> on 6/27/03 12:10 PM, Mark Sullivan at
DJ-Anonyme@webtv.net wrote:
>
> "[...] It's the only book I've read by Cooper,
though. What would you
> recommend reading next?
>
> --
My readings in Cooper haven't been
all that extensive, frankly, but I can recommend "Closer" and
"Guide." Memory becomes a bit hazy at this point
... especially since many of his characters express, ahem,
similar concerns. I remember liking both books, though, and
will hazard a guess that "Closer" is the preferred folow-up
to "Frisk."
I tried checking the megolith which
Alison Bechdel refers to as
"Medusa.com" in order to make sure that I was affixing the
correct Dennis Cooper plot to the correct one-word Cooper
title, and here's the choice little quote I discovered:
"
... if you think 'Naked Lunch' is charming and
brilliant,
and you enjoy the smellier bits of 'Le
Chants
de Maldoror' or 'Our Lady of the Flowers,'
you'll
totally dig 'Guide.'"
Precisely.
You might also want to look at
one and/or all of Gary Indiana's crime trilogy, "Resentment:
A Comedy" and "Three Month Fever" and "Depraved
Indifference." They have a similar humor and a similar West
Coast perspective to the Cooper books. The first and third
are novels inspired by real-life criminals (Kimes, *mere et
fils*, and the Menendez family, respectively). The middle one
is non-fiction, more-or-less, using a novelist's techniques
to deal with Andrew Cunanan. I love 'em all, only I hesitate
whether to recommend that you begin with "Resentment"
or
"Indifference." The set-pieces are marvellous in the latter,
but I believe that the former has the more satisfying
finale.
c.
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