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Frisk (George Miles Cycle #2)

3.71 of 5 stars 3.71 · rating details · 850 ratings · 57 reviews

Cooper says, "I present the actual act of evil so it's visible and give it a bunch of facets so that you can actually look at it and experience it. You're seduced into dealing with it. ... So with Frisk, whatever pleasure you got out of making a picture in your mind based on ... those people being murdered, you take responsibility for it." In unsparingly confessional mode,...more

Paperback, 204 pages

Published October 23rd 2002 by Grove Weidenfeld (first published 1991)

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Feb 11, 2013 Paul rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: homophobes

Shelves: really-terrible-novels

Frisk is the gay American Psycho, and like that horrendous novel it revels in grossly repellant violence, and just like American Psycho, you have to ask yourself what the point is. And it's hard to say. Ellis's novel was supposed to satirise the yuppie greed-is-good 1980s. Okay, it does. But the violence towards women in that book goes on for page after page after page. And after say 15 pages, the reader is justified in saying Okay Brett, I Get The Point Already!! But on and on the violence goes...more Frisk is the gay American Psycho, and like that horrendous novel it revels in grossly repellant violence, and just like American Psycho, you have to ask yourself what the point is. And it's hard to say. Ellis's novel was supposed to satirise the yuppie greed-is-good 1980s. Okay, it does. But the violence towards women in that book goes on for page after page after page. And after say 15 pages, the reader is justified in saying Okay Brett, I Get The Point Already!! But on and on the violence goes. And so I get to figure that what's happening is that Ellis actually LIKES writing this stuff. Otherwise why go on at such length? And why does he like it, all that describing women being chopped up and tortured in so many disgusting, amusing ways? Well, I have to leave that to each reader to answer, and likewise answer why the reader likes reading it as well, and why so many many readers (vastly male it seems from the Amazon reviews) think American Psycho ROCKS! So, Dennis Cooper writes about gay sadomasochistic sex and murder. And in this book, plenty of coprophagy. The style he uses to do this is uniformly dull, lifeless, enervated, flat, affectless. It's... oh, I dunno, whatever. One critic describes it as "cool, immaculate prose [which] manages to convey intense romanticism alongside the macabre temptations of taboo." Yeah, right. Does that make it good, this breaking of taboos? Dennis Cooper does step out of his cool, immaculate style and gets quite excitable when he gets to the part about carving up teenaged boys. But then he lapses into a kind of boredom again. And the Los Angeles Times Book Review critic says in the blurb on the front "destined to classic status". And I say, these critics are degenerates. This book serves no purpose, except maybe, you know, if people like to read about torturing boys to death. I mean, some people might. So to them, it's good. Might even be a classic, I guess. Do I have the right to say that people shouldn't get their fun reading about pain and death and sadistic torture for page after page? (less)

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Jan 02, 2012 Nate D rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: those who desire

Recommended to Nate D by: found photographs of ghastly things

Shelves: post-modernism

What Dennis Cooper is on about here, beneath all the porn and violence, is actually pretty subtle and articulate. This is sort of his deal, and it explains the sharp polarization in the reviews he gets. Here, Cooper's program is a total de-romanticization and dismemberment of the idea of sexual desire, particularly in its potentially destructive aspects. For his characters, particularly narrator "Dennis", desire doesn't actually help anyone connect with anyone else. More the opposite. Desire her...more

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Aug 09, 2010 Eddie Watkins rated it 4 of 5 stars

Years ago this book would’ve repulsed me, and not because of its extensive rimming, its deep digital anal probing, its examination of others’ turds, its languid sadism, or even its graphic sexual torture. It would have repulsed me because of its offhanded nihilism, its obsession with image, and its cult of youth.

I used to ask so much of books – new worlds promised, religious and philosophical issues probed, mysticism - and now here I am reduced to reading about violent gay sex fantasies and scar...more

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Aug 08, 2008 Ian rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: literature

This is a difficult book to rate. It is a snuff fantasy that is first and foremost intended to provoke. I read this for a college course, and this is probably the only reason I would do so. Inside are depictions of deviance, sexual torture, and evisceration. An example of a choice scene: the murder and dissection of a man, and subsequent filtering of organs and fluids between the fingers, in order to discover his essence. And it gets worse.

But this isn't simply shock fiction. Cooper's premise is...more

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Jan 15, 2009 Friedrich Der rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: intelligent people who like shock

Recommended to Friedrich by: found it 2nd hand

I found this deeply disturbing and I didn't bother finishing it. Narratives about sociopaths are nothing new - think American Psycho, Natural Born Killers etc - but what makes this one different is that there is no satire. It's also just about the most graphic thing you will ever read. The victims are presented as insentient toys, beautiful and moronic. The other characters complicity accept the murders and do nothing to stop them. Add it all together and you have something that glamorizes tortu...more

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Sep 23, 2011 Dan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011

a tough book to "rate," and a tough one to unravel.

this is my first official dennis cooper novel, though i've followed his blog fairly closely for several years. i expected something harsh, but it actually exceeded my expectations in the taboo-breaking department. the majority of it reads like a hybrid of the marquis de sade and a larry clark movie. fucked up sex, abstract philosophizing, vaguely bored man-children, etc. sometimes the combo works and sometimes it's just unpleasant to get through...more a tough book to "rate," and a tough one to unravel.

this is my first official dennis cooper novel, though i've followed his blog fairly closely for several years. i expected something harsh, but it actually exceeded my expectations in the taboo-breaking department. the majority of it reads like a hybrid of the marquis de sade and a larry clark movie. fucked up sex, abstract philosophizing, vaguely bored man-children, etc. sometimes the combo works and sometimes it's just unpleasant to get through.

for a book that deals with snuff films, rape, murder and pedophilia, it's remarkably un-psychological. the various heinous acts that are described within its pages are not only presented without a moral/ethical barometer, they're also presented without the power dynamics that usually propel sadistic fantasies. the novel's antagonist ("dennis cooper," a nice touch) is kind of a pothead mad scientist. he's not particularly interested in bullying his nubile young victims. he's more interested in witnessing what might happen while he disembowels them and so forth. in cooper's work, this abstract experimentation is presented as highly erotic, but it reads as somewhat flat due to its lack of personal involvement. this distinguishes the book from, say, the poetic masochism of a jean genet novel.

as a fairly vanilla straight person, the fetishism of the book failed to lure me in on a pornographic level. but it was kind of interesting to look at it "from the outside," so to speak. can fantasies of this sort exist without power dynamics? like a good nietzschean/foucauldian, i'm tempted to say that power is the fuel that ignites this sort of stuff fundamentally, but it's interesting to approach the subject with pseudo-scientific detachment, i guess. the absence of a clearly identified power struggle seems to be the book's central idea (beyond pornographic descriptions), and i wish it was approached in more depth. on the other hand, cooper makes clear that the book's morbid attractions are impossible to put into language. i guess i wish he tried a bit harder though. (less)

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Feb 15, 2011 Doug rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

What a book to finish on Valentine's Day, huh?

I'm not sure what I *thought* Frisk was going to be about, it was just one of those books that I had heard about from a couple of different sources right near the same time and so I figured it would be interesting to ride that coincidence. I did see a quick blurb, and noticed it had to do with obsession and snuff films and recreation and I thought, "Oh, alright." The blurb barely sunk in until I was a chapter or two inside...

Things this book has, if...more What a book to finish on Valentine's Day, huh?

I'm not sure what I *thought* Frisk was going to be about, it was just one of those books that I had heard about from a couple of different sources right near the same time and so I figured it would be interesting to ride that coincidence. I did see a quick blurb, and noticed it had to do with obsession and snuff films and recreation and I thought, "Oh, alright." The blurb barely sunk in until I was a chapter or two inside...

Things this book has, if any are a deal breaker, the rest of the review is probably not necessary for you:

* drug abuse (yeah, I know, I'm just setting it up...),
* Face punching to the point of scarring,
* Sharing of illicit variances with underage folk,
* the word "ass smell" and its derivations get used a lot,
* numerous references to blossoming anuses,
* coprophagia, and
* a bit of the old ultraviolence against a young boy with most/all of above thrown in.

If you read through that list and are still around, then I can say that this book also has some other really fascinating bits. It is a melancholy journey of obsession, of objectifying others, of trying to understand what makes up the essence of a lover. Of trying to recreate the past and failing. Of owning beauty by destroying it. Of knowing someone by destroying them. Of testing the boundaries of friendship. It really is fodder for discussion and bookclub reading, but see above...

The resulting mix is vaguely like embedding a thirty minute, gorgeous discussion of the women of Shakespeare and what the represent to modern gender politics in the middle of a hard-core gay S&M video. It is delightful in its own kerfuffle--a literary equivalent to scatological, pornographic chess-boxing--but one imagines the Venn diagram where the big circle that says "Fans of literary discussions about the frailty relationships" and the big circle that says "Fans of graphic depictions of violent, body-fluid-involved sex" is probably not one that has a *huge* cross over. And in my case, I'm not so much a fan of the latter (hell, of the former, for that matter)as one who does not mind it; so the book was middling to me in that respect.

However, the total package, as a mood piece, as a bottled bit of bother, worked for me. I would not recommend it a whole lot unless someone knows what they are getting into, and there is an element toward the end that deflated my enjoyment (I won't spoil what, even though it was an interesting plot device) even though the ending itself was touching and vaguely beautiful.

Note: For fans of Palahniuk's Fight Club, this book has as scene where the narrator wails on a blond pretty boy after being overcome with the need to destroy. Later, the pretty boy is somewhat recreated as a harder, scarred man. This very much so echoes the later Fight Club where the narrator wails on Angelface, and something similar occurs. I'm not sure if Chuck read Frisk or not, so it could either be homage or coincidence.

Second Note: The book plays around with narrative structure. The "I" is Dennis, but often stretches of the story are told from other points of view, and sometimes events that guessed at or fictionalized are woven back into the narrative. For fans of that sort of thing, here you go.(less)

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Sep 14, 2010 Evan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

That's my friends' problem, not mine. Jealousy, that's what their idiocy is about. I'm more "experienced" than any of them. I've imagined scenes they couldn't even start to think up. And one of the things that goes on when you mentally explore a certain area of life like I do is you start to understand all of it. Or else you know exactly what you want out of it, and the rest doesn't matter.

Kevin shielded his eyes, pressed his face to the window. Amsterdam's skyline reminded him of a dessert tray...more

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May 31, 2012 Joel rated it 5 of 5 stars

Transgressive fiction has always had a special place in my reading list. While its definition encompasses a world of books from the classics to the current crop of ‘transgressive’ writers. A few have made clunky efforts; books which started quite nicely but ends with me treating the book as a chore (for instance, Darcey Steinke’s Suicide Blonde; it had started out quite nicely although I couldn’t quite relate with bourbon drinking but it finished with a whimper). Dennis Cooper’s treatment of ‘tr...more Transgressive fiction has always had a special place in my reading list. While its definition encompasses a world of books from the classics to the current crop of ‘transgressive’ writers. A few have made clunky efforts; books which started quite nicely but ends with me treating the book as a chore (for instance, Darcey Steinke’s Suicide Blonde; it had started out quite nicely although I couldn’t quite relate with bourbon drinking but it finished with a whimper). Dennis Cooper’s treatment of ‘transgressive’ can run hot and cold at the same time.

American Psycho could well be treated as its ‘straight’ counterpart while ‘Frisk’ is its eeee-vil gay sibling (I take that back, Patrick Bateman, after much ruminations, is gay). I read this book way back in 2001 and I didn’t like the way it ended. But it was pretty gruesome and drugged out. Cooper wasn’t the writer who drove me to write fagporn for myself. That was Patrick Califia’s fault (and I would have to say, those efforts were altogether dismal). However, while Frisk was compelling, there are some points in it that I have disagreed with (and what some of my gay-friends were not aware, which is a bit disconcerting: as if the dead and dying gay boys around us weren’t somehow responsible for their current state, I will digress from this thought).

Frisk ties in sex, violence, mutilation and copious amounts of gay sex. While gay sex is de rigeuer in gay relationships, the equation being leveled against alternative lifestyles like drug use, orgies, and sexual deviancies have led me to believe that was what it was all about. Which made me sad, really. But this is transgressive fiction so I let it slide. In any case, I lap these things up.

Cooper’s stock in trade of extreme descriptions of violence and mutilation is in full display here. When the main character travels around Amsterdam (or some European country), he encounters a German couple who have the knack of killing boys and sniffing their asses. That doesn’t get any more extreme than that. I remember a movie adaptation which, instead of a gay couple, transposed a demented straight couple. Parkey Posey worked so well in the movie that an addition of a female character blunted an otherwise dreary movie.

The book contains excesses of drugs (which pervades Dennis Cooper’s books) and some characters were one-note. While Poppy Z. Brite’s Exquisite Corpse gelled together because of the ludicrousness of the plot, Frisk is terrifying because of the inherent ennui and obsessions are real and reflective of this generation’s gay culture.(less)

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Nov 19, 2012 Domenica rated it 2 of 5 stars

I agree that this is a difficult book to rate. I literally could not read more than, say, 30 pages at a time before needing to put the book down and take a breather. I'm not squeamish, prudish, or overly sensitive. But this novella literally made me feel ill and a little psychotic myself at times. The fact that it is so precisely well-written and stylized (not in a gimmicky or playful Easton-Ellis way) is what makes it even more eerily effective.

The narrative style is extremely unconventional (I...more

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Mar 21, 2013 Jori Richardson rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: most-hated-protagonists, sexuality

I picked up this book at a library book-sale, intrigued by the vague description on the back cover.
When I read the Jean Genet quote that came before the book started, I knew that this was going to be a heavily sexual story - and it was. Depending on how they are written, books like this normally don't offend me.
However, this one really made me feel uncomfortable. I know that that was the author's aim, as his writing was pointedly shocking.
The book opens with a series of photographs being studied...more

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Jan 06, 2013 Samuel Ch. rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Primer acto: Dos homosexuales cogiendo.
Segundo acto: Dos homosexuales cogiendo.
Tercer acto: Dos homosexuales cogiendo.
Cuarto acto: Dos homosexuales cogiendo.
Quinto acto: Dos homosexuales cogiendo.
Sexto acto: Dos homosexuales cogiendo.
¿Cómo se llamó la obra: Frisk

Claro que ya esperaba una serie de escenas explícitas, pornográficas... ¡pero no una en cada página! El sexo se vicia, el morbo aburre, la obsesión se vuelve tonta y los personajes no tardan en ser únicamente lenguas que lamen o traseros...more

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Nov 09, 2010 Perry rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: interlibrary-loan

Frisk was interesting maybe because it was very obscene in terms of homoeroticism and having these kind of boundaries that i haven't seen literature push before? In college i took a class on Georges Bataille and pornographic literature and i guess this a more contemporary imagining of that.

So Frisk is about our narrator who is also named Dennis Cooper and um he sees a set of photographs when he's thirteen of this mutilated thirteen year old and the pictures kind of impact the rest of his life i...more

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May 19, 2010 Idun rated it 3 of 5 stars

Sadomasochistic gay snuff was nothing new at that time. But Frisk has something to introduce here, something nor overrated neither underrated. And I gave it three stars for the sake of it. What's good about it, it never tends to deliver a grandeur orgy to take a pleasure in (Marquis de Sade :D), but stimulates your creative cells, shifting from loathe to love to flat (isn't it basic, when you imagine a kind of violence that somehow get you purged, a moment later you get excited and the same time...more

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Jun 16, 2008 Guy rated it 3 of 5 stars

Dennis Cooper - Frisk (1991). Tweede deel uit de “George Miles”-cyclus en ongetwijfeld het goorste boek dat ik ooit onder ogen kreeg. Ik kende Coopers reputatie als boegbeeld van de homo- en undergroundliteratuur, maar had er geen idee van dat hij zo geobsedeerd was door taboes als seks, geweld, de dood, en dan vooral de combinatie ervan. Het leest als een kruising van American Psycho, De 120 dagen van Sodom, de dissidente obsessies van Georges Bataille en Het Grote Handboek Voor De Patholoog. P...more

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Jan 05, 2008 Christopher rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed

My fourth favorite novel of Cooper's (after Guide, Try, and The Sluts). I wouldn't say that Cooper is an acquired taste; he's a rarefied taste. Not "decadent," though there's something dandyish in Cooper's precise prose, and of course death and decay themes pervade Cooper's novels, as they do "decadent" literature. What distinguishes Cooper's work from "decadent" writing is Cooper's urgent need to work out these (admittedly disturbing) issues of violence and pedophilic sex. And he does so withou...more

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Mar 28, 2011 Laura Obscura rated it 5 of 5 stars

I love the feelings evoked from reading Dennis Cooper's work. Like a horrible car crash, I'm peeking through my fingers sometimes to see what's on the next page. Awe and repulsion at the same time. I really ask myself sometimes what I'm learning from Frisk. I guess rather than put it that way, it's more of a reflection of sensory assault. So, like The Human Centipede, once you know what it's about and you can handle it, you're set to experience it. It can't get any worse.

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Feb 02, 2013 Marianne Vries rated it 3 of 5 stars

There's a layer hiding just under the surface of this book and if you pay attention you can see it. It's a story about the people in the line behind us at the grocery store, but even more about the people at our school reunion - the ones who had their moment of glory and have been trying ever since to recapture that feeling, or that friend, or that lover's delight; and those who have moved on and don't know why the others were left behind.
It's a beautiful, poignant sequel to Closer if you read...more

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Mar 09, 2011 Alexander Veee rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: books-i-own, read-2011

I think," I continue, "no, I know that if I killed you, and it wouldn't have to be you, just someone who, like you, fits a particular physical type that I'm into, it would be unbelievably profound. I'd be... free? That sounds stupid, I guess. But I see these criminals on the news who've killed someone methodically, and they're free. They know something amazing. You can just tell."

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Jul 21, 2010 Jason Tougaw rated it 5 of 5 stars

Cooper is known for his gory sexual violence, but as a squeamish guy, I can tell you the sexual violence works because the prose is so subtle, complicated, and well crafted. Also, Cooper has this way of writing sentences that capture the rhythms of what it feels like to be southern Californian. Somehow he shows how the language shapes the thinking--and the being.

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Jan 24, 2012 Joshuah rated it 2 of 5 stars

i can't seem to get pass this indulgent way of writing... it's just not beautiful they way words should be. and the story doesn't seem to have any layers at all. it's just gross out gay porn. Ooo! you wrote a book about a gay man killing his lovers and eating shit. De Sade did this years ago, and was better at it. Now it's just boring.

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Jan 30, 2012 Mel Bosworth rated it 4 of 5 stars

Freaky and in your face. Told in a well executed first person omniscient that kept me off balance. While reading I thought, "This is a poor man's Marquis de Sade." It's more like 7 days of sodom than 120 days though, and like the latter its shock is often buffered by flecks of humor. Well worth the read if you've got a strong stomach and an open mind.

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Dec 18, 2008 Iain Gardener rated it 4 of 5 stars

this is a tough one, given the subject matter I would anyone tempted to read it, to check that they won't find it offensive, given that priviso I found it a first rate book, well written, I have already begun reading some of Coopers other works and will post on them soon

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Sep 09, 2012 Aphina rated it 4 of 5 stars

I have only given it a four because of the powerful emotions this book made me feel. I have never been so sickened and revulsed by a book before, I seriously dreaded opening it up to read!

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May 12, 2009 M. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2006-or-before, own, 2009, second-reading, fiction

My first Cooper.

------
second reading notes:

Having read virtually all of Cooper's work since reading this for the first time, and now reading it in order of the context of the George Miles Cycle, Frisk, instead of seeming really violent and abject as it did before, seems almost light. It's really just Cooper's meditation on the reality of representation, and it's fascinating. But it's all just concept that is explored here, so some of the terror that's present in say, The Sluts, where similar su...more

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Dec 29, 2009 Cameron Moir rated it 4 of 5 stars

Short montage of stories, slightly sadistic but untterly exciting> Some mght find a little sick.

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Sep 14, 2009 Charlie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Influenced my novella. A great assessment of fantasy v. reality, and the fabulous dark places.

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May 10, 2011 megan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: grotesque, queer, weird-body-shit

i know i should have gone to quickies and been sociable but instead i had to finish this book.
i read this when i was 22 maybe and had no context for it at all. i am much more well read now and it is still gruesomely captivating (and cleverly structured) (and oh man - the SPACED chapter's pov experimentation!!!) if less shocking - some of the dazzle has worn off i think now that it's less beyond me.
it amazes me that i have always been interested in the things that i am interested in. why on eart...more

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Jul 27, 2012 Nick rated it 4 of 5 stars

More Cooper death eroticism. Fun if you like this sort of this. I do!

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Jul 11, 2011 Aral rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

warren's eyes get a glary sheen that might or might not be imploding emotion.

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About Dennis Cooper

Dennis Cooper was born on January 10, 1953 and grew up in the Southern California cities of Covina and Arcadia. In 1976, he founded Little Caesar Magazine and Press, which he ran until 1982. In 1985, he moved to Amsterdam for two and a half years, where he began his ten year long project, The George Miles Cycle, an interconnected sequence of five novels that includes Closer, Frisk, Try, Guide, and...more

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Frisk (George Miles Cycle #2)

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