Goodreads Mobile | see what your friends are reading

Apr 29, 2010

Joey rated it:

I've been a semi-closeted fan of D. Cooper's work since the late 80's when I picked up a copy of 'Frisk' at Bookstop in Clearwater, Florida. I was startled by the prose; by words so fraught with moral flashpoints. I consider Cooper's work literary porn (and I've read my fair share of gay porn through the years).

I hadn't read anything by Cooper in many years and bought 'Ugly Man' on impulse when I saw it on a bargain table. Like any of his books, I couldn't stop reading, but it's n More...

0 comments like

Jun 06, 2009

M. rated it:

Great. Really fucking great. This is a much better collection than Wrong. I was slightly annoyed that about 50 of the book's 250 pages reprinted Jerk and The Ash Gray Proclamation (both of which I already had, albeit in "extended" formats [the former as a collaborative "art book" with Nayland Blake, the latter as a CD project:]), but then again, that's still about 200 pages of "new" or "unreleased" Dennis. It's also fascinating to find that blog entries More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 10, 2011

Yair rated it:

Definitely not for everyone, and definitely not for the faint of heart or easily disturbed, this is still a work of merit and intelligence though at times not as brilliant or fulfilled as its initial premise lays out (this is the first of Cooper I've read).

I tried reading this book once before and couldn't get through it. After actually throwing it out it continued to stick with me, a combination of a book unfinished with a definite curiosity to see where the author intended to go w More...

0 comments like

Jul 21, 2009

Ti rated it:

The Short of It:

WTF?

My Thoughts:

Ugly Man is a collection of short stories. When I say short, I mean short! Some are just a paragraph or two and most are just a few pages long. The stories center around these themes: sex, death and homosexuality...and then more sex and then more death and then toss in some gore for good measure and you've got an idea of what's contained between the covers.

When I read the first story I was shocked! I gasped out loud. More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 22, 2009

Jim rated it:

Where does an outsider artist go once the taboos of drug abuse and man/boy love have become played out?

Sexualized cannibal porn.

Seriously.

Frankly, I'm baffled by all the accolades Cooper receives. If you stripped away the outsider lit attributes (illicit sex, fetishized pain, etc.) and substituted it with say long-distance running or extreme hoarding, i.e. something equally dangerous and crazy but doesn't require a victim, would it have the same effect? I ca More...

0 comments like

Feb 09, 2010

Glenn rated it:

A short story collection where the longest title (One Night in 1979 I Did Too Much Coke and Couldn't Sleep and Had What I Thought Was a Million-Dollar Idea to Write the Definitive Tell-all Book About Glam Rock Based on My Own Personal Experience but This Is as Far as I Got) rivals the length of the shortest story (Santa Claus vs. Johnny Crawford is only one 80 word paragraph) is certainly a curiosity, but I cannot in good conscience recommend this book to anyone. There are images in some of the More...

0 comments like

Jul 19, 2009

John rated it:

"The Anal Retentive Line Editor" is kinda brilliant, but for the most part this collection is just the same story over and over and over again: under-aged twinks want to get fisted and murdered and dismembered and luckily every guy they meet wants to fist and murder and dismember them. Standard Cooper, plus some inane space fillers. The last story is interesting though. At first I thought it was just another spin on the above, and a very weak one at that. But actually, it seems like it More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

May 03, 2011

Stacy rated it:

This is the first work by Dennis Cooper I have ever read and I think what has struck me most about it is how Cooper manages to make material I would normally think of as something I’d have no interest in reading about into fiction that is completely readable and, yes, even enjoyable. I can see where the topics and means and portrayals and blah blah blah would make some of the more sensitive readers around here uncomfortable, and I’m most certainly not saying that this is a book that everybody wi More...

0 comments like

Jun 12, 2009

J. rated it:

Just an incredible collection--though, as always, I warn that it is not for the faint of heart. Cooper's use of dismemberment and cannibalism (something of a new twist) as embodied exploration of the metaphors of the "porn reflex" of attraction are just as intense here as in his other work. I love the idea of collecting some of the scattered writing from over the years in one place, too. The only reason this one doesn't get 5 stars is that a few of the pieces sometimes shorthand their More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 11, 2010

Michaela rated it:

I think the most amusingly subversive thing about this book is the very idea of some uptight straight upper middle class conservative ladies' reading group discussing this book. Because, yes, someone over at Harper Collins thought they were being really, really funny when they earmarked this as a book appropriate for reading groups. I can only imagine the discussions ...

I enjoyed this, but I like Cooper's writing quite a bit. I like his examinations of queer sexuality and self-hatred More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 06, 2010

Dave M. rated it:

I forget where I read it, but somebody said this collection was like an album of B-sides. I usually only like a B-side if I already love the flipside. This is the first Cooper book I've ever read, so maybe I'd feel differently if that wasn't the case. These stories are meant to be shockingly funny, I think, but for the most part they're just boring. Depressed twink seeks older man to maim, murder, or make a meal of him. Rinse, repeat.

That said, "The Anal Retentive Line Editor"

0 comments like

May 11, 2010

Russ rated it:

This is so, so messed up. I don't think I've ever read a collection of short stories that is anywhere near as inventive as this collection. Perspectives, narration, everything is fucked with. But nothing is quite as fucked as the subject matter, which is always--ALWAYS--oriented around murder and gay sex. With the possible exception of the one story that is just a survey of the worst russian gay porn sites.
If you want to read a bunch of the most brilliant stories ever written about mur More...

0 comments like

Apr 25, 2010

Kye Alfred Hillig rated it:

Ugly Man is one of those books that had me from the first sentence. Dennis Cooper is a wild mother fucker and he already has my complete adoration. His writing is done the way that writing should be, edgy. Cooper has a great taste for what truly tickles the funny bone. I loved how all the stories in this book eventually come back around to gay sex, murder, and cannibalism. The real miracle is that none of it seems contrived. He is not trying. This is who he is, a beautiful weirdo.

0 comments like

Jun 17, 2010

Americanogig rated it:

I thought I had read some disturbing stuff in my life, but I couldn’t even make it past a couple of these short stories. Torture porn at its worst, I’m not sure how this book even got published except for the shock value. Imagine the worst, graphic horror movie killing, now describe it in agonizing detail and write story after story about similar scenes. I would urge you to learn from my mistake and stay far, far away from this book.

0 comments like

Dec 15, 2009

Steve rated it:

I know that Cooper can be a little twisted in his stories and what is characters do, but I was shocked that in one story, three characters kill and have sex with (while kiling) other boys whom they have convinced have a desire to die, while in the last story two characters are literally cannibalizing a third character after giving him so much heroin that he died. All in all, though, I did enjoy the stories and, in fact, read the book in one day.

0 comments like

May 25, 2010

AG rated it:

This was just OK. A collection of minor "B-Sides" that read more like Cooper's Moleskine jottings on the Métro than actual fully formed pieces. The three diamonds in the rough are (1) the genius cover finish treatment (tickle that pickle!) (2) the hilarious, Waugh-like, nosebleed-inducingly dry copyeditor farce (3) the final rimming treatise/tour de force about cannibals, the Taliban, and the metaphysics of being a twink.

0 comments like

May 21, 2009

Tosh rated it:

Dennis Cooper is without a doubt one of the great writers living today. For one, he's hysterical. And two, he has a Beckett type of genius of capturing souls who are traveling from one place to another. Maybe from earth to hell/heaven or somewhere inbetween.

Essential collection of short stories that I think eventually will be considered an American classic. I think they are at this very moment.

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Jul 06, 2009

Boxedrobot rated it:

Sporting one of the ugliest covers I've ever seen I wondered if I'd not be able to slip under the spell of Mr. Cooper's work for the first time. Then I *felt* the cover and felt repulsed, so I kind of figured this was going somewhere, and I did, in fact, fall lock-step back in love once again. I always feel like his books are some sort of high-school crush I can return to to get jockeyed around, pushed, shoved, kissed hard on the mouth, and then dumped. It hurts so nicely.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 24, 2011

Neal rated it:

I didn't hate this, but it just wasn't my cup of tea. I think I would have thought this was cutting edge and great 10 years ago, but it all started to run together for me after a while this time. There's only so much graphic sex and violence you can take before it starts to lose its appeal.

0 comments like

Feb 07, 2010

Danielle rated it:

I don't really get it, I'm not sure how it is considered a comedy--it seemed to be most about gays, porn and violence. I guess I was expecting something different--should have read up on the author first. Oh well, live and learn.

0 comments like

Jan 12, 2010

Bamboo added it

For me, many (stories) waver between artistically obsessing over a complicated theme and lazily recycling a superficially-controversial idea. This is the "effect" of the book on me. If that matters anymore these days, that's how this reader feels.

0 comments like

Dec 22, 2010

Michael rated it:

Disturbing collection from a disturbing author. Makes you want to scrub yourself raw after reading them, but worth it because no one else goes there like Cooper.

0 comments like

Jun 09, 2009

Gregory rated it:

Just got this today and devoured it in one sitting. Best thing DC has done in a long, long time, I'd say. Particularly enamored of "The Worst (1960-1971)".

0 comments like

Jan 07, 2012

Jay rated it:

Amazing collection, a style on which I love. Surprised how much rimming and fisting was fit into each story, but equally, never seemed gratuitous

0 comments like

Jul 08, 2009

Stephanie rated it:

Could not get into this book. I found it incredibly dull. The infatuation with death and killing was not interesting, but rather tedious to read.

0 comments like

Jun 04, 2009

Jacob rated it:

LOVED this collection of "short stories". Some of them were as short as a paragraph, but all of them were thought-provoking. My favorite was "The Anal Retentive Line Editor".

1 comment like

Mar 31, 2011

Ethanganot added it

My rating is zero stars. This is just some disturbing sh!t. How many stories can one guy write about gay sex and gory mutilation?

0 comments like

Nov 30, 2009

Gabriel rated it:

Those stories (literally, in the case of "Jerk," I suppose, but also everyone's favorite "The Anal-Retentive Line Editor") that elevate the ever=present Grand Guignol elements of Cooper's writing to frantic, parodic levels worked best for me.

0 comments like

Oct 21, 2009

Kevin rated it:

There's some great stuff in here mixed in with some stuff that seemed too similar to past works by Cooper. The Anal Editor piece was one of the most brilliant and funny things I've read by Cooper but the book's closer, The Ash Gray Proclamation, was messy and kind of embarrassing.

0 comments like

Dec 11, 2010

Curtis rated it:

Filthy, filthy, delightfully filthy.

0 comments like

reviews