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A short story from the collection Ugly Man by Dennis Cooper.
The cult novelist's collection of short stories plumbs veins of dark humor amid the sex and gore his fans have come to expect. The contents range from short shorts-a rumination on "The Fifteen Worst Russian Gay Porn Web Sites" and an abortive episode entitled "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"-to longer pieces in which sadistic male characters explore their preoccupations with the murder, mutilation and rape of nihilistic teenaged boys. Stories of the latter group often feature text pared down to dialogue alone or resembling scripts complete with stage directions. The lighter fare, such as it is, provides much needed comic relief, as in the case of "The Anal-Retentive Line Editor," which proceeds through interstitial edits upon a series of drafts of a piece of gay erotica, forming a running conversation and problematic seduction between author and editor. This is classic Cooper: explicit, unconventional and, to the uninitiated, alarming. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Stories are creative but a little over the top. I wouldn't read many of the stories consecutively.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.These eighteen short stories take a dark amusing look at sex, gore, and gory sex. Ironically the title story is an extreme short yet gets the message across of gore, death and sex. involving a dying diseased person turning hookers into "angels of mercy". Other entries are grosser though there is an ironic humor to most. "Jerk" for instance is an apropos description of a puppeteer. The title of the weird "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" seems longer than the entry. There are also longer contributions starring sadists who are also "ugly men" torturing, mutilating, and raping teenagers. Those tales that are explicit stone serious are not easy to read; nor are the "scripts. On the other hand, those with a mocking edge like "The Anal-Retentive Line Editor" are super as where else can you find a running war between an editor and a writer over the latter's gay erotic thriller. THE UGLY MAN is typical Dennis Cooper as the author will tickle his fans with his pickle while also shocking the sh*t out of newcomers with his quirky look at death, gore, and sex.
Harriet Klausner
Anonymous
Posted May 13, 2013
No text was provided for this review.
Overview
A short story from the collection Ugly Man by Dennis Cooper.