8,692 books
—
6,937 voters
Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.
Start by marking “Frisk” as Want to Read:
Frisk
(George Miles Cycle #2)
by
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
Get A Copy
Paperback, 144 pages
Published
October 23rd 2002
by Grove Weidenfeld
(first published 1991)
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Reader Q&A
To ask other readers questions about
Frisk,
please sign up.
Be the first to ask a question about Frisk
Community Reviews
Showing 1-30
Start your review of Frisk
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
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
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
For those who subscribe to the cult of language (ie: without beautiful language a book can’t be beautiful; the bricks are all, the architecture is irrelevant; this whole kneejerk anti-plot perspective that seems to be de rigueur in our corner of Goodreads), I’m here to tell you: there are other cults. Other criterion for excellence. And they’re valid.
Me, when I was a lad, I subscribed to a cult of structure. Probably stemming from my reading of Slaughterhouse Five as a teenager (remember that zi ...more
Me, when I was a lad, I subscribed to a cult of structure. Probably stemming from my reading of Slaughterhouse Five as a teenager (remember that zi ...more
This novel isn't rated five stars because I enjoyed the experience. Make no mistake, you will hate Dennis Cooper at some point during this book, probably multiple times. I certainly did. But what makes this book so special and unique is the WAY it takes you to the dark, horrible places it inhabits, and its agenda for doing so. Despite being about the way American culture connects violence and sex, it doesn't fetishize sexual violence. Its characters have fetishes around violence, but the book it
...more
This book is amazing!!! It basically has all the disturbing shit that I love to read: violence, rape, inappropriate sexual relations and a whole lot of disgusting human beings.
This book is definitely not for everyone, and I honestly believe it has only been written to make everyone as uncomfortable as possible. There's barely any plot, the characters are literally there to be a part of the sex acts, and it might has well been written as a couple of short stories. But I love it!
I also love the ...more
This book is definitely not for everyone, and I honestly believe it has only been written to make everyone as uncomfortable as possible. There's barely any plot, the characters are literally there to be a part of the sex acts, and it might has well been written as a couple of short stories. But I love it!
I also love the ...more
This book was actually less cruel than I anticipated. In the end Cooper seems to say murder & mutilation are really no solution to the human predicament. It's a book about the relationship between fantasy and reality. You think the first necessarily aspires to the second, but that's not always so.
...more
...more
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
Dennis brings me back to my high school days when I was genuinely convinced that the thoughts I had and the emotions I felt were truly, at their core, beyond any immorality and level of shame that any other teenager was going through. It is sad to think of how much happier I would have been during those years to have a book like Frisk, passing me notes, telling me "it's okay--fantasy isn't reality, I think those things too"
Beyond the shock value and aesthetics of transgression that appear in Fr ...more
Beyond the shock value and aesthetics of transgression that appear in Fr ...more
Dec 31, 2011
Nate D
rated it
liked it
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
those who desire
Recommended to Nate D by:
found photographs of ghastly things
Shelves:
post-modernism,
read-in-2012
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
far better than American psycho and far more believable, will write a review soon.
Godfuckingdamnme for giving this horror four stars.
Dennis Cooper is one of the most infamous cult authors around but Closer, the first book in his five-novel George Miles cycle, left me disappointed. Thankfully the follow-up, Frisk (great title, referenced in the text in enigmatic fashion), is a much stronger, more distinctive work. This is a provocative, sometimes disgusting (i.e. graphic coprophilia, mutilation etc.) read that operates on multiple intertwined levels: it’s a psychological portrait of an obsessive mind circling the abyss; a meta
...more
This is one of those books you'll likely not read again, but it is worth reading for the first time. The story is a bit slow at first and soon picks up in the middle only to conclude the way you would have probably predicted. It's sick, vile and absolutely unsettling, but I loved reading it and wanted to read the rest in this series after reading this one.
...more
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.
...more
Frisk By Dennis Cooper Scary And Dazzling Thrill Kill Gay Action
_________________________________________________________
Part two of the George Miles Cycle by Dennis Cooper we reviewed his first book Closer a little while ago.
George doesn’t appear in this 2nd volume which is mostly about Dennis, a very upset person who fantasizes about murdering others usually boys or young men of a certain age and look.
Dennis is joined by his best friend Julian soon into Frisk they befriend a young dope addict ...more
_________________________________________________________
Part two of the George Miles Cycle by Dennis Cooper we reviewed his first book Closer a little while ago.
George doesn’t appear in this 2nd volume which is mostly about Dennis, a very upset person who fantasizes about murdering others usually boys or young men of a certain age and look.
Dennis is joined by his best friend Julian soon into Frisk they befriend a young dope addict ...more
If you don't see the point of this novel, you didn't read it closely enough.
Frisk represents the ultimate experience of death, sexuality, and madness. Cooper pushes the limits again and again, repeatedly thrusting us beyond the line we last imagined with language as raw as his characters.
By the end of the novel, Cooper confronts you with none other than yourself. What do you want to happen? In taking you through the narrator's mind (who is at once omnipotent, omniscient, and first person), Coop ...more
Frisk represents the ultimate experience of death, sexuality, and madness. Cooper pushes the limits again and again, repeatedly thrusting us beyond the line we last imagined with language as raw as his characters.
By the end of the novel, Cooper confronts you with none other than yourself. What do you want to happen? In taking you through the narrator's mind (who is at once omnipotent, omniscient, and first person), Coop ...more
Parts of this one dragged for me until the last chapter. The conclusion is brilliant, and I sure didn't see it coming. I feel weird about empathizing with some of characters, especially after that conclusion. People I am not really like at all. Which is probly good for me.
...more
Dennis Cooper is a marvelous maker of images and moods. Frisk extends and develops the theses of Georges Bataille in The Tears of Eros, tracing the concomitant natures of death, eroticism, and the sacred, from the Upper Paleolithic to now and now and now A.D.
A disturbing horror novel, an intriguing structural experiment, an ethical inquiry into the tug-and-pull between desire and morality: Frisk is many things, but it is first and foremost a wrenchingly personal exploration of the author’s own admitted fascination with sexual violence and torture. I admire Cooper’s courage in putting out such a (seemingly) revealing and honest book. Of course, not all of us will be able to directly relate to these highly specific fantasies of rape and manual disembo
...more
For me, this book was about obsession and the futility of intimacy. The protagonist is obsessed with getting inside his lovers, and he can never get close enough—he can bridge the gap between bodies, but there is no closing the gap between minds. He’s also chasing an ideal which can only exist in fantasy. For anyone who’s ever fallen in love with a fictional character, this strikes close to home. I loved Frisk, from a philosophical perspective.
I really, really wanted to enjoy it from an erotic p ...more
I really, really wanted to enjoy it from an erotic p ...more
Great or godawful or something in between. Or nothing in between. This novel is most likely some combination of these things. There’s no way for me to give such a book a rave review nor can I give it a negative review. On one hand, it’s a psychosexual horror story infused with perverse philosophy; on the other hand, it’s excessively gross and ugly (and the ending is underwhelming). I can’t say I enjoyed reading most of this, particularly its gruesome second half, but that doesn’t take away from
...more
Aug 11, 2016
PaperBird
added it
Did a review of this book here: https://youtu.be/pUYb26Pte1Q
...more
Obviously an inspiration for Poppy Z. Brite's EXQUISITE CORPSE, FRISK manages to be both poignant and hellishly, gut-churningly horrific. I am no stranger to disturbing and grotesque fiction about the ways people abuse and mutilate one another, but protagonist Dennis's detailed account of raping, torturing, and murdering an 11-year-old boy almost made me put the book down. I felt actually sick, and as though I had been made complicit in a real act of sadistic evil. That's powerful stuff, and the
...more
Ah.
Jan 15, 2009
Friedrich Der
rated it
did not like it
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
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
But this isn't simply shock fiction. Cooper's premise is ...more
Like de Sade and Bataille had a baby conceptually, and Genet and Ballard had a baby stylistically, but not quite as interesting as any of them (though I can't say I liked Ballard's Crash, it was definitely...something interesting! Though I liked this more than Crash). The book gets progressively better, and the ending is very oddly wholesome. I respect the idea of the book quite a bit (the exorcism of unwanted fantasies/desires through literature/writing), but it was almost a chore to read at ti
...more
This book is messed up. Truly.
“My perfect type tends to be distant, like me. I don’t mean matter-of-fact, I mean shut tight. Like he’s protecting himself from other people or pain or both by excising himself from the world in every way, apart from the obvious physical stuff you need to get by such as walk, talk, eat, etc.”
The narrator of Frisk is a young man named Dennis who like many boys at the ripe old age of thirteen would begin experiencing with his own sexuality, hoping to have it form like the majority, in a healthy ...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 ...more
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
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
Readers also enjoyed
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
Other books in the series
George Miles Cycle
(5 books)
News & Interviews
Need another excuse to treat yourself to a new book this week? We've got you covered with the buzziest new releases of the day.
To create our...
16 likes · 3 comments
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »
“Human bodies are such garbage bags.”
—
52 likes
“Estoy poseído desde hace mucho por esta ansia de destripar de verdad a alguien que me pone cachondo. El chico holandés, en este caso, porque es el último ejemplo. La idea me hace sudar y temblar en este preciso momento. Brazos, piernas, por todas partes. Si él estuviera encerrado conmigo en este retrete, y si yo tuviera una navaja, supongo, o, aún mejor, garras, prescindiría de esa minúscula parte de mi cerebro que piensa que el asesinato es algo malo, signifique esto lo que signifique. Me pondría de pie, o trataría de ponerme de pie, y le haría picadillo. Pero como no tengo al chico, ni valor, ni arma, me quedo aquí, escribiendo, masturbándome. Que es lo que está haciendo mi mano izquierda mientras la otra escribe. Pero dentro de la cabeza tiene lugar la violencia más espectacular. Un chico estalla, se derrumba. Parece un tanto falsa, puesto que mis únicos modelos son películas gore, pero es increíblemente intensa.”
—
2 likes
More quotes…
