Dennis Cooper has been praised as a writer of "disquieting genius" by "Vanity Fair, and his sparely crafted novels have earned him an international...
read full description
reviews
Mar 06, 2009
Davelowusa
rated it: 
No one gets this book, least of all me. What is the point? A pothead loses/kills his video game-obsessed pothead son; fakes paraplegia; becomes obsessed with video games himself; and then is so high or crazy that he starts talking to the various and sundry animals in the game.
It's not that it's a great book by any means, it's that it's unique, which is difficult for a book to be in a post-postmodern world. It makes people want to talk, and I don't really consider the reading proces More...
It's not that it's a great book by any means, it's that it's unique, which is difficult for a book to be in a post-postmodern world. It makes people want to talk, and I don't really consider the reading proces More...
Jan 28, 2009
Vincent
rated it: 
Ugh! This book is the reason why more kids are playing video games instead of reading.
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Feb 01, 2011
Tancredi
rated it: 
"Diciamo che ho appena cancellato il mondo e non ho distrutto il mio. Diciamo che Marianne aveva ragione e che la morte è una favola o un gioco, e che ho appena sepolto il mio corpo accanto a quello di mio figlio. (...) Diciamo che quell'erbetta regolare nei cimiteri è erba finta e che sotto non c'è niente né nessuno."
Che cosa succede nella mente di un uomo che non riesce a superare il trauma di aver provocato accidentalmente la morte del figlio?
Ci sono due modi per r More...
Che cosa succede nella mente di un uomo che non riesce a superare il trauma di aver provocato accidentalmente la morte del figlio?
Ci sono due modi per r More...
Jan 19, 2011
Eddie
rated it:
Cooper does Dick without dick.
Somehow this little book , or one section of it at least, made me feel ickier than Cooper’s books dealing explicitly with extreme sexual violence. What made me feel icky here was the long chapter that took place mostly within an inane video game. The main character, the father whose recent life has been consumed by guilt for being responsible for the death of his son, is a pot head making ill-guided efforts at reconnecting with his dead son. One of these More...
Somehow this little book , or one section of it at least, made me feel ickier than Cooper’s books dealing explicitly with extreme sexual violence. What made me feel icky here was the long chapter that took place mostly within an inane video game. The main character, the father whose recent life has been consumed by guilt for being responsible for the death of his son, is a pot head making ill-guided efforts at reconnecting with his dead son. One of these More...
3 comments
like
(12 people liked it)
Nov 27, 2009
Jimmie
rated it: 
I didn't know what to expect when I picked up this book. Like other writers of transgressional fiction (William S. Burroughs, Kathy Acker), Dennis Cooper's writing has always been rooted firmly in left field.
This particular novel is about a man who, after a horrible car accident, is coping both with the death of his teenage son and his confinement to a wheelchair. In trying to come to terms with his son's death, he discovers a building his son drew obsessively. The man commissions a More...
This particular novel is about a man who, after a horrible car accident, is coping both with the death of his teenage son and his confinement to a wheelchair. In trying to come to terms with his son's death, he discovers a building his son drew obsessively. The man commissions a More...
Aug 08, 2009
Christopher
rated it:
God Jr. is a very important part of Cooper’s body of work—partly because, unlike most of his other fiction, all of the physical violence in God Jr. happens “off-stage.” In the absence of explicit horror I could see and feel the psychic landscape of disconnection and escapism without the voyeurism and adrenaline that clouded my reading of the earlier books. The horror in God Jr. is heartbreakingly ordinary: the failure of a father to connect with other people, especially his son, drives him to ab
More...
0 comments
like
(3 people liked it)
Jun 16, 2009
David
rated it:
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
To view it, click here
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Mar 24, 2007
Imogen
rated it:
Answers the question, "what would a Dennis Cooper book be like if all the salacious stuff rang sensationalistically hollow, and then the second half of the book was 100 pages of an unsympathetic jerk you didn't care about having stoned conversations with the characters in a Nintendo game?" Fuck this book.
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Dec 29, 2008
Brent
rated it:
I appreciate that Dennis Cooper wrote a different kind of novel, but this is my least favorite of his novels.
Although, it has come to my attention that perhaps I would appreciate this book more if I understood gaming culture.
Although, it has come to my attention that perhaps I would appreciate this book more if I understood gaming culture.
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Mar 22, 2009
Windy
rated it:
Well, I have to write a new review because someone else here (cough *Dave Low* cough) stole my words! Unbelievable!
I gave this book one star, which seemingly places it on the same level as Twilight. It's not that bad. Really. Consider it 1.5 stars. But... I just didn't get why this book is a such a big freaking deal. The father in the book, whilst grieving for his dead son, smokes so much pot that he starts talking to characters in a video game! And he pretends to be paralyz More...
I gave this book one star, which seemingly places it on the same level as Twilight. It's not that bad. Really. Consider it 1.5 stars. But... I just didn't get why this book is a such a big freaking deal. The father in the book, whilst grieving for his dead son, smokes so much pot that he starts talking to characters in a video game! And he pretends to be paralyz More...
Nov 17, 2007
Gina
rated it:
Do people like this? How does this stuff get published? Just crappy, crappy writing. And everything's bleak. And life sucks. The end.
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Aug 25, 2009
Hunter
rated it:
This book is what I get for being adventurous and buying a book I had never heard of, by an author I didn't know. The cover looked like something by Douglass Coupland but the book fell short, though I think Cooper was going for something similar.
Does anyone have an example of a GOOD book taking place largely inside a videogame? (If so, I'll award you a dollar or free copy of Banjo-Kazooie, which provided Cooper with several of his characters.)
Does anyone have an example of a GOOD book taking place largely inside a videogame? (If so, I'll award you a dollar or free copy of Banjo-Kazooie, which provided Cooper with several of his characters.)
May 11, 2011
Leslie
rated it: 
Yet another novel with spare sentences and despicable characters in pure desperation (I just read Play It As It Lays: A Novel).
In God Jr, tore-up stoner Jim survives a car wreck, feigns paraplegia and builds a misshapen monument based on his dead son's sketch. Throw in a hot teacher, a psychic, a Nintendo glitch and a failing marriage. In the last section, Jim communes with a character in the video game his son was obsessed with when he died.
CONFESSION: After a while, I More...
In God Jr, tore-up stoner Jim survives a car wreck, feigns paraplegia and builds a misshapen monument based on his dead son's sketch. Throw in a hot teacher, a psychic, a Nintendo glitch and a failing marriage. In the last section, Jim communes with a character in the video game his son was obsessed with when he died.
CONFESSION: After a while, I More...
Oct 06, 2011
Tom Spanbauer fans are likely to find the great writing they’re looking for in the books of Dennis Cooper, especially God Jr, a book of short fiction that contains modern elements laid out poetically.
Nov 25, 2008
Blythe
rated it:
Last Copper book i read was about gay satanic meth heads killing people. But this one has personified bears and nintendo! And its short enough to be read before my ADD kicks in. Yay God Jr.
Oct 10, 2008
Billy
rated it:
Novels sticking to the topic of video games and especially a various facsimile of a banjo-kazooie game and a bunch of stoned people who want to variously play/ bask in the video game landscape which is a particular glitch in one cartidge mayhap that becomes a "monument" the dad builds the son.
I found myself skimming the area where he describes, in horribly vague detail because of a veiled reference to a Nintendo lawsuit (the company is infamous for protecting brand. parody, More...
I found myself skimming the area where he describes, in horribly vague detail because of a veiled reference to a Nintendo lawsuit (the company is infamous for protecting brand. parody, More...
Aug 03, 2011
Kim
rated it:
Read it in a day, but only because I don't smoke pot, which might help in making sense of the ambiguity and magical realism of this sad, sad story.
Aug 23, 2009
Bradley
rated it:
Great book. First time I've read Cooper in like ten years. Strange to read a book by him that doesn't feature cute gay boys mutilating each other.
Sep 15, 2011
Brennon
rated it:
Disjointed, but a wonderfully original book about grief -- a genre that's usually totally hackneyed and dull.
Aug 10, 2010
shane
rated it:
i like banjo-kazooie and marijuana also so 'all in all' a good book2read
Nov 27, 2010
Sean
rated it:
Very disappointing--not at all like the Dennis Cooper I had come to know and enjoy. I abandoned it after about 100 pages. The whole thing seemed lame and pointless.
Oct 20, 2007
Tosh
rated it:
A quiet meditation of sorts about a father's grief over his deceased son. To get into his head, the father starts playing the son's favorite computer game. Unusual Dennis Cooper novel in that it doesn't deal with 'Gay' characters, but really, his work has never been about "Gay" subject matters. More about desire and where that leads...
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Oct 25, 2007
Brian
rated it:
The first thing I read by Cooper. It's his latest novel, and far more accomodating to the mainstrea. It reads more like a Douglas Coupland than anything else (not that there is anything wrong with it.) A good, quick read, but not the place to start. For that, get Closer.
