BOOK
Dennis Cooper's books are about sex and violence in the same way Taxi Driver is about how hard it is to get a date in New York. Sex and violence are personal obsessions for Cooper, yes, but they're also ways to get at bigger ideas.
Period, the fifth and last book in Cooper's so-called Sex and Death series, is a twisted funhouse mirror of a novel, morphing together a sort of Huck Finn boys-in-lust story, a goth band that passes the time by slicing and dicing young male fans, and glossier, media-saturated characters, like a goth radio-show host and the keepers of secret Web sites. The book's images are disquieting and relentless: beautiful, anonymous boys, porn, drugs, violence, poetry. Cooper's prose is wildly spare.
But the latter makes Period a problematic novel. As the last book in a long series, it's a tough sell on its own. If you want to check out a single book in the series, try the earlier Frisk or Closer. Like most interesting and important things in life, you have to earn your way into Period. Laying down your money is just the start.
Period, by Dennis Cooper: $21. Grove Press: (800) 788 3123.
STREET CRED
The Short Goodbye
Par2-D2
Violent Laughter
The March of Progress
Flighty Mouse
Fast Outta the Gate
Broadband Gamespot
Read Me
Music
Goth Talk
Dark Passage
Got Skim?
Weather Vane on a Chain
just outta beta
Lenscraft
The Road to Nerdville
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