Delirium

so weird that this guy is young and lives in new york. really doesn't seem like the kind of novel people still know how to write. not in new york, anyway. no brand names, no gossip, nothing "relevant." just smart words, beautiful ideas, serious writing. off to buy AMNESIA...

This is a writer who seems to care more than anything about how his sentences come together. I am glad, because if it were not for the sheer beauty of the prose, this novel would be terrifying. I do not think I have encountered a story this brutal and relentless in years. An important book, I think.

I have architect friends who HATE HATE HATE this book. I guess it attacks everything they were trained to believe in. But you know something? Our modern cities are pretty damn hideous, and I think Cooper's a genius for creating a myth to explain why we live in hell.

I haven't read a book in years that impressed me this much. (That said, Amnesia -- by the same author -- was beautiful.) Cooper is doing something entirely new here. Critics keep comparing him to Nabokov, but I think he has reinvented the novel -- in Delirium, it's a form that bridges genres: part poetry, part drama, part architecture. A kind of centaur. You have to read this.

I find Cooper's second novel impressive on several levels. AMNESIA enthralled me with its inventive atmosphere of foreboding, its relentlessly strange signifiers, its peculiar mix of street wisdom and arcane erudition. I got distracted toward the end, some of the changes didn't feel right, although the final sprint recovers the momentum. DELIRIUM kept me going all the way through. Playing Prospero, Cooper controls the dazzling word play and the multitude of parallel tales, as his characters struggle toward identity in a contemporary yet gothic, decimated landscape. Since this is an installment in a series it might be too early to call major themes, but this book raises the questions about dynamic levels of prostitution and just what requires redemption. What could possibly be more pertinent to our time? The primary joke here is that a sort of universal evil emanates from a Philip Johnson/van der Rohe-like architect, the consummate whore, strewing his pernicious monoliths across the globe. On the simplest plane there's a chase going on, leading to a classic comeuppance, but Cooper makes it mean much more - he takes his time and he cares about the ghosts which are haunting him here. I like this odd book a lot and look forward its successors.