The blog of author Dennis Cooper

Real things, often bad, reenacted in 3D animation *

* (restored)

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Hurricane Damages Building

 

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Falling Forklift Container

 

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‘The Voice’ and YouTube star Christina Grimmie shot dead at concert

 

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Slip and Fall Injury

 

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US Airways Flight 1549

 

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Surveillance footage shows Nipsey Hussle shooting

 

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The Rhode Island nightclub fire

 

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Leg Amputation Surgery

 

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Tsunami

 

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Pedestrian struck by semi trailer

 

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Paul Walker Crash Site

 

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A Day in Pompeii

 

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Police Shooting of Suspect’s Canine

 

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Trying to escape the sinking Titanic

 

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Kurt Cobain 3d model crime scene greenhouse Seattle april 1994

 

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Malfunctioning toaster

 

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Bus collision

 

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Michael Brown vs. police shooting in Ferguson

 

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Stair Collapse and Fall

 

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Double landslide

 

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Elderly man falling out of hospital bed

 

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The Herald Of Free Enterprise capsizing

 

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Crime Scene Body Example

 

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JFK Assassination

 

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Hadramaut

 

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Heating Unit Explosion

 

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Pan Am 103 – Lockerbie Disaster

 

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Evidence used to convict Amanda Knox

 

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Tara Reade’s Claim of Sexual Assualt Against Joe Biden

 

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Tupac Shakur’s Murder

 

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DMT Trip Simulation

 

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Boris Johnson spends second night in the intensive care unit

 

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Disney World Monorail Crash

 

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Motorcycle Accident Reconstruction

 

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Two news helicopters crash over Phoenix, Arizona

 

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JetBlue flight diverted after pilot flips out

 

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GTA4 DEATH TUNNEL

 

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Rhinoplasty

 

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JFK_Head_Z312_Sun_Study

 

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Four killed in Australia theme park ride accident

 

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Dyrby Death by Iron Gate

 

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Meteorite hits Earth

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** David, Hi. I’ll head over to youtube and find her, thanks. Yeah, I too love ‘If’ and ‘O Lucky Man’, def. We had about 3/4 decent weather here all weekend. I was going to walk over and check out that Christo-wrapped Arc de Triomphe, but I didn’t. It’s still there though. ** Tosh Berman, Thanks, Tosh, I hope/presume NYC was way fun. Why were you there? Well, why not. I think I’ll be doing a Zoom book launch thing with Skylight, but I don’t know when yet. ** Sypha, My pleasure. I do like writing novels. I think the plan is that Bret’s podcast novel will eventually become a book? I think that’s what he said. Good luck with ‘Dune’. I don’t want to read it, but I’d rather read it than see the movie. ** Misanthrope, Hi. Oh, thanks. Beautiful is welcome. Yeah, well, yeah, very tough subject. A whole lot tougher than ‘Frisk’s’ or whatever. Obviously interested to know your overall thoughts when they exist. My bookstore said they might have the Joy Williams in today, so I go might find out. All over the place is definitely a good thing. A la this blog which is kind of a read-out of my swerving attention span. ** Dominik, Hi!!! It definitely was creepy, but, because I was on Ecstacy, I thought it was just all so wonderful, ha ha. Half the people I know who read ‘A Little Lie’ swear by it, and the other half hated it so much they fly into a rage at the mention of its name. My weekend was okay. My writer friends Lucy and Chris popped through Paris, so I saw them happily. Went to my favorite bookstore but didn’t buy anything. Did my biweekly Zoom book club. Did a ‘IW’-related interview. Shit like that there. How/what was yours? If I were an escort, I would moan ‘Eggplant’ every time a client caressed me and make a million billion dollars, I bet. Love opening a little restaurant in Paris that serves amazing vegan Ramen, G. ** David Ehrenstein, I do believe I remember that about you and Mr. Wilson. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that I was in Mr. Wilson’s loft decades ago when my late friend Howard Brookner was making a documentary about him, and Matt Dillion was staying there at the time, and one of his very used undershirts was lying crumpled on the bed, and a friend of mine who was also there chewed it. ** _Black_Acrylic, Lovely, lovely PT episode, my friend. Thank you! ‘Creepy Sheen’ is such a nice title. I’ll look for it. Yes, yes, get started on those submissions. ** Bill, Her book is a goodie. The Residents! They have a healthy following here in France, so that’s strange. Do they do ‘the hits’? Is their show still ‘wild’? ** Joseph, Hi, Joseph! How very nice to see you! Thank you so much about ‘I Wished’. That’s enormously wonderful to hear. Thank you. How are you, sir? What’s going on? ** Nik, Whoa, Nik, it’s awesome to lay eyes on you, or, well, on your text-based embodiment. I think I remember you saying you were working on the Baumer book. It turned out so well, obviously. What a tremendous guy, and such a terrible loss. I hope you’re doing really great. If you ever feel like giving a catch up, I’m beyond all ears. Take care! ** Steve Erickson, Ah, ha! Everyone, Mr. Erickson weighs in on the inescapable new album by the inescapable Lil Nas X right here. Ha, Ecstacy never made me feel that giant bond with humanity. Maybe because I do all the time anyway, ha ha? I think just felt the boring and predictable ‘oh, that’s beautiful, oh, that’s so fascinating’ kind of thing. ** Florian-AF, Hi, Oh, it’s not an actual game. It’s more a kind of an art piece that looks and works like a video game. We’ll doing the guided tour while the audience watches. Ideally we’ll tour the piece around to different places if turns out as fun and cool as we’re hoping. I’ll do a post about it here once there’s enough of it finished to share. Gisele’s and my piece ‘Crowd’ will be performed at BAM in Brooklyn next year, I can’t remember when. Right, your bandcamp, great, I’ll go devour it. Thanks. So far so good with the novel, but we’ll see. ** Okay. Today’s post was dead, and now it’s not dead anymore if you’re interested. See you tomorrow.

13 Comments

  1. TomK

    Hey Dennis,
    I just finished I wished. Incredible and unbelievably moving. I never really react physically/externally to literature, maybe that’s something I like about it, but this made me sob. Everything about it is incredible.

    I have so many things i want to ask about it but I can’t figure out how what I want to know can be ordered into a question.

    One thing I guess and maybe I’m way off about it’s presence or intent but I felt every novel or rather every novel’s stylistic imprint was somehow put to work or mobilized in creating ‘i wished’ and that this layering increased the impact of the emotion Or reality that escaped it. Like Bresson but in wildly different and mutating surfaces. I saw the sentence structure and strange perfection of the marbled swarm, god jr and period in the way sentience and grief could be transferred around until it returned to its conditions.

    It was incredible. I hope you’re doing ok with everything.

    I emailed this to you before because I couldn’t get the blog on my computer browser but it’s fine on my phone.

  2. Dominik

    Hi!!

    I can imagine you standing there, head full of ecstasy, working out all the secrets of Disneyland in complete awe, haha.

    I can understand both groups, honestly. I simultaneously love and hate “A Little Life” so much right now. I spent my entire weekend with it, and what fucks me up the most is that I loved it so, so much, and then the author just went so grossly overboard with the physical and emotional torture that, after a certain point, I just couldn’t take it seriously anymore. And it was unnecessary, really. I watched an interview with the author, and she said she decided to go for this overkill because she wanted to create a character who was damaged beyond the hope of repair. But I think she could’ve realistically reach that point even if she left out at least two of the major tragedies, and it’s just… ah. I’m upset, haha.

    Your weekend definitely sounds a lot less frustrating and more fruitful! I always find the idea/mention of the book club especially fantastic.

    Your love has at least one regular customer from this moment on. Thank you! Love studying the “elderly man” to learn how to fall out of his bed just as slowly and gracefully, Od.

  3. Ian

    Hey Dennis, hope all is well with you in Paris. These are some funny animations. They remind me of the videos of ppl being decapitated in my health and safety course. The nfl is back so life is good with me. I just ordered a new novel called The Ketchup Factory. I will let you know how it is. I had to message indigo, Canadian bookseller, to get my copy of IW shipped but it should arrive this week.

    Take care, Ian

  4. Misanthrope

    Dennis, Fuck, I think these animations are worse than the real thing because oftentimes the real things seem/look so unreal when viewed as to be almost silly and wholly unbelievable. These animations…not so much.

    I finished I Wished last night. My God. This is maybe your most difficult novel to process on so many levels. Right now, I’m trying to reconcile this being a novel, i.e., fiction. Hmm.

    It’s funny, I mentioned the other day how it’s like you’re talking directly as your real self to the reader in this one and you actually address that very close to the end and how different and difficult that is for you. Or for the narrator, I suppose. That’s one thing that’s been difficult, especially in light of this being a novel.

    But what’s really interesting about that is that you’ve addressed mental health in a way that we don’t see often. Or rather, you’ve really gotten to a really deep level that we don’t often see. Instead of just being like, “Man, this guy was messed up and miserable and here’s what he did and I felt bad,” we get a very deep look at what it’s like for someone close to said person to deal with that and how it affects his own mental health. Really, this critique here is about content more than literary stylings or anything, but I think it’s important. Grief, loss, self-doubt, self awareness, all the things that come with this but also come with so many other things that we don’t realize until it’s too late. Which really fits with your theme of having something right in front of you but not knowing you have it and looking for it somewhere else. Also appearance versus reality, how things aren’t what they seem. I think, too, a life that gets sidetracked looking in all the wrong places. And even at the age of 68, still looking, getting closer but still looking, however hopeless it may seem or be.

    Ultimately—and this is going to sound like a harsh criticism but it’s actually not, it’s a compliment—I Wished is an unfinished, incomplete novel. It can’t help but be, and I think there’s a beauty in it. Even with the most “successful” people, their lives are never really finished, even when they’re dead. There’s always something more they could’ve done or that they wished they’d done. And one must keep wishing and keep living and keep searching internally and externally. Even with all the sadness in the novel, there’s hope. And of course, there’s memory (not nostalgia but memory).

    And thanks for writing it. Maybe this is weird, but it’s a gift you’ve given to George, to yourself, and to your readers. Which is maybe the best the thing about it.

    Oh, I got the Joy Williams book yesterday. I threw in Whitehead’s Underground Railroad too because it was right there on the shelf above it. It’s supposed to be the greatest book ever, so we’ll see.

    Gus the hamster died Saturday night. David found him curled up on his side, asleep forever. We buried him yesterday.

  5. David

    Just looked up that Arc de Triomphe thing online…. sounds interesting… been to Paris a number of times it’s a fantastic place… today is the first day in a while I have awoke and felt pretty damned good…. I checked your Blog via facebook this morning and saw this post… then on re checking after my run the link wasn’t there… nor was this post available through clicking directly onto your blog… I actually refound it by finding ‘your’ alternate facebook page that has a link on it… and ‘bingo’… I will go through all of these videos as they look brilliant…. on awaking this morning I jacked off with stinging nettles… fantasizing about being in a very ‘awkward’ situation… then I cut the arms of my twelve monkeys…… (movie) T shirt…… put it on and went for a run… and now I’m back… obviously… not necessarily I could be running typing this…. but I’m not… (SETI is something you recline on whilst writing a message to Dennis cooper… after masturbating with stinging nettles and doing a run… or is it the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence…) I love sci fi movies…. all the best x

  6. _Black_Acrylic

    @ DC, thank you for your kind words about Play Therapy! It really means a lot.

    The guy living over the road is ill with Covid, having been double jabbed previously too. He went to the Bramham Festival and probably caught it there, mingling with other people in the great outdoors. I’m still gonna see this art exhibition next week but don’t think we’ll be attending Leeds United games any time soon.

  7. Sypha

    Dennis, is that the plan for Bret’s book? I hope so. For whatever reason I find podcasts almost impossible to listen to. Even though I subscribe to Bret’s Patreon I’ve never listened to a single one, not even his interview with you. Shame on me, I know. Wait, I take it back, I DID listen to bits and pieces of his podcast in regards to the history of the A STAR IS BORN films, mainly because I was curious to hear what his thoughts on Lady Gaga’s performance was. Well, I would, wouldn’t I? :p

    DUNE the book is okay. The writing style seems very stilted and awkward to me, but I like how Herbert throws in tons of ideas and concepts but doesn’t bother to really explain what the hell he’s talking about (I assume the appendixes go into more detail on that kind of thing). It annoyed me at first but I also like how obviously, unsubtly evil the bad guys are: really they’re so over-the-top bad guys I’m surprised Herbert didn’t give them curly moustaches to twirl. You ever seen David Lynch’s DUNE movie? I’ve never seen it myself (in fact, one of the few films of his I haven’t seen), but I kind of want to see it now that the book is almost done with.

  8. Bill

    That knee amputation animation, yow.

    The Residents show was (I think) one set of new material (so-so), and one set of oldies (good fun). It was mostly four guys (I don’t know who’s in the band these days) playing the tunes, in goofy costumes (with no costume changes mid-set). They were touting this new “multimedia show”, but it umm needed some help. So a mixed night out, but it was good to see a live gig at the Castro theatre.

    Bill

  9. David Ehrenstein

    A chewed Robert Wilson undershirt? Fabulous! A shame we can’t see it in 3-D

    My favorite 3-D movie is Paul Morrissey’s “Flesh For Frankenstein”

  10. Billy

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJmR_f0X-zw

    This is the same sort of thing except you had to put it together in the game. You could play the tape back and forth. Lousy game but anyway.

    “Stephen Jay Gould, reviewing the evidence of the fossil record in the Burgess Shale, offered the dizzying conclusion that if the “tape” of evolution could be rewound and run again, it would not “come out” the same way.”

    ‘I Wished’ came in the post today so I’m hoping I’ll read it this week.

  11. T

    Hey Dennis! Wow, these are… I dunno… so honest at getting at the inconceivability of death and disaster and whatever. Something about the way a lot of the figures (don’t) react, their ‘confusion’ or whatever, seems like far more accurate than the way shock or trauma is performed in movies, say. Really liked the tsunami, the soundtrack, the water textures (gave a something kinda similar to the waterfall serenity of last week), plus the cars driving into the water and the heavy shipping still coming into port. Also spent a lot of time watching various procedures on the channels that had uploaded the surgery animations, good fun. Hope you had a radiant weekend – I forget what I did during mine, but I did take note of your book recommendations, thanks for them! The Mark Baumer collection sang to me particularly, I might see if I can score that before moving across the channel. Wishing you a day that’s so good you have to commission a 3D reanimation of it from start to finish.

  12. Florian-AF

    Ayy Dennis, that all sounds great. I’ll keep an eye out for dates regarding Crowd and hope to arrange a trip to see it, at least hopefully. Looking forward to seeing stuff about the game themed piece also.

    Also glad that you’ll check out some of the music. Hope you enjoy some of it, “God is a Man Eater” and “I Will Give you…” are two that I’m quite happy with. The latter is a live recording of noisier and more intense music that you may like

  13. Joseph Goosey

    ey Dennis,

    Well, you’re welcome sir but again one of my first thoughts the moment I finished the book was “thank you.” I don’t know if it’s a thing other people do or not (I’m rarely in the room when anyone else finishes a book) but when I finish a book that affects me immensely, in a positive & heavy way, I place the actual book object down very, very gently and usually emit an soft & involuntary noise that amount to an “o.” This was one of those cases.

    As for what’s going on here, I’m still alive and scribbling poems. I guess at this point in the world in which we live, what with rampant virus and all, that’s considered a resounding success & I’ll totally take it. (“This is an ignoble attitude, I would rather die for love, but I haven’t” – i think is the O’Hara quote, maybe I botched it) The scribbling is literal and taking place in a journal given the aforementioned borrowed laptop since mine crapped out. But I write differently in a journal rather than on a computer. And writing differently is always good…even if it’s crap!

    So I live really close to Fort Bragg North Carolina which is super dumb and I’d love to move but as I write this I can hear them doing their silly practice bombings. That I’m listening to bombs right now just seemed worth mentioning.

    May your day be bomb-free.

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