Second in the award-winning George Miles Cycle, “as intense a dissection of human relationships and obsession that modern literature has ever attempted” (The Guardian). When Dennis is thirteen, he sees a series of photographs of a boy apparently unimaginably mutilated. Dennis is not shocked but stunned by their mystery and their power; their glimpse at the reality of death. Some years later, Dennis meets the boy who posed for the photographs. He did it for love. Surrounded by images of violence, the celebrity of horror, news of disease, a wasteland of sex, Dennis flies to Europe, having discovered some clues about the photographs: “I see these criminals on the news who've killed someone methodically, and they're free. They know something amazing. You can just tell.” An isolated windmill in Holland provides the perfect setting for Dennis to find out more about bodies—of which there are many—and what is inside them. In Frisk, as in the award-winning Closer, Dennis Cooper explores the limits of our knowledge and the dividing line between the body and the spirit. Frisk is a novel about the power of fantasy and faith, about the ecstasy and horror of being human. “A significant work of fiction. Cooper... wants to lead us into the wormy heart of the murderous impulse.” —Michael Cunningham, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Hours “Destined to classic status.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review “Dennis Cooper, a disturbing and transcendent artist, enters the mind of a killer and comes out with genuine revelation.” —Michael Silverblatt, host of Bookworm “An electrifying study in carnage.” —The Sunday Times

Cooper, Dennis

Grove/Atlantic, Incorporated

Atlantic Monthly Press

Grove Weidenfeld

1st Evergreen ed, New York, [Emeryville, CA, 1992

New York, [Emeryville, CA], New York State, 1992

1st Evergreen Ed edition, November 11, 1993

United States, United States of America

Paperback ed., repr, New York, 2006

First edition, New York, 1991

1st Evergreen Ed, 2007

Originally published: New York : Grove Weidenfeld, 1991.

When Dennis is thirteen, he sees a series of photographs of a boy apparently unimaginably mutilated. Dennis is not shocked, but stunned by their mystery and their power; their glimpse at the reality of death. Some years later, Dennis meets the boy who posed for the photographs. He did it for love. Surrounded by images of violence, the celebrity of horror, news of disease, a wasteland of sex, Dennis flies to Europe, having discovered some clues about the photographs: "I see these criminals on the news who've killed someone methodically, and they're free. They know something amazing. You can just tell." What they know may lie in bodies themselves. Bodies are unavoidably real; what's in them must have something to say, even in a society that lives on images and fantasies. An isolated windmill in Holland provides the perfect setting for Dennis to find out more about bodies--of which there are many--and what is inside them--[from the author's website]

"Possessed by the mystery of a series of fake snuff photographs he was shown as a teenager, Dennis, the narrator of 'Frisk', lives in a world where the rules of attraction have become a treasure hunt, and love is only a matching of images and body parts. In Holland, in a room in a windmill above a brewery, Dennis is freed from the need to respect feelings; the unimaginable becomes an idea, and the idea a reality."--Publisher description

<p>In Frisk, Dennis Cooper explores the ultimate meaning of the body, sex, and death. The novel’s narrator, a thirteen-year-old boy, is stunned when he encounters photos of a mutilated boy; his imagination leads him on a journey in which sexual urges start to fuse with grisly fantasies and desires he doesn’t understand.</p>

2023-06-28