What I like best is the way Cooper keeps bringing you back to the vulnerability of telling someone you love them. The book makes it clear that this is more difficult, more significant in the end than all the Transgressive events it describes over and over like a Lydia Lunch spoken word. In fact, I wonder whether all of those trappings are not there just to offset the thing about love and vulnerability.
A lot of this sounds very much like In Watermelon Sugar. Fortunately, this book actually makes some sort of a point. The line about mistaking intricacy for enlightenment, and how we crave novels that are surface-complex and deep-simple shows that Cooper is well aware of the dangers of writing this kind of book (that it becomes just an intellectual game to write it/read it). I spent like a day trying to "figure out" that other book when I first read it, but I don't think I'll do that for this one. It's pretty satisfying anyway.
I noticed that the whole thing has a sort of tone, rhythm and perfect/crazy word-choice that's more poetry or songy than novely. Parts of it sound a lot like Coil lyrics. Through the whole opening (which I love is entitled "Chapter 1" when every other chapter has some specific name), I was hearing "Bad Moon Rising". And when I think about it, it's clear that the themes, even that tone is pretty damn close to those songs ("Brave Men Run", "Society Is A Hole", etc). Which was nice, for me.
What I like best is the way Cooper keeps bringing you back to the vulnerability of telling someone you love them. The book makes it clear that this is more difficult, more significant in the end than all the Transgressive events it describes over and over like a Lydia Lunch spoken word. In fact, I wonder whether all of those trappings are not there just to offset the thing about love and vulnerability.
A lot of this sounds very much like In Watermelon Sugar. Fortunately, this book actually makes some sort of a point. The line about mistaking intricacy for enlightenment, and how we crave novels that are surface-complex and deep-simple shows that Cooper is well aware of the dangers of writing this kind of book (that it becomes just an intellectual game to write it/read it). I spent like a day trying to "figure out" that other book when I first read it, but I don't think I'll do that for this one. It's pretty satisfying anyway.
October 11, 2011
I was at a wedding yesterday and had this book underneath my seat when one of the other guests who I just met for the first time was making small talk and asked me what book it was. I was like, "Oh it's just something to read on the train and the bus, etc. The author is Dennis Cooper," but then she asked what it was about and I said, "Oh did I say Dennis Cooper? I meant to say it's, um, The DaVinci Code." I don't know what this book is "about". What was I going to say? "Well there's some murders and a band and they talk to Satan."
Why do I love Dennis Cooper books? They're gay (and, oh yeah, I'm gay - HAPPY COMING OUT DAY!!!!!). They're raw. They defy convention. They're ideological. They're reasonably brief. They're transgressive. They're ultimately beautiful in their own shitty way. Dennis Cooper books explore things which I feel the need to explore and for all those reasons, I love Dennis Cooper books.
Why do I love Dennis Cooper books? They're gay (and, oh yeah, I'm gay - HAPPY COMING OUT DAY!!!!!). They're raw. They defy convention. They're ideological. They're reasonably brief. They're transgressive. They're ultimately beautiful in their own shitty way. Dennis Cooper books explore things which I feel the need to explore and for all those reasons, I love Dennis Cooper books.
December 16, 2022
Period is an aggressively abstract scrap of bizarro slam poetry, pissing over the edge of self-parody, so as such, it finally persuaded me that a serious share of Cooper's onanistic psychotherapy is a monomaniacal scrutiny of a single trauma that he tragically nurtured into his personal Ouroboros - accursed psyche cycles, incapable of expansion.
"Nate lies by the road. It weaves off into the mountains out there. And it reeks. He’s been here for hours, partly obscured by the brush, awaiting the right car to pass, and a nice passerby. Someone in elegant clothes, whom he can fleece. God forgive him, he’s broke. The sun’s creepy, a hard piece of scalding red shit that has no consciousness of its own, so Nate can’t tell it anything real like, Go away. Everything should have a mind. So he could communicate with it. So he could say, Grass, get taller and cover me better. Or … School bus, stop here, right this second, and dump all your passengers out on the road so I can fuck, rob, or kill them. He wouldn’t mind if the bus said, No way, you’re too fucking lowly a jerk to waste time on. Or if the sun said, Oh go ahead and burn up, you asshole. Or if he could say to this road, Hey, can you glisten a little? ’Cos that would look so unbelievable. And it would glisten for Nate, to be nice. Then it might say, Okay, now you walk on my surface awhile. And Nate would, even if it got him arrested. ’Cos the road is so peaceful or something. Anyway, everything understanding everything. People’s guns saying, No, not him, asshole, kill him. And Nate’s pistol would swing itself around and do the shooting for him. And he’d just go, Well, hey, I didn’t make the decision. And his gun would go, Yeah, I made the fucking decision. And what could the cops do? Melt down the gun? Well, they could. And maybe that would be sad, ’cos if the gun had a mind, Nate just might be attached to it. Shit, he can’t win. There’s no way the world’s ever gonna be totally perfect, unless nothing and no one had minds. If everyone just kind of lay there, only moving around when the wind kicked them up, or if the rain got too hard, or if there was a flood. Natural things. Nate would lie in the grass here for days, weeks, spacing out, then some storm would move him twenty feet that way, and his world would change, and he’d get to know new blades of grass and new dirt and new flies or whatever. He wouldn’t die, just change. Dry out, get wet, smell one way, smell another way. No boredom, no love, no fear, no being broke, no Leon, no … nothing. Maybe that’s what will happen at world’s end, after one of the millions of viruses sneaks in folks’ bodies, and no one, no matter how total a genius, can cure them. They’ll just … collapse where they are, and never see, feel, or do anything, and eventually everyone will lose sight of each other’s existence, and just become … what? Lumps of nature. In Nate’s case, a small, smelly thing lying out in some brush. A stupid thing drifting through history, no worse or better than trees or the bugs or his gun. Oh, he longs for that day. But until then he just loves this road."
"Etan’s sort of asleep by the scribbly dirt road. He’s been out here for days, smelling rank when the sky’s blue, and very bunched up when it’s starred and cold. How can he possibly know shit? That’s the lame-ass conclusion he’s reached, drawn by eerily dumb, revolving thoughts. Everything’s just a result of the sun gradually eating the earth, he guesses. Even that idea’s too rigorous for his brain. He’s nothing much, a smalltown boy overly stuck in his head, which tends to refine one fantasy about The Omen and him, ’cos they’re the only tape he owns. As far as he’s concerned, they’ve driven down this exact road, picked him up, murdered him so many times that the picture’s worn down to what’s just so painfully personal to him. He can’t come anymore. He’s all raw. The batteries died in his boombox. Now it’s him and the world again. He can’t ignore the fact, seeing as how it’s so gigantically around him. Not just the shit he can see. He means the world down this road, past those far off, unclimbable, fogged-over mountains. A place where folks merely exist, he figures. Like the trees, bushes, grass, et cetera, growing unevenly on either side of his head. Maybe they’d move around more, but less meaningfully than the stupidest animal he’s ever seen in the woods, even ants. That’s ideal. Not wanting anything, even to eat food or shit it back out. No one would care how they look, much less how any other guys look. No one would want to screw, love, or kill Etan, nor would he want to do that to anyone else. There’d just be him, and a shack, and his stuff, and everything would be able to talk, and every sentence would trigger appropriate words in return, that’s all. Like in some cartoon he saw. So his shirt would be as cool as his friends. It could fascinate him, or else he wouldn’t give a shit if it was boring. If it just talked about what it was made from, or how weird it felt to be faded or ripped. Everything would have the same consciousness, and pretty close to the same flat voice. No individual minds, no hearts, no instinctual shit, just movements and ideas that fit in a pattern too simple to notice. Maybe that pattern would be the thing folks call peace, if anyone ever thought about peace, which they wouldn’t. That’s a pathetic thought, he’s very well aware. He just needs to eat."
"Nate lies by the road. It weaves off into the mountains out there. And it reeks. He’s been here for hours, partly obscured by the brush, awaiting the right car to pass, and a nice passerby. Someone in elegant clothes, whom he can fleece. God forgive him, he’s broke. The sun’s creepy, a hard piece of scalding red shit that has no consciousness of its own, so Nate can’t tell it anything real like, Go away. Everything should have a mind. So he could communicate with it. So he could say, Grass, get taller and cover me better. Or … School bus, stop here, right this second, and dump all your passengers out on the road so I can fuck, rob, or kill them. He wouldn’t mind if the bus said, No way, you’re too fucking lowly a jerk to waste time on. Or if the sun said, Oh go ahead and burn up, you asshole. Or if he could say to this road, Hey, can you glisten a little? ’Cos that would look so unbelievable. And it would glisten for Nate, to be nice. Then it might say, Okay, now you walk on my surface awhile. And Nate would, even if it got him arrested. ’Cos the road is so peaceful or something. Anyway, everything understanding everything. People’s guns saying, No, not him, asshole, kill him. And Nate’s pistol would swing itself around and do the shooting for him. And he’d just go, Well, hey, I didn’t make the decision. And his gun would go, Yeah, I made the fucking decision. And what could the cops do? Melt down the gun? Well, they could. And maybe that would be sad, ’cos if the gun had a mind, Nate just might be attached to it. Shit, he can’t win. There’s no way the world’s ever gonna be totally perfect, unless nothing and no one had minds. If everyone just kind of lay there, only moving around when the wind kicked them up, or if the rain got too hard, or if there was a flood. Natural things. Nate would lie in the grass here for days, weeks, spacing out, then some storm would move him twenty feet that way, and his world would change, and he’d get to know new blades of grass and new dirt and new flies or whatever. He wouldn’t die, just change. Dry out, get wet, smell one way, smell another way. No boredom, no love, no fear, no being broke, no Leon, no … nothing. Maybe that’s what will happen at world’s end, after one of the millions of viruses sneaks in folks’ bodies, and no one, no matter how total a genius, can cure them. They’ll just … collapse where they are, and never see, feel, or do anything, and eventually everyone will lose sight of each other’s existence, and just become … what? Lumps of nature. In Nate’s case, a small, smelly thing lying out in some brush. A stupid thing drifting through history, no worse or better than trees or the bugs or his gun. Oh, he longs for that day. But until then he just loves this road."
"Etan’s sort of asleep by the scribbly dirt road. He’s been out here for days, smelling rank when the sky’s blue, and very bunched up when it’s starred and cold. How can he possibly know shit? That’s the lame-ass conclusion he’s reached, drawn by eerily dumb, revolving thoughts. Everything’s just a result of the sun gradually eating the earth, he guesses. Even that idea’s too rigorous for his brain. He’s nothing much, a smalltown boy overly stuck in his head, which tends to refine one fantasy about The Omen and him, ’cos they’re the only tape he owns. As far as he’s concerned, they’ve driven down this exact road, picked him up, murdered him so many times that the picture’s worn down to what’s just so painfully personal to him. He can’t come anymore. He’s all raw. The batteries died in his boombox. Now it’s him and the world again. He can’t ignore the fact, seeing as how it’s so gigantically around him. Not just the shit he can see. He means the world down this road, past those far off, unclimbable, fogged-over mountains. A place where folks merely exist, he figures. Like the trees, bushes, grass, et cetera, growing unevenly on either side of his head. Maybe they’d move around more, but less meaningfully than the stupidest animal he’s ever seen in the woods, even ants. That’s ideal. Not wanting anything, even to eat food or shit it back out. No one would care how they look, much less how any other guys look. No one would want to screw, love, or kill Etan, nor would he want to do that to anyone else. There’d just be him, and a shack, and his stuff, and everything would be able to talk, and every sentence would trigger appropriate words in return, that’s all. Like in some cartoon he saw. So his shirt would be as cool as his friends. It could fascinate him, or else he wouldn’t give a shit if it was boring. If it just talked about what it was made from, or how weird it felt to be faded or ripped. Everything would have the same consciousness, and pretty close to the same flat voice. No individual minds, no hearts, no instinctual shit, just movements and ideas that fit in a pattern too simple to notice. Maybe that pattern would be the thing folks call peace, if anyone ever thought about peace, which they wouldn’t. That’s a pathetic thought, he’s very well aware. He just needs to eat."
June 10, 2022
Truly unlike anything I’ve read before, including the four preceding books in the cycle.
October 29, 2023
maybe 4.5 ⭐️. maybe 5. hard to make up my mind yet.
this was a fucking amazing trip. i read the entire george miles cycle over the course of five days, and i personally think that’s the perfect way to do it, though i think it’ll only get better after one or two re-reads.
this book was the finale of the cycle, and reintroduces george miles as an actual character (as he was in book one, and sorta in book four). the narrative mirrors itself, constantly leaving you questioning whether what you are reading right now is “reality” or “the novel”. who is who, who is when, who is where? which one is more real, nate or etan? leon or noel? when/who/where is walker? is dagger george, is george the only one in either reality?
i would say as far as the violence and gore factor goes, this book is by far the most harmless in the cycle, but it is also the most mind-bending. cooper makes many stylistic choices, which show why he is so hailed as a transgressive writer, much beyond just the subject matter of his books.
overall i was FASCINATED by this series, and i’ll have to do my hardest to stop myself from doing any more research on it until i’ve re-read it at least once, so i don’t let my own thoughts and ideas be influenced and led by those of others (even including the author himself, lol). yesterday, after reading guide, i was a little weak and ended up looking at cooper’s blog, where i read his explanation of the narrative structure of this series, and i was amazed to find that i had correctly interpreted it thus far (yes i’m easy to please, thanks). i’d love to get deeper into it and write a proper analysis, but then again, what right do i have to do so after only reading these books once?
maybe if i’m still annoying enough after reading them a second time i’ll add onto this. until then, catch me in the reviews section of virtually any other cooper novel.
this was a fucking amazing trip. i read the entire george miles cycle over the course of five days, and i personally think that’s the perfect way to do it, though i think it’ll only get better after one or two re-reads.
this book was the finale of the cycle, and reintroduces george miles as an actual character (as he was in book one, and sorta in book four). the narrative mirrors itself, constantly leaving you questioning whether what you are reading right now is “reality” or “the novel”. who is who, who is when, who is where? which one is more real, nate or etan? leon or noel? when/who/where is walker? is dagger george, is george the only one in either reality?
i would say as far as the violence and gore factor goes, this book is by far the most harmless in the cycle, but it is also the most mind-bending. cooper makes many stylistic choices, which show why he is so hailed as a transgressive writer, much beyond just the subject matter of his books.
overall i was FASCINATED by this series, and i’ll have to do my hardest to stop myself from doing any more research on it until i’ve re-read it at least once, so i don’t let my own thoughts and ideas be influenced and led by those of others (even including the author himself, lol). yesterday, after reading guide, i was a little weak and ended up looking at cooper’s blog, where i read his explanation of the narrative structure of this series, and i was amazed to find that i had correctly interpreted it thus far (yes i’m easy to please, thanks). i’d love to get deeper into it and write a proper analysis, but then again, what right do i have to do so after only reading these books once?
maybe if i’m still annoying enough after reading them a second time i’ll add onto this. until then, catch me in the reviews section of virtually any other cooper novel.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Read
December 6, 2023Far sparer than the previous 4 novels. Stripped back in its brevity, that’s clear and obvious, but also in the removal of any contact being played out between the characters. We rarely witness them coming into direct contact with one another, and tend to focus on the wanting and the longing for something, as opposed to the acting upon said want. This splitting of characters - this keeping everything at a distance - coupled with empty, robotic, to-the-point journal extracts that seem to come from the victim/s, brews up a gentle creepiness that, in effect, feels far removed from the force-fed brutality that we’re so used to receiving from Dennis Cooper. I feel like the short length of the book takes away some of that new creepiness that we see Cooper explore, but it still had an effect overall. Addition of communication with Satan was a powerful end to the cycle, uncovering further, more candid threads to provide reasoning and explanation for the darkness we’ve swam through in all 5 novels.
September 10, 2023
The fifth, and final, segment of the infamous George Mills Cycle... every second of this series was haunting, disgusting and disturbing, but also strikingly beautiful in all of it's putrid glory. It was difficult to rate any pieces of the Cycle due to their abhorrent nature, but don't let the 3/4 star reviews take away from the fact that this series is truly art. Immensely disturbing art. But the level of infamy the Cycle has maintained to this day doesn't come from nowhere - it is deviously well-deserved, and I loved every twisted moment of it... now excuse me while I take a scalding hot shower to cleanse myself of the deviance.
January 9, 2022
Teenagers r just human transitions. Dude the copies got stuck in the metaverse. The same story. Even natures mirror comes into play. The longing, the lust the emotion the emptiness all collapsed and disintegrated in this final book of the cycle. Novel as blog. A writer stuck in his head without the help of real words to describe his dilemma. He gets close again and the world is wiped away. What an interesting and amazing way to end the cycle.
July 12, 2024
4.5 - there is a tragic understatement to this book that made a lot of the story feel ghostlike and restrained - this book nearly abandons the hyperviolence and horror of the previous four and places focus on the internal life and character relationships - we learn about the function and purpose of the cycle in a way that feels both messy and galvanised. Every word is deliberate, and the cleverness of the book is how naturally it flows despite this.
Fantastic end to a peerless collection of writings, and works as a haunting capstone to Cooper's opus.
Additionally, I Wished (Cooper's most recent work) is absolutely necessary as a coda to this series, and I would recommend everyone to read that after Period.
Fantastic end to a peerless collection of writings, and works as a haunting capstone to Cooper's opus.
Additionally, I Wished (Cooper's most recent work) is absolutely necessary as a coda to this series, and I would recommend everyone to read that after Period.
July 21, 2020
i haven’t read guide yet but this feels like a scattered, overbearingly postmodern dry run for the sluts ...
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December 21, 2023i have finished the george miles cycle. i enjoyed it. i am wary of anyone else that enjoyed it.
November 23, 2022
Like Cooper mixes Faulkner and death metal. This one was too puzzle-like for my taste, too much negative space, but still sharp and fun.
October 15, 2023
"So...do you think he, like...do you think he's somewhere?"
A dreamlike knot of Satanism, mirror worlds, and immortal boy(s) dying. Sometimes I want to reread Cooper, but I *need* to reread Period. No other work in the Miles cycle is this intricately bizarre.
A dreamlike knot of Satanism, mirror worlds, and immortal boy(s) dying. Sometimes I want to reread Cooper, but I *need* to reread Period. No other work in the Miles cycle is this intricately bizarre.
June 25, 2024
In jenem kalifornischen Landstrich, wo überhaupt nur männliche Teenager leben, jener Welt, wo die Teenager alle mehr oder weniger schwul sind, sie mögen auch bi oder pansexuell sagen, zu einer Uhrzeit, wenn weit und breit keiner mehr ist, der solchen Jungs noch zu sagen versucht, sie hätten heute aber nicht frei, sondern müssten das und das erledigen, sind jetzt also zwei ziemlich dünne Buben, Nate und Leon, die, gedröhnt vom Crystal Meth, ihren satanistischen Fantasien nachhängen. Dann schleicht auch immer noch ein dritter Junge umher. Er ist uncool, nicht auf Droge, er ist stumm und taub. (Die Älteren denken jetzt an Tommy, aber ist er nicht.) Dieser einzelne, schleichende Junge muss sich jeden einzelnen Augenblick seines Lebens selbst erst vorzeigen, darum zückt er ständig ein Notizbuch. Nate schlägt vor, den könnten sie anlocken, einfangen, dem Satan opfern, dafür kriegen sie dann eine Gegengabe. In dem Fall würde er die Unsterblichkeit nehmen. Leon verliebt sich gerade in Nate. Aber Nate hat sexuell einfach keinen Bock auf ihn. Besser sie killen mal den Taubstummen.
Später, unsterblich jetzt, geht Nate die Landstraße lang. Da stoppt neben ihm der Van seiner Lieblings-Satanistenband, The Omen heißen die, und sie nehmen ihn mit. Die Satanisten bzw. Band, eigentlich sind es nur zwei schwule Typen, auch zu alt für diese Jungswelt, aber das ist Absicht, sind auf der Suche nach der wahren Liebe, die sie noch nie getroffen haben. Sie sammeln immer diese junge Herumtreiber ein, dopen sie, vergewaltigen sie und schlachten sie ab. Die Liebe haben sie nie gefunden. Hinten im Laderaum liegt gerade wieder einer. Die Morde sind auch längst lange nicht mehr so geil, wie sie früher noch waren. Als ihr größer Fan gibt ihnen Nate ein bisschen Hilfestellung. Der Junge aus dem Lieferwagen verschwindet im Sumpf. Ihr übliches Drehbuch ist so: Der Junge ist gefesselt, hat aber eine Hand noch frei, um sich zu wichsen. Wenn er knapp davor ist, kappen sie das Ding und er verblutet. Man muss natürlich mit Stichen nachhelfen, sonst ist der ganze Wagen versaut. Weil sie Satansjünger sind, fragt Nate sie, ob sie an den Deal, den er mit dem Satan hat, glauben, also auch, dass er unsterblich ist. Klar sagen sie und also kann er ihr Spiel spielen. Er ist dann aber doch nicht unsterblich.
Klingt wie Snuff oder Gewalt-Pornografie. Früher hat man ja auch versucht, ein paar Cooper-Bücher in ein paar Ländern wegen Jugendgefährdung zu verbieten. Inzwischen hat man ihm den Künstler-Status zuerkannt. „Period“ ist der „Punkt“ (so der deutsche Titel) hinter dem legendären George-Miles-Zyklus, der bis in die siebziger Jahre zurückreicht. Wenn man es so kurz zusammenfasst, klingt es weiß wie. Aber ehrlich, nach dem fünften, sechsten gelesenen Cooper-Buch nervt es allmählich nur noch. Immer müssen schöne, dürre Teenager mit langen, braunen Haaren aufgeschnitten werden und dann findet sich die Liebe doch wieder nicht in ihren wundervollen Körperöffnungen. Sie sind halt tot und die Zyniker sind noch immer da.
Weil man sich das jetzt wirklich falsch vorstellt, zitiere ich mal eine Notiz von dem Taubstummen.
Und so weiter.
Beschreibende oder was erzählende Sätze oder gar Absätze kommen nur selten vorbei. Fast das ganze Buch ist Dialog in Wechselrede. Erinnert an Film. Man schreibt ja auch keine Notizen mehr, man hält das Smartphone hoch und postet den Film bei Insta. Nee, stopp, Buch ist von 2000 und da war Dennis Cooper schon alt, galt da noch nicht. Übrigens hat Cooper die wirklich krude Gewalt in seinen Geschichten noch nie erzählt. Er hat es nur geschickt so eingerichtet, dass der Leser sie sich ausgedacht hat. Hat schon Hitchcock so gemacht. Das Blut in „Psycho“ war schwarze Tinte und das Messer hat ihre Haut kein einziges Mal berührt.
Was ich bis jetzt wiedergegeben habe, nimmt etwa ein Drittel von Period ein. Dann treten andere Figuren hinzu. Cooper war noch nie der Mann für dicke Romane, er hat schon immer mehrere Storys zu was zusammengeklebt, was er hinterher Roman nannte. Allerdings weiß man auch gar nicht, ob die neuen Figuren neu sind oder vielleicht die toten Personen unter neuen Namen, ihre Geister oder Jugenderinnerungen oder so.
Womit wir bei der Frage wären, wer hier eigentlich schreibt. Und ob es der wirkliche Dennis Cooper ist. Jedenfalls ist da jetzt ein älterer schwuler Autor im Buch, der einfach nicht über den Tod eines jungen Freundes wegkommt. Obwohl das Jahre her ist. George Miles vielleicht, mag sein. Den soll es ja echt gegeben haben, in der Jugend von Dennis Cooper, einem Politikersohn aus Los Angeles.
Als Nächstes bekommen wir viele Seiten lang die Messages geliefert, die sich zwei (oder drei? Oder einer?) Jungs über eine Internetplattform schicken. 2000, so hat man das damals gemacht, ging noch nicht mit Wischen. Zwei Jungs: Noel und Etan. Der Eine behauptet, Opfer einer Vergewaltigung geworden zu sein. Er könnte Hinweise liefern. Der Andere glaubt, er kennt einen, der weiß, was wirklich passiert ist, und er kann den Kontakt herstellen. Ist vielleicht das mit den mordenden Satanisten vom Anfang nur eine Fantasie von diesen zwei Jungs gewesen? Ihr Ping-Pong-Roman. Oder sind es gar nicht zwei, sondern ein Gestörter denkt sich die ganze, lange Unterhaltung im Netz nur aus? Ein Freak wie dieser Taubstumme. Zwischendurch gibt’s jedenfalls immer wieder mal was von dem.
Die Machart wird nach und nach deutlich. Coopers Sparsamkeit streicht jeden Realismus raus, den andere Autoren einbringen würden. Es bleibt der blanke Plot und sehr, sehr viel Jungsgerede. Das soll vermutlich so trocken wie Knäckebrot und so hart wie der Schwanz der Bisamratte sein. Ich fand's aber eher langweilig und beschloss, für diesen Schreiber erst einmal paar Jahre Pause einzulegen. Man kennt das. Wem es mal gelungen war, die ganze Welt in Erstaunen zu setzen, der wird dazu verurteilt, es so lange und so oft immer noch mal zu tun, bis es gar keiner mehr hören kann. Wenn ihr's noch nicht kennt, dann fangt mit dem George-Miles-Zyklus besser mal von ganz vorne an! Vielleicht seid ihr ja noch dabei, wenn ihr hier ankommt. Auf jeden Fall mal: nicht von Satanisten fesseln lassen, nicht am Röhrchen ziehen und keine Deals mit dem Teufel aushandeln!
Später, unsterblich jetzt, geht Nate die Landstraße lang. Da stoppt neben ihm der Van seiner Lieblings-Satanistenband, The Omen heißen die, und sie nehmen ihn mit. Die Satanisten bzw. Band, eigentlich sind es nur zwei schwule Typen, auch zu alt für diese Jungswelt, aber das ist Absicht, sind auf der Suche nach der wahren Liebe, die sie noch nie getroffen haben. Sie sammeln immer diese junge Herumtreiber ein, dopen sie, vergewaltigen sie und schlachten sie ab. Die Liebe haben sie nie gefunden. Hinten im Laderaum liegt gerade wieder einer. Die Morde sind auch längst lange nicht mehr so geil, wie sie früher noch waren. Als ihr größer Fan gibt ihnen Nate ein bisschen Hilfestellung. Der Junge aus dem Lieferwagen verschwindet im Sumpf. Ihr übliches Drehbuch ist so: Der Junge ist gefesselt, hat aber eine Hand noch frei, um sich zu wichsen. Wenn er knapp davor ist, kappen sie das Ding und er verblutet. Man muss natürlich mit Stichen nachhelfen, sonst ist der ganze Wagen versaut. Weil sie Satansjünger sind, fragt Nate sie, ob sie an den Deal, den er mit dem Satan hat, glauben, also auch, dass er unsterblich ist. Klar sagen sie und also kann er ihr Spiel spielen. Er ist dann aber doch nicht unsterblich.
Klingt wie Snuff oder Gewalt-Pornografie. Früher hat man ja auch versucht, ein paar Cooper-Bücher in ein paar Ländern wegen Jugendgefährdung zu verbieten. Inzwischen hat man ihm den Künstler-Status zuerkannt. „Period“ ist der „Punkt“ (so der deutsche Titel) hinter dem legendären George-Miles-Zyklus, der bis in die siebziger Jahre zurückreicht. Wenn man es so kurz zusammenfasst, klingt es weiß wie. Aber ehrlich, nach dem fünften, sechsten gelesenen Cooper-Buch nervt es allmählich nur noch. Immer müssen schöne, dürre Teenager mit langen, braunen Haaren aufgeschnitten werden und dann findet sich die Liebe doch wieder nicht in ihren wundervollen Körperöffnungen. Sie sind halt tot und die Zyniker sind noch immer da.
Weil man sich das jetzt wirklich falsch vorstellt, zitiere ich mal eine Notiz von dem Taubstummen.
6:55: Just Walked Some More.
6:56: Wish I brung my coat.
7:01: Boulder or two.
7:03: Resting on one of ‘em.
7:09: Something.
7:09: Over there?
Und so weiter.
Beschreibende oder was erzählende Sätze oder gar Absätze kommen nur selten vorbei. Fast das ganze Buch ist Dialog in Wechselrede. Erinnert an Film. Man schreibt ja auch keine Notizen mehr, man hält das Smartphone hoch und postet den Film bei Insta. Nee, stopp, Buch ist von 2000 und da war Dennis Cooper schon alt, galt da noch nicht. Übrigens hat Cooper die wirklich krude Gewalt in seinen Geschichten noch nie erzählt. Er hat es nur geschickt so eingerichtet, dass der Leser sie sich ausgedacht hat. Hat schon Hitchcock so gemacht. Das Blut in „Psycho“ war schwarze Tinte und das Messer hat ihre Haut kein einziges Mal berührt.
Was ich bis jetzt wiedergegeben habe, nimmt etwa ein Drittel von Period ein. Dann treten andere Figuren hinzu. Cooper war noch nie der Mann für dicke Romane, er hat schon immer mehrere Storys zu was zusammengeklebt, was er hinterher Roman nannte. Allerdings weiß man auch gar nicht, ob die neuen Figuren neu sind oder vielleicht die toten Personen unter neuen Namen, ihre Geister oder Jugenderinnerungen oder so.
Womit wir bei der Frage wären, wer hier eigentlich schreibt. Und ob es der wirkliche Dennis Cooper ist. Jedenfalls ist da jetzt ein älterer schwuler Autor im Buch, der einfach nicht über den Tod eines jungen Freundes wegkommt. Obwohl das Jahre her ist. George Miles vielleicht, mag sein. Den soll es ja echt gegeben haben, in der Jugend von Dennis Cooper, einem Politikersohn aus Los Angeles.
Als Nächstes bekommen wir viele Seiten lang die Messages geliefert, die sich zwei (oder drei? Oder einer?) Jungs über eine Internetplattform schicken. 2000, so hat man das damals gemacht, ging noch nicht mit Wischen. Zwei Jungs: Noel und Etan. Der Eine behauptet, Opfer einer Vergewaltigung geworden zu sein. Er könnte Hinweise liefern. Der Andere glaubt, er kennt einen, der weiß, was wirklich passiert ist, und er kann den Kontakt herstellen. Ist vielleicht das mit den mordenden Satanisten vom Anfang nur eine Fantasie von diesen zwei Jungs gewesen? Ihr Ping-Pong-Roman. Oder sind es gar nicht zwei, sondern ein Gestörter denkt sich die ganze, lange Unterhaltung im Netz nur aus? Ein Freak wie dieser Taubstumme. Zwischendurch gibt’s jedenfalls immer wieder mal was von dem.
Anonboy16: Let’s be simple for a while. Do you mind? What are you doing right now?
NAtetan: Nothing. I’m just sitting around trying not to blow my brains out. Kidding. Or half kidding anyway. Like I said, that guy in my mirror is really pressuring me. Sometimes I think death would be the answer to everything. Have you ever heard of this band called The Omen?
Anonboy16: No, don’t know them. Sorry you feel bad.
NAtetan: They have this great quote about that. Shit I can’t remember how it goes. Forget it. So what are you doing?
Anonboy16: Not much. Can’t hear nor talk, ’cos of what happened, I guess. Just stay by myself a lot. Take walks. Stuff like that. It’s strange. Got some ideas and opinions, but I can’t remember why I have them. So they’re worthless. So I just watch people, and take notes. Thinking if I can figure others out, then I’ll know who I’m not.
NAtetan: Wait, what are you talking about?
Anonboy16: The forest ranger’s been asking if anyone knows me. But so far nobody does. Starting to give up. George Miles is my only hope.
NAtetan: You’re ignoring me.
Anonboy16: Don’t even know how old I am.
NAtetan: And you live in my mirror, right?
Anonboy16: What?
Die Machart wird nach und nach deutlich. Coopers Sparsamkeit streicht jeden Realismus raus, den andere Autoren einbringen würden. Es bleibt der blanke Plot und sehr, sehr viel Jungsgerede. Das soll vermutlich so trocken wie Knäckebrot und so hart wie der Schwanz der Bisamratte sein. Ich fand's aber eher langweilig und beschloss, für diesen Schreiber erst einmal paar Jahre Pause einzulegen. Man kennt das. Wem es mal gelungen war, die ganze Welt in Erstaunen zu setzen, der wird dazu verurteilt, es so lange und so oft immer noch mal zu tun, bis es gar keiner mehr hören kann. Wenn ihr's noch nicht kennt, dann fangt mit dem George-Miles-Zyklus besser mal von ganz vorne an! Vielleicht seid ihr ja noch dabei, wenn ihr hier ankommt. Auf jeden Fall mal: nicht von Satanisten fesseln lassen, nicht am Röhrchen ziehen und keine Deals mit dem Teufel aushandeln!
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