The blog of author Dennis Cooper

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p.s. Hey. I’m on the new episode of Bookworm talking with Michael Silverblatt about ‘I Wished’ if anyone’s interested. Here. ** JM, Hi. Your thing in SCAB is fantastic, man. Very excited for the full novel or novella. (In my world, there’s hardly any difference.) Wow, the blog as a fake waterfall, I like that. That’s my new template. Boyfriends with alternate reading tastes can be very useful. I would never have read ‘Lord of the Rings’ if one of my boyfriends wasn’t obsessed with it and insisted we read it aloud together. Oh, hm, on suggestions re: your bf. I guess it depends on his extant tastes. I always think minimalist prose is a worth a try. Clean sentences with just enough pizzazz for you and enough narrative propulsion for him? Hm. Have a lovely one whatever that one is. ** David, I like when people cry. It makes you realise how complex they are. Happy that old Duran Duran still had enough fire in their … bellies? I try to avoid seeing bands from my distant past, but I am tempted to see Pavement next year. ** Dominik, Hi!!! I’m about halfway through the new SCAB and I think I have to agree with whoever said it’s probably the best one yet. You so rule. Word. Serious. Yeah, I definitely don’t think the curious experience of eating with a numb mouth is worth the dentistry. Well, Disneyland is obsessively clean. I used to do this thing where I would deliberately drop a piece of trash on the ground and wait to see how long before some cast member swept it up. I think the longest that ever took was 41 seconds. So they don’t let gum in for fear you’ll throw your chewed up wad on the ground and someone will step on it, thereby making it difficult to clean away. It won’t surprise you that having a fake waterfall in my apartment is one of my dreamiest dreams. Plus a whole river. Sigh. Thank you for knowing me so well. Love making every porn star in the world extremely ticklish, G. ** Misanthrope, G, sir. I’m going go walk down to the big English language bookstore today with high hopes that they have the new Joy Williams in stock which is highly unlikely but if they don’t I’ll just buy the new issue of The Wire. Japanese food followed by a Carvel cake is so wrong it’s right. You’re money’s bitch, admit it, whore. ** Sypha, I never saw ‘Monk’. That office sounds nice, though. Maybe I can find a gif of it. Tally ho. ** _Black_Acrylic, I’ve had at least one snow globe day here, maybe two, but whether they’re alive at the moment is a question I will endeavor to answer and correct if not. I love snow globes. They age so badly though, it’s a sin. Cool re: the happy union of you and ‘IW’. ** Jamie, Water features in shopping malls are nice, yeah. Weird, huh. Or maybe not. Weird to be an intelligent, discerning person who likes them maybe. Maybe it’s because I always took showers growing up, but the few times I’ve been forced to take a bath I was so bored I could have screamed. Strange. If you move fast enough, the still hot pasta sort of heats up the non-cooked pasta sauce to an acceptable degree. Or that’s my excuse, ha ha. When I’m hungry, I just want it over with. Which is weird. I eat basically the exact same thing every single day, and I don’t mind at all. My yesterday was pretty good. Zac and I went to the Musee de Chasse et la Nature, which is arguably the greatest single thing in Paris. It has been closed for a year for refurbishing, and they’ve added a whole new floor, so that was exciting. Then we had coffee and cupcakes with Michael Salerno and this young guy, Ange, who’s the star of Michael’s great new film. That was nice, and Ange is awesome, and Zac and I immediately want to ask him if he’d be into playing one of the main roles in our film, so that’s potentiality great if he’s interested. And the usual work and stuff. Not bad. As for your day, aww, and oops, although it sounds kind of wonderfully Tati-ish in your telling. May festivities on your end constitute the entirety of your Friday. Love, me. ** David Ehrenstein, I can’t read/find out who Jean-Claude Van Italie is because of the NYT paywall, but I’ll find out elsewhere. Robert Pollard was on Colbert last night? Ha ha. ** Max B, Hi, Max! How are you? Thank you so, so much! I’m so happy you like the novel. That’s so nice to hear. Thank you! I’m pretty good, and you? ** trees, Hey, Ted! Wow! And you’re still trees after all this time. Thank you for coming in. I follow you on FB pretty closely, and I’m ever more a fan of your amazing poetry. I hope all is splendid with you. Love from the other big city with a P in front of it. ** Steve Erickson, Ah, interesting, about ‘Titane’. I’ve heard a lot of neg about it in the last couple of days. I think I’ll watch ‘Raw’ first. You can’t fault someone for wanting/needing to make money from their work, although he could do both. Codex is a nice name for a bookstore. ** T, Hi, T. Maybe Ikea does already. I live across the street from one which I never entered strangely, but now I have a reason. Muted can be good. Muted is usually a positive word in my lexicon. So, sounds great enough. Yes, I know and like Ikeda’s work. I actually know him a little. He lives in Paris part-time. My collaborator Gisele baby-sits his dog when he goes out of town. The effect you’re proposing for text is a toughie in my experience because, yeah, to mute — there you go — a word’s content is very hard to do partly because people get irritated when you deliberately do that, which is why concrete poetry is so unpopular. But it’s a great goal, and I know I’ve tried to find ways to do it. You didn’t ramble, you rewarded. I wish the very same thing for your Friday. Did it happen? ** Florian AF, Hi, F. Puce Mary is amazing. And she’s having an extended artist residency in Paris right now, so I get to hang out with her a lot, which is great, obviously. Thanks, thanks! ** Brian, Fake waterfalls’ alarming qualities are very underrated. Oh, right, online school. God, what a mess. I … think all schooling here is back to being in person again ‘cos we’re doing really well at the moment. More and more people I trust are warding me off having high hopes for ‘Titane’, so now I don’t know. I’m wary but interested enough about the new Noe. Dying for the Anderson. Quite excited for the new Weerasethakul. Pretty interested to see the new Almodovar. Scared of the new Dumont based on the trailer. Avoiding ‘Dune’ like the plague. I forget what else. Museum run, me too.I laid out my Thursday to Jamie up above. It was good. I was into it. Friday? What’s on your score card? ** Bill, Oh, man, thank you, Bill. I know what high standards you have, and that means a ton. That’s so good to hear. Yeah, it is kind of scary having that novel out in the world. I feel inordinately spooked. And it was very intense to write, which I guess you could tell. Really, thank you so much for telling me that, Bill. ** h (now j), Hi! It’s not scary like my usual scary. It’s a different kind of scary, ha ha. Thank you! You are very not forgotten, my friend. I was going to be in NYC right about now for book stuff, but everything got cancelled, so, when I do get there, hopefully soonish, it’ll probablybe for other reasons. Take care! ** Right. Today I made the thing up there for you, and, well, for me too obviously, and that’s the scoop. See you tomorrow.

11 Comments

  1. _Black_Acrylic

    Sorry to hear that snow globes have an inbuilt obsolescence thing going on, although maybe it just makes them all the more compelling? They rule anyway.

    The new episode of Play Therapy is online here at Tak Tent Radio! Ben ‘Jack Your Body’ Robinson serves up Acid Hall, classic Italo and some scary Giallo Disco vibes as well.

  2. Dominik

    Hi!!

    Ah, Dennis, thank you so much!! I’m really, really happy you enjoy the new SCAB!

    Huh, I had no idea Disneyland was so crazy clean. 41 seconds… I mean, I can’t even imagine the size of a crew that works so efficiently in such a huge area. Yeah, knowing this, it’s pretty understandable that they’re freaked out about gum.

    I knew it! I knew you were gonna be so, so happy and content with yesterday’s love, haha! Hahaha, I’d watch a lot more porn if that were the case! Love politely trying to catch your eye from across the room like this: https://secureservercdn.net/160.153.138.163/169.7d4.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/giphy-2.gif, Od.

  3. David

    yep I cried back in the day being screwed and paid…. the time I tried to object and the guy did it anyway…. then the times I liked it were often met with “confusion”… most recently I cried last night looking at a picture of me with my pal Colin who died last year… after his funeral I ran so hard up this road ‘Carriageway Walk’ in the midlands, angry as fuck that I failed to notice the slightly raised curb at the end and went flat out… one of my toe nails actually came off later on as a result…. I of course kept it and thought of the whole thing as massively symbolic being a ‘fuck up’ and all… of course there are tears of laughter as well…. most recently caused by you delivering some of your quips!! Worth seeing some of those old bands Dennis… you’d be surprised… even when Marilyn Manson was on crutches a few years back he was incredible… you get that fire in your belly… although did actually think I was gonna die several years back in a mosh pit…. no mosh pit at Duran Duran of course… my fave face in this post is the little dog chiwawa they always make me smile… and I’ve been known to show my teeth at folk in the same manner as they do….(not a joke) I wrote a poem sometime ago it’s a take on uk poetess Pam Ayres’ ‘I wish I’d looked after my teeth’…. it’s called ‘oh I wish I’d not shown my teeth…’ Glad to hear you’ve managed to have some cake!!! cheers Dennis x

  4. rewritedept

    looks like i just missed you. a comment is at yesterday’s post if you’re so inclined.

    love love love love you heaps and tons and everything like that.

    talk soonish?

    -c.

  5. Misanthrope

    Dennis, A Harry Styles head and a Niall Horan head nice. I didn’t see a Timothee Chalamet head, though. Everybody knows that’s the most important head ever. 😉

    Hahaha, I am money’s whore kinda. The edict has come down from on high: get vaxxed or you’re fired. Eek. If I do that, then you and I are both right about me being money’s whore.

    Yeah, we ended up having a good time with the dinner and Carvel cake. 😀

    First thing after my money-whoring work today I’m going to the bookstore. No way they don’t have Joy’s new book. If they don’t, you’ll see me on the news and will probably get questioned by Interpol.

    So…I Wished arrived yesterday. Along with the other books I ordered, including Diarmuid’s Wrong. Here’s the funny part: the other five books were in two separate padded mailers. I Wished was in a box way too big for it all by itself…and the box was Cinderella DVD box. Strangest fucking thing. I should’ve taken a pic. At first, I was like, I didn’t order a fucking Cinderella DVD. Then I shook it and was like, no way.

    I put the Trollope I’ve been reading and enjoying aside and started it last night. Um, it’s an odd little novel, Dennis! Good odd. I don’t know if this is going to make sense, but this is the first time I’ve read one of your novels where I feel like you’re actually just talking to me face to face. Like I actually hear your real voice in it. Is that a good thing? A bad thing? I don’t think it’s a bad thing at all, it’s just…different. But I am already loving it. It’s really touching in a lot of ways, and there’s some humor in it that I appreciate, which your novels always have and that I’ve always thought gets overlooked. I’m about halfway through the second chapter.

    Oh, and the other books I got:

    Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin
    The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp
    Daniel Deronda, George Eliot
    A Sand Book, Ariana Reines

    Hope your weekend is swell. I’m going to my friend’s place in Annapolis tomorrow night. Kayla’s going with me. Otherwise, it’s getting the Joy Williams and then getting back on my stuff.

  6. Sypha

    I recognize a few of these heads as belonging to GHOSTBUSTERS toys from the 1980’s. I know this because my brothers and I had the same action figures back then!

    I completed I WISHED last night and very much enjoyed it. Because my mind inevitably drifts towards the Gnostic I was interested in the almost demiurgic aspect of the narrator (though I would call him a demiurge with good intentions in this case!). My favorite chapter was the “Xmas” one (with the first “The Crater” chapter a close second), because as you know while my interest in Halloween has slightly waned as I’ve grown older my fascination with Christmas remains (and I liked the description of Santa as “…the sun dressed up for Halloween”): did George really want the Moon outfitted with giant Mickey Mouse ears as his Christmas gift in 1965? Because I thought that was very cute and charming. As a whole I found the book very moving and the very last sentence especially hits one right in the heart!

  7. David Saä V. Estornell

    Have a nice Week-end!!

  8. David Ehrenstein

    Jean-Claude Van Italie was a marelous off-broadway playwrite of the 1960’s whose most famoudwork “America Hurrah” had extravgant cotumes created by Robert Wilson. Jean-Claude also made a rea tgay por film “American Cream” which featured Dorothy Dean in a walk-on role.

    Here’s My Favorite Head

  9. Florian-AF

    Dennis, that’s awesome! I think the Spiral is probably the best noise album I’ve ever listened to, but in some ways her work goes beyond the genre. Almost jealous that you get to be at the residency. Is it at IRCAM? I’m generally curious where, I guess just to be more familiar with stuff there.

    Great post today btw, what started your interest in GIFs? I enjoy how you use the blog almond as an art medium.

    What projects are going on at this time?

  10. Steve Erickson

    Codex is mostly a used bookstore, but they carry about 100 new titles – a mix of recent fiction, cult favorites and political theory. Anyway, I went to McNally Jackson and found I WISHED there today.

    There’s a perversity to Yves Tumor’s current devotion to rock music. A multi-genre sound is far more fashionable these days. I guess the equivalent would be Moor Mother doing an entire album of Tribe Called Quest-influenced hip-hop.

    I’m seeing the new Noe and Almodovar films at the New York Film Festival next week, along with Radu Jude’s BAD LUCK BANGING… and THE SOUVENIR 2. And I’m watching the film Saul Williams co-directed, NEPTUNE FROST, on a video link this weekend. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Vika Kirchenbauer, but she made the best of the six shorts from the festival I’ve seen so far.

    The podcast I recorded earlier in the week is now up, if anyone wants to hear a roundtable discussion between myself and Chicago-based critics Ben Sachs and John Dixon about new releases and Kiyoshi Kuroswa’s WIFE OF A SPY: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/kiyoshi-kurosawa-new-release-roundtable-the-reversal/id1557125005?i=1000535664334

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