Again, this post is not really about photography. I guess some of the following ones will not be either so sorry in advance, I guess. While I love photography and spend a lot of time working on, looking at and talking about it, I will dedicate these blog entries to the things that have inspired and informed my work. Where I think it comes from.

So, meet Dennis Cooper. One of my favourite writers. I first stumbled upon his work in the 10th grade, I think. I was just hanging around at the local library and I saw this book with a cover that had two boys kissing on it. Jackpot. Except they were painted like clowns and covered in blood. I read the book anyway and it made a huge impact on me. Today I barely even remember what it was about but I vividly remember how it made me feel. Reading Cooper’s work can be a real challenge. Though often short and fast-paced, his novels are not exactly page-turners. One time, I was on a plane reading his 1991 novel, Frisk, and I had to put the book away for fear of throwing up. There is a lot of violence, shit, blood and gore in there. Young, pale teenage boys dying in all sorts of horrible ways. Still, somehow, there are glimpses of humour and tenderness there as well.

Like in his novel The Sluts, where a webmaster shuts down a discussion thread on an escort review website, due to it being too graphic and discussing the murder of an escort in detail. The users then defect to continue the discussion in a thread dedicated to fantasies involving the murder and torture of Nick Carter (of The Backstreet Boys). A whole page of terribly detailed murder fantasies. So bad it’s good.

Maybe you can compare his books to horror movies. You do not want to look but you cannot help it. You want to turn the page because you want to know what is going to happen, but you do not want anybody to die. Still, you turn the page and someone dies.

I have read most of his work but here I will list my three favourites plus synopses:

1. The Sluts (2004)

“Set largely on the pages of a website where gay male escorts are reviewed by their clients, and told through the postings, emails, and conversations of several dozen unreliable narrators, The Sluts chronicles the evolution of one young escort’s date with a satisfied client into a metafiction of pornography, lies, half-truths, and myth. Explicit, shocking, comical, and displaying the author’s signature flair for blending structural complexity with direct, stylish, accessible language, The Sluts is Cooper’s most transgressive novel since Frisk, and one of his most innovative works of fiction to date.”

1. My Loose Thread (2003)

“Dennis Cooper’s latest novel has emerged as his finest, most thought-provoking and challenging piece of writing yet. At the heart of the work is Larry, a teenager who is struggling to understand not only his sexuality and physical feelings toward his younger brother but also the purpose and reason behind his own existence. Larry is offered $500 to kill a fellow pupil and retrieve the boy’s notebook. It all seems straightforward enough. However, once Larry ventures into the notebook, complications arise. Captivated by both the beauty of its articulation and the horror of its content, he longs for such an ability to communicate himself. Written in sparse yet concentrated language that surrounds, submerges, and potentially overwhelms the reader, My Loose thread is a claustrophobic, harrowing, and intensely moving piece of fiction.”

1. Frisk (1991)

“Possessed by the mystery of a series of fake snuff photographs he was shown as a teenager, Dennis, the narrator of ‘Frisk’, lives in a world where the rules of attraction have become a treasure hunt, and love is only a matching of images and body parts. In Holland, in a room in a windmill above a brewery, Dennis is freed from the need to respect feelings; the unimaginable becomes an idea, and the idea a reality.”