Period

This was my first Dennis Cooper book. I have since read all of his books. And I must say that none of them can ever hold up to this, my first experience. All of his books are terrific, especially Try and Guide. But the atmosphere that Cooper has been building on, for years, culminated in this apex which was at once sharp with everything Dennis' literature reveled in and completely ambiguous as if a cloud had descended over him and us in a blanket of glossy melancholia. This book is brimming with classic modern approaches towards writing but it gives them a new birth, the freshness of the prose is terrific. Cooper seems to have completely detached himself from the rest of the literary world and whereas in his earlier novels he slid through pop cultural references, he has abandoned his postmodernity for something purely modern and abstract. This work reads like the classics of high modernist fiction with the subtlest references to popular culture. It's basically a long fragmented dialogue, poem, list. Satanism and death metal abound, but whereas old-Cooper would have cheekily referenced an actual band or made up alternative names for people who obviously stood for public personas (i.e. guide) he creates these blurry characters who simultaneously mimic the very void they inhabit. These people can be anyone and they absorb whatever you project onto them, the only thing that remains constant is their glowingly gloomy environs. This is a very fragmented read, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who has no appreciation for modernist literature or no patience for it, as it would come across as a pretentious and indulgent artifact. But if one has the time to digest something as subtle as this progressive writing, one can be greatly rewarded. The violence and sexuality in this novel doesn't compare to anything else by Cooper. Many people are drawn to Cooper's literature simply because of that violence and sexuality. But this novels lack of this is completely understandable considering the nature of this vague little book, the amount of detail needed for such grotesqueries would be completely inappropriate for the style in which Cooper brilliantly channels. I read this in one night, and the feeling that Cooper created honestly seeped out of the book. I could feel the isolation of the place he had created. I distinctly remember sitting in my bed and remembering those characters and the place that they lived, which seemed to be any town and unlike any town or not even a town at all but a specific locale of the psyche, airy, uncharted, and very sad. Cooper has revealed the very depths of his being in this book, and it's the saddest and most mysterious place I have ever glimpsed. Cooper is honestly the most progressive writer that I know of, he deals with the same subjects that many progressive writers dwell upon but he steps it up a notch stylistically with his absolutely genius way with words and thoughts. This book is very important to me.

"Period" is likely to anger many Cooper fans due to its spare qualities in narrative, character, form. Cooper has always written about desire, particularly it's darkest manifestations and results. Cooper's books are short, extreme, and demand that they roll around the subconscious of the reader. "Period" is no different, but here everything Cooper has worked toward in the 4 previous novels in this cycle is reported flatly, obscurely, and sometimes causes great aggravation in the reader.However, interviews with Cooper have revealed that "George Miles" was a real person who left deep emotional marks in Cooper. His mutilation in "Closer," the first in the cycle, seems like an attempt to exorcise the author's feeling for his object of obsession. George's absence (or mere mention) in the next 3 books makes it seem like the author was successful. Those 3 books ("Frisk," "Try," "Guide)all deal in some way with the attempt to vanquish desire. Exploration of the extremes in human thought and behavior distance the obsession over something the author, who is always a character in some fashion in the cycle, cannot have.Interviews say that Cooper found that the real George Miles committed suicide, years after their relationship. "Period" takes that as a cue to move everything toward death - desire, the author himself, any characters that happen to appear in the midst. This book mirrors Cooper's others, but leaves us in the end only with ourselves and interpretations. The book has a formal structure where the prose is allowed to mirror itself foremost, the other books in the cycle secondly, and ourselves - probably most disturbingly.Under all the sex, gore, minimalism, and luridness of Cooper's novels is a profound meditation on who we are, what relationships mean, how expression cannot contain reality, and the various meanings of love. This is strong stuff. "Period" is not the place to start for a novice. But it's one hell of a book-long poem about desire, and therefore a fitting end to the five book cycle. What Cooper does next is already an intriguing subject. He might just be the last American writer with any guts. A master; a masterwork.

The photo of 'Walker Crane' (a take on Wes Craven, of 'Scream' fame??) at the back of the book looks like an uglier, more descript version of Tim Robbins, but maybe it's just the lighting. The character Henry is my favourite in this book. He's so obssessive that all of his victims begin to look the same and their continued existence comes to depend on a trivial yet all important event in his past. The idea that physical beauty helps us deny what we are is an important theme here. The surface is just gift wrapping, but even the 'deep, incontrovertible' truth of blood and sinew is mute and meaningless. This is the best book ever written on the pointlessness of desire. Highly recommended.

this one's even foggier, you just don't know what's going on, hardly any of the ultra detailed descriptions of, say, Guide, instead you're left with voices, diary entries and 'anonymous' internet chat, while the 'plot' just vanishes inside this multi mirrored projection hall. we're not really in the city anymore either, it's a small town, then a forest, then a house in a forest, and then someone gets lost in this house. Blair Witch? this is even scarier, I suppose, as we're left with traces, memories, voices and the usual all consuming dance of death and desire. Where next? we can't leave that house anymore, so we have to go back to 'Closer' and one of its characters, and we have to start a website with some strange photos of some distant looking boy, who we're slowly getting obsessed with...did i understand? are these still lifestyle choices? actually these are probably 5 stars, for at least 5 books. goodnight.

Cooper's "Period" is a fitting finish to his cycle of novels which examine the extremities of human desire. It is a sparse, elegant, poetic mind game that references its 4 predecessors, while giving a final spin to Cooper's themes. Cooper has always taken great risks with his extreme subject matter, and that's no different here. "Period" might be graphic and disturbing, but the writing is so fine that the book cannot be dismissed as mere sexualized horror fiction. "George," the main character in the first novel of the cycle, re-emerges as a focal point; yet he and many of the other characters seem oddly one and the same. The book uses a doppelganger device, via a rather humorous introduction of teens dabbling in Satanism and also a sort of magic mirror, to allow characters' identities to swap back and forth. The author himself is present in the story, as in the previous novels, though not with the name "Dennis" this time. In fact, there are two artists/authors in the narrative, further exploring ideas of what makes up identity. Cooper has great fun with this idea, in his typically morbid fasion. Reality and fiction blur constantly, as the novel winds through its unnamed town where boys prey on each other, a goth-rock band gathers human victims for its "art," and the artist/author builds a spooky memorial for "George" in the form of a pitch black house haunted by memory, longing, and desire. Cooper is really writing about love in all its power, and he does this using things that usually conjure up the opposite of love. The fact that he accomplishes all this in just over 100 pages, with spare prose that evolves into poetry at unexptected times, makes this novel, and the entire cycle, an absolute classic. Fans of the previous novels should love "Period." However, for the uninitiated, the density of the mind game Cooper plays out here makes this one definitely not the place to start. "Period" is a book that resonates in the mind long after the last sentence is read. It is worthy of high praise and attention, but is surely not for the squeamish or easily intimidated. It will be exciting to see where Cooper takes his writing after this.