FANZINE

Author Dennis Cooper was in the states briefly from Paris, reading from his first book with Harper Perennial, a collection of short fiction called Ugly Man. While waiting on Amazon to deliver, I downloaded it on my iphone and started reading on my free Kindle app (yes you can now read about people being fisted on the sly on the subway). Fanzine recently published a limited version of The Weaklings by Cooper, and yesterday I got the U.M. paperback in the mail. Needless to say I read through the night, alternately wincing, frightened, tantalized and laughing my ass off, a similar reaction I had to the new Sam Raimi flick, but then printed words dig so much deeper, or they can, Cooper reminds. Here’s an author who began writing at 15 trying to emulate de Sade and later Rimbaud – I think history will prove Coop’s now surpassed both. And just in time for that larger audience, who’ll get no punches pulled.

http://www.amazon.com/Ugly-Man-Stories-Dennis-Cooper/dp/0061715441