Dennis Cooper

A Novel

Closer

isabella

I'm being watched, as if the whole world is watching, like protesters said in the sixties, when I wasn't born yet. It wants me invisible. No, it wants my skin in a heap on the floor and a teetering skeleton smeared with blood. I can't imagine that. As far as I'm concerned, everything's out in the open.

Geoffrey Froggatt

It may seem ridiculous to call an author one of your favourite authors when you’ve only read one of their books, but after reading this one, at least I can say I’ve now read two. Much like how The Sluts explored one boy’s character through the eyes of men, the narrative does the same here, only here we explore a group of guys through the thread of one boy that links them all together. Like his other novels, this book is dark transgressive queer fiction, and therefore will only resonate with a niche audience. This book isn’t for everyone, but it was definitely for me. Closer explores the minds and motives of several guys that come in contact with George Miles and his beauty. The novel follows the links of desire and value that drag George into the arms of men like John, an artist who drains his portraits of humanity in order to find what lies beneath; Alex, fascinated by splatter films and pornography; and Steve, an underground entrepreneur who turns his parents' garage into a nightclub. After The Sluts by Dennis Cooper became one of my favourite queer books I’ve ever read, I knew I needed to read more, however I recognized I needed a breather from Cooper’s dark and transgressive storytelling. Dennis Cooper’s books are like if Bret Easton Ellis wrote in the style of a Gregg Araki film. The novel is existentialist in tone, with a central theme that life is merely suffering until death, with little reprieve; it is necessary to squeeze from that suffering the largest possible amount of pleasure. Though George is the thread that holds the novel together, the focus is more on George's lovers, who use him to find love, meaning, entertainment, and trust. Each chapter is titled with the name of the man on whom George is focusing his sexual attention in a given moment. Dennis Cooper's novel follows these depraved characters as they seek meaning in a meaningless world; Cooper makes it clear that the men themselves aren't the problem, life is the problem. As the men file through their meaningless sexual encounters trying to find some semblance of feeling, the mundanity of what should be a meaningful experience allows Cooper to express what it means to constantly seek out and never achieve transcendence. The story features a handful of young men on the threshold of adulthood who seem emotionally detached from any sense of community, family or from the concept of human dignity. It’s almost as if they exist as merely biological bodies, vessels devoid of that which actually makes us human. Because of this, an intrinsic sense of compassion for one another and respect for themselves is also mostly missing in his novel and we are presented with acts of degradation and exploitation perpetrated against others, and emotionally scarring sexual activity that shocks the reader but leaves the characters in this book largely unmoved. 

This is the queer teenage wasteland that Gregg Araki is constantly depicting in his own work, only without the colourful visuals and the shoegaze soundtrack that’s used as contrast in his films. This novel is devoid of much warmth and comfort, and that is the point. The emotional emptiness is emphasized by how some of the characters see and describe themselves, and how they are seen by others. We the readers only perceive the characters from how they see others, so there’s a distance between them and the reader, and even among the characters themselves. The characters only see each other as their own shadows, masks, or reflections. George is not a fully developed character in this book (which is the first in a series of five novels built around George), but it’s hard not to empathize with him, based on what we do know. For one, his mother is extremely ill and so the only source of parental stability comes from his father. Second, he is trying to understand and come to terms with his identity as a gay teenager in the 1980’s. I liked exploring George’s life through the vignettes of the men he has sexual and intimate encounters with, and it really showed this dark underworld of bleak sex and connections in the gay hookup culture. I think this novel shows how far men can fall into their primal desires when they’re hidden in the shadows the way that queer men were forced to hide for their entire lives. I think when people are forced to live in the dark they start to become the darkness itself. When these men realize they can’t feel anything in the heteronormative world, they are forced to explore whatever works in the hidden underworld of hookups and exploitation. When men have to be anonymous, they grow comfortable in their anonymity, and when you’re no one, you grow bold enough to become anyone, no matter how depraved. Much like in The Sluts, we see men who reach out past the typical kinks and taboos, who have grown numb to the typical pleasures and continued past all of their moral lines, who have devoured so many men and boys that they seek to destroy them, to literally kill them, just to feel alive again. Alternatively, we meet men and boys who were abused and hurt by other men in their lives and how they struggle to adjust and carve out a path for themselves in this world, and sometimes in doing that they hurt some people along the way. I think that despite things changing in the real world for queer men, the undercurrent and foundation of this novel is still true for many of us. A scene that really stayed with me was the one where George hooks up with a man and mentally leaves his body while he has sex with him. I don’t think a lot of guys (queer or not) can relate to that experience, but I know that I did. I saw my younger self in George in ways that I don’t want to admit or think about. I think that there are dark corners, trap doors, and rabbit holes out there in the world, and I think boys and men can easily fall into them and never find their way back out. While the ending is abrupt, it felt so poignant without trying to be. We leave the characters in a shitty club, reaching out to each other in the dark. It felt poetic. I liked this novel despite how sad it was, but I’m more curious to see where George’s character goes in the next few books in the series. I recommend this book for readers who are fans of transgressive queer fiction.

Morgan Thomas

Thisnwas fun to read the first in the George Miles cycle, especially since I've mainly read his later works. It's interesting to see this book explore many of the subjects that will come up frequently in the works that I've read. He explores things like sex, death and longing but not as extreme as he will do later. I think any issue I had comes from the writing which very much gave in the mind of a teenager with the way it sort of meandered. Not sure I loved it, but I enjoyed it.

Madie Houston

I loved how gory and disgusting it was. Also the way that the author writes about the struggles of teenagers was perfectly written. I just felt like it was missing an Ah Ha moment or a realization that brings everything all together. 

K. Qua

Une descente dans les obsessions de l'Amérique contemporaine, un train fantôme dévalant les pentes du désir et plongeant vers la mort sur fond de rock'n'roll. Tous repères effondrés, toute morale abolie, ses personnages semblent évoluer dans une dimension parallèle dont le sexe, la drogue et les films d'horreur de série Z seraient les dernières balises.

Closer A Novel

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