Wrong : a critical biography of Dennis Cooper / by Diarmuid Hester.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hester, Diarmuid, 1982- author.

Series:

The new American canon

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Gay authors--United States--Biography.

Gay authors.

Cooper, Dennis, 1953-.

Cooper, Dennis.

Cooper, Dennis, 1953---Criticism and interpretation.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (1 online resource)

Place of Publication:

Iowa City : University of Iowa Press, [2020]

Summary:

"This is the first book-length study of the queer American writer and artist, Dennis Cooper (b. 1952), which explores his remarkable career from the 1970s to the present. Employing archival research along with interviews and close readings of his often-controversial work, it explores Cooper's various incarnations - punk poet, cult novelist, avant-garde playwright, queercore film director - situating him in relation to a number of underground American art, writing, and music scenes that have recently attracted renewed critical interest. Its primary aim is to establish Cooper's reputation as a leading figure of the American post-War avant-garde. Mr. Cooper has offered the project his full cooperation and has agreed to a substantial interview that will conclude the text. The principal argument advanced by the book is that we take seriously Cooper's assertion that he is an anarchist writer. While relatively skeptical of many of the labels that have been applied to him over the years (e.g. "gay poet," "transgressive writer," "blank novelist"), in interviews Cooper has readily acknowledged that he is an anarchist and that anarchist principles underpin his life and work. Hester pursues this idea across his oeuvre. What makes an anarchist writer in the American century? In what ways is a commitment to the radical politics of anarchism palpable in Cooper's work? How is this commitment born out in his life beyond the text? Irving Howe once wrote that a "powerful subterranean current" of anarchism runs through American literature - this book considers Dennis Cooper's life and work as a startling contemporary eruption of this longstanding and underappreciated tradition"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Chapter 1. Wrong: The Adolescence of an Iconoclast

Chapter 2. Sturm und Drang: Rimbaud and Sade

Chapter 3. A Poetics of Dissociability: The Punk Poets of Los Angeles

Chapter 4. "I'm Yours": Frank O'Hara, Paul Goodman, and The Tenderness of the Wolves

Chapter 5. Safe and the Aesthetics of Distance

Chapter 6. "If there actually is such a thing as New Narrative..."

Chapter 7. "Fuck Sexual Conformity": Anarcho-Homo Radicalism in the 1980s

Chapter 8. The George Miles Cycle

Chapter 9. JT LeRoy/My Loose Thread: "I had no other choice"

Chapter 10. The Automated and The Eerie: Collaborations with Gisele Vienne

Chapter 11. Dennis Cooper's Blog

Chapter 12. Reading for Queer Subculture in The Marbled Swarm: A Novel

Chapter 13. Asignifying Desire: HTML Novels and Feature Films

Afterword: Starting with Friendship.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781609386924

1609386922

OCLC:

1124780951