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The Marbled Swarm
The Marbled Swarm is Dennis Cooper’s most haunting work to date. In secret passageways, hidden rooms, and the troubled mind of our narrator, a mystery perpetually takes shape—and the most compelling clue to its final nature is “the marbled swarm” itself, a complex amalgam of language passed down from father to son.
Cooper ensnares the reader in a world of appearances, where the trappings of high art, old money, and haute cuisine obscure an unspeakable system of coercion and surrender. And as the narrator stalks an elusive truth, traveling from the French countryside to Paris and back again, the reader will be seduced by a voice only Dennis Cooper could create.
Cooper ensnares the reader in a world of appearances, where the trappings of high art, old money, and haute cuisine obscure an unspeakable system of coercion and surrender. And as the narrator stalks an elusive truth, traveling from the French countryside to Paris and back again, the reader will be seduced by a voice only Dennis Cooper could create.
208 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2011
83 people are currently reading
4185 people want to read
About the author
Dennis Cooper
105 books1,875 followersDennis Cooper was born on January 10, 1953. He grew up in the Southern California cities of Covina and Arcadia.
He wrote stories and poems from early age but got serious about writing at 15 after reading Arthur Rimbaud and The Marquis de Sade. He attended LA county public schools until the 8th grade when he transferred to a private school, Flintridge Preparatory School for Boys in La Canada, California, from which he was expelled in the 11th grade.
While at Flintridge, he met his friend George Miles, who would become his muse and the subject of much of his future writing. He attended Pasadena City College for two years, attending poetry writing workshops taught by the poets Ronald Koertge and Jerene Hewitt. He then attended one year of university at Pitzer College in Claremont, California, where he studied with the poet Bert Meyers.
In 1976, he founded Little Caesar Magazine and Press, which he ran until 1982. From 1980 to 1983 he was Director of Programming for the Beyond Baroque Literary/Art Center in Venice, California. From 1983 to 1985, he lived in New York City.
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 Period.
His post-George Miles Cycle novels include My Loose Thread, The Sluts and God, Jr.
Other works include the short-story collections Wrong and Ugly Man, poetry collections The Dream Police and The Weaklings, as well as the recent Smothered in Hugs: Essays, Interviews, Feedback, and Obituaries.
Dennis Cooper currently spends his time between Los Angeles and Paris.
He wrote stories and poems from early age but got serious about writing at 15 after reading Arthur Rimbaud and The Marquis de Sade. He attended LA county public schools until the 8th grade when he transferred to a private school, Flintridge Preparatory School for Boys in La Canada, California, from which he was expelled in the 11th grade.
While at Flintridge, he met his friend George Miles, who would become his muse and the subject of much of his future writing. He attended Pasadena City College for two years, attending poetry writing workshops taught by the poets Ronald Koertge and Jerene Hewitt. He then attended one year of university at Pitzer College in Claremont, California, where he studied with the poet Bert Meyers.
In 1976, he founded Little Caesar Magazine and Press, which he ran until 1982. From 1980 to 1983 he was Director of Programming for the Beyond Baroque Literary/Art Center in Venice, California. From 1983 to 1985, he lived in New York City.
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 Period.
His post-George Miles Cycle novels include My Loose Thread, The Sluts and God, Jr.
Other works include the short-story collections Wrong and Ugly Man, poetry collections The Dream Police and The Weaklings, as well as the recent Smothered in Hugs: Essays, Interviews, Feedback, and Obituaries.
Dennis Cooper currently spends his time between Los Angeles and Paris.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 217 reviews
December 19, 2011
part genius; part indecipherable.
a guy with a giant dong assrapes some kid for so long the kid's intestines fly out of his anus resembling 'a bloody octopus'. i wish dennis cooper was my boyfriend.
a guy with a giant dong assrapes some kid for so long the kid's intestines fly out of his anus resembling 'a bloody octopus'. i wish dennis cooper was my boyfriend.
November 29, 2011
I love Dennis Cooper more than his characters love underage rough trade psycopath nymphet boytoys with daddy issues. But one thing Dennis Cooper is not is subtle. Sophisticated, yes; layered with meaning, absolutely -- but understated, no way. In fact, I would argue that his greatest talent is his ability to be the opposite of subtle: it's his unrelenting repulsiveness that so powerfully drives his work to ever crueler, ever more captivating heights.
Which is to say that I hated this book. I mean, really? The ferocious and brilliant author of the violently enjoyable The Sluts decides to pen a subtle, understated, meandering novel about a subtle, understated, meandering way of speaking, all of it a subtle, understated, meandering pastiche of the limp mid-century nouveau roman style? Yo, Dennis, Imma let you finish, but Paul Auster is the best Robbe-Grillet rip-off artist of all time. Of all time! And guess what, man: EVERYONE HATES PAUL AUSTER.
Listen, I know Cooper's whole shtick is that he fucks with the reader's every last conception, but he fucked this one up in completely the wrong way. About 1/3 of the way through this mercifully brief novel the reader learns that if he feels confusion while reading, that is the intended response. For me, the issue with this clever conceit is that, while I didn't understand one lick of what was going on, more importantly, I also didn't give a flying fuck. It was just one empty and lifeless red herring-filled set piece after another, peopled with ciphers who made me yawn with boredom as they were disemboweled through their anuses or devoured bite by bite down to their toenails. I really hope this is just a one-off for Cooper and not a new pathway for his work, knocked out of a side wall like a secret passage in a crumbling chateau. I want the old sick and twisted Dennis back, and fast.
Which is to say that I hated this book. I mean, really? The ferocious and brilliant author of the violently enjoyable The Sluts decides to pen a subtle, understated, meandering novel about a subtle, understated, meandering way of speaking, all of it a subtle, understated, meandering pastiche of the limp mid-century nouveau roman style? Yo, Dennis, Imma let you finish, but Paul Auster is the best Robbe-Grillet rip-off artist of all time. Of all time! And guess what, man: EVERYONE HATES PAUL AUSTER.
Listen, I know Cooper's whole shtick is that he fucks with the reader's every last conception, but he fucked this one up in completely the wrong way. About 1/3 of the way through this mercifully brief novel the reader learns that if he feels confusion while reading, that is the intended response. For me, the issue with this clever conceit is that, while I didn't understand one lick of what was going on, more importantly, I also didn't give a flying fuck. It was just one empty and lifeless red herring-filled set piece after another, peopled with ciphers who made me yawn with boredom as they were disemboweled through their anuses or devoured bite by bite down to their toenails. I really hope this is just a one-off for Cooper and not a new pathway for his work, knocked out of a side wall like a secret passage in a crumbling chateau. I want the old sick and twisted Dennis back, and fast.
March 1, 2016
The rating I’ve given may pique interest in this book, but caveats are incredibly necessary. If you are someone who needs to identify with the narrator or characters in a novel, do not read this book. If you are a reader who resents being intentionally manipulated by an author, do not read this book. If you are a reader who believes there is not a single thing of value in the works of Marquis de Sade, do not read this book. If you are a reader who cannot tolerate 48 pages of hints, redactions, circumlocutions, and subterfuge, again do not read this book. However if you happen to be a person who fantasizes about raping and killing young boys, or if you are a depressed Emo kid fantasizing about being raped and eaten Hannibal Lecter style, then....um...PLEASE read this book rather than act on your inclinations. I say that with a shudder that I’d contend shakes the very ground, but I also live in Oklahoma.
If you remain intrepid despite these warnings, you will find a book of fearfully obnoxious & utterly awesome, terrifying prose. At 48 pages you will be rewarded, if that's the word for a rather dubious honor. At the very least, then the title & the source of your frustration will be revealed.
I’d like to be clear, I do not think there is anything wrong with drawing lines with regards to narratives or perspectives you’re willing to entertain. It is important that people draw these lines. For better or worse, I do not draw these kinds of lines, at least not all the time. While I’m an ethicist IRL, I don’t believe art is beholden to morality, and so I sometimes read depraved things and (very) occasionally I am awed by them.
For example, Marquis de Sade awed me at a not-quite-young, but tender age; I was shocked that he could still shock after 200 some-odd years. I didn’t think it possible that I could be shocked given the cultural morass in which I found myself 15 years ago (and still do to tell the truth). I thought I’d seen pretty much all of it. I hadn’t.
If you are unfamiliar with MDS then please turn there first. I do not find it accidental that this rapefest of a novel is set in France. If you are familiar with MDS and 120 Days of Sodom, Dennis Cooper’s The Marbled Swarm is a close, but more spectacular (to choose as neutral of a word as possible) analogue.
But if you are familiar with 120 Days of Sodom, you also probably know the scroll of the manuscript was lost (& found) during the storming of the Bastille in 1784. You also probably know that the descriptions of the most depraved acts (the last month) are mere sketches, never completed. Cooper’s The Marbled Swarm, I believe, intends to flesh those scenes out in the most literal way imaginable.
Imagine first, Brett Easton Ellis’s Patrick Bateman, but then imagine him without the shitty comical taste in 80s music, and with a predilection for Emo preteens. Imagine the debauchest version of a droll Whit Stillman film. In other words, imagine that wealth is maximally & unapologetically corrupting.* Imagine that you believed (& didn’t) in the ancient correspondence theory of truth whereby the existence of a thing--perhaps a lurid & carnivorous inner yearning--is enough to make it real, or as imaginatively vivid & fucked up as it must necessarily be to approximate your absolutely darkest and most perverse desires. To expose & also purge them through the glaring exposure. That’s The Marbled Swarm.
P.S. If you are neither a Sadist nor an Emo preteen, & you are still interested in reading this novel, I advise you to set aside a day so as to spend as little time in this world as possible.
*In the interest of full & utterly disturbing disclosure, I began this review whilst still reading and I chose the “Imagine” trope without knowing that it would eventually surface in the novel’s repertoire of devices to lure the reader.
If you remain intrepid despite these warnings, you will find a book of fearfully obnoxious & utterly awesome, terrifying prose. At 48 pages you will be rewarded, if that's the word for a rather dubious honor. At the very least, then the title & the source of your frustration will be revealed.
I’d like to be clear, I do not think there is anything wrong with drawing lines with regards to narratives or perspectives you’re willing to entertain. It is important that people draw these lines. For better or worse, I do not draw these kinds of lines, at least not all the time. While I’m an ethicist IRL, I don’t believe art is beholden to morality, and so I sometimes read depraved things and (very) occasionally I am awed by them.
For example, Marquis de Sade awed me at a not-quite-young, but tender age; I was shocked that he could still shock after 200 some-odd years. I didn’t think it possible that I could be shocked given the cultural morass in which I found myself 15 years ago (and still do to tell the truth). I thought I’d seen pretty much all of it. I hadn’t.
If you are unfamiliar with MDS then please turn there first. I do not find it accidental that this rapefest of a novel is set in France. If you are familiar with MDS and 120 Days of Sodom, Dennis Cooper’s The Marbled Swarm is a close, but more spectacular (to choose as neutral of a word as possible) analogue.
But if you are familiar with 120 Days of Sodom, you also probably know the scroll of the manuscript was lost (& found) during the storming of the Bastille in 1784. You also probably know that the descriptions of the most depraved acts (the last month) are mere sketches, never completed. Cooper’s The Marbled Swarm, I believe, intends to flesh those scenes out in the most literal way imaginable.
Imagine first, Brett Easton Ellis’s Patrick Bateman, but then imagine him without the shitty comical taste in 80s music, and with a predilection for Emo preteens. Imagine the debauchest version of a droll Whit Stillman film. In other words, imagine that wealth is maximally & unapologetically corrupting.* Imagine that you believed (& didn’t) in the ancient correspondence theory of truth whereby the existence of a thing--perhaps a lurid & carnivorous inner yearning--is enough to make it real, or as imaginatively vivid & fucked up as it must necessarily be to approximate your absolutely darkest and most perverse desires. To expose & also purge them through the glaring exposure. That’s The Marbled Swarm.
P.S. If you are neither a Sadist nor an Emo preteen, & you are still interested in reading this novel, I advise you to set aside a day so as to spend as little time in this world as possible.
*In the interest of full & utterly disturbing disclosure, I began this review whilst still reading and I chose the “Imagine” trope without knowing that it would eventually surface in the novel’s repertoire of devices to lure the reader.
November 18, 2011
A very beautifully layered novel that one can almost taste the narrative. Considering it deals with cannibalism among other things this may not be your type of flavor - but it is an essential read by one of the great English language writers alive. What strikes me about the novel for me personally is the jaded aristocratic voice that runs through it. All of Dennis Cooper's novels have a strong visual sense - and usually with the minimal language. "The Marbled Swarm" is different because the text is so dense and beautifully spread out - that its just a joy to go over the sentences over and over again. It has its own music, and the images that come from the "music" is both funny and highly poetic.
A lot of people will probably react to the violence and sex, but to me in the hands of M. Cooper its a beautiful instrument that plays a haunting melody. In about six months i am going to re-read this book - not only for the pleasure of the text, but also to dig into the narrative that is as twisted as the secret tunnels that are featured in this novel.
A lot of people will probably react to the violence and sex, but to me in the hands of M. Cooper its a beautiful instrument that plays a haunting melody. In about six months i am going to re-read this book - not only for the pleasure of the text, but also to dig into the narrative that is as twisted as the secret tunnels that are featured in this novel.
November 22, 2011
The Marbled Swarm is a performance of gruesome virtuosity, a blood-gilded house of cards that geometrically collapses down to a single card containing the superimposed forms of all that preceded it, at last finding itself reduced, pure and tragic, a simplicity it so desperately attempted to obscure with endless card tricks -- mysteries within mysteries, horrific acts minutely detailed, the ultimate veneer of language itself -- attempted to obscure out of nothing so much as failed self-preservation instincts.
Reading this was a conflicting experience: pressing hard along the art/trash lines that post-modernism has gleefully attempted to erase, this is poetic, artful, densely layered and impeccably refined, yet also often willfully irredeemable and repugnant. And I don't say that lightly, I don't shock so easily anymore. Early on, we watch our protagonist's uncomfortable blackly funny attentions towards the young son of an aristocratic family whose supposedly haunted house he hopes to buy. But, he assures us, in the beginnings of the direct conversation that composes the entire book, he's not the ordinary predator we suspect. It's true, he's much worse, and will show us. But even then this isn't any sort of confessions-of-a-monster that it might be. As I said, it's a performance, our narrator spinning his complicated sentences in unexpected directions expressly for our amusement, entertainment, and revulsion, assuming our existence to such an extent that readership becomes a dialogue, or a game for two players. The utterly unique voice drives the entire text, binds together the dead ends, and incongruities, and eventually even invests the proceedings with unexpected ... well, to say more would be too much. But suffice to say that this narrator is one of the most fascinating I've encountered. If I hadn't just read Island People, there'd be nothing close in recent memory, but in some ways these two are complimentary parts of a similar literary genius, hiding itself within its stories, within its very words.
Another note: many have reflected on the Robbe-Grillet-ness of parts of this, most obviously the text itself in one of its internal proxies, and in Cooper's direct thanks to Catherine Robbe-Grillet, but besides the more surface correspondences -- the uncertainties, secret rooms, the aestheticized horrors -- lies, perhaps, a truer similarity: Cooper, here, has concerned himself, on one level, with one of the great recurring Alain Robbe-Grillet themes: the act of writing itself.
Reading this was a conflicting experience: pressing hard along the art/trash lines that post-modernism has gleefully attempted to erase, this is poetic, artful, densely layered and impeccably refined, yet also often willfully irredeemable and repugnant. And I don't say that lightly, I don't shock so easily anymore. Early on, we watch our protagonist's uncomfortable blackly funny attentions towards the young son of an aristocratic family whose supposedly haunted house he hopes to buy. But, he assures us, in the beginnings of the direct conversation that composes the entire book, he's not the ordinary predator we suspect. It's true, he's much worse, and will show us. But even then this isn't any sort of confessions-of-a-monster that it might be. As I said, it's a performance, our narrator spinning his complicated sentences in unexpected directions expressly for our amusement, entertainment, and revulsion, assuming our existence to such an extent that readership becomes a dialogue, or a game for two players. The utterly unique voice drives the entire text, binds together the dead ends, and incongruities, and eventually even invests the proceedings with unexpected ... well, to say more would be too much. But suffice to say that this narrator is one of the most fascinating I've encountered. If I hadn't just read Island People, there'd be nothing close in recent memory, but in some ways these two are complimentary parts of a similar literary genius, hiding itself within its stories, within its very words.
You who've read this far with any care and feel you know me to the point to which you've been empowered will have gleaned what I would like you to assume I felt when told my recent life had been the colophon of someone else's trail of bread crumbs.
Another note: many have reflected on the Robbe-Grillet-ness of parts of this, most obviously the text itself in one of its internal proxies, and in Cooper's direct thanks to Catherine Robbe-Grillet, but besides the more surface correspondences -- the uncertainties, secret rooms, the aestheticized horrors -- lies, perhaps, a truer similarity: Cooper, here, has concerned himself, on one level, with one of the great recurring Alain Robbe-Grillet themes: the act of writing itself.
April 24, 2011
Since this won’t be released for a while, I don’t want to say too much. Some quick thoughts: I'm a huge admirer of Dennis Cooper's work and The Marbled Swarm strikes me as a genuine masterpiece. Set in Parisian warehouse apartments and country chateaus, the novel is riddled with secret passages, doubles, cannibalism, and peepholes that reveal both more and less than they appear. Its labyrinthine structure is worthy of Robbe-Grillet and the puppetmaster narrator is an equal of Pale Fire’s Kinbote in terms of his corrosive wit and disturbing half revelations. The sentences themselves are also exquisitely wrought, each one seeming to simultaneously expose and obscure some element of the narrative.
This is Cooper’s most baroque and demanding book. If you’re new to his novels, I’d recommend reading My Loose Thread and/or God Jr before tackling this. Some goodwill and patience may be required to fully appreciate a novel that reshuffles itself with each chapter and delays its emotional wallop until the very last sentences. It’s also a book that gives up its mysteries slowly and I look forward to reading it again before the year’s out.
This is Cooper’s most baroque and demanding book. If you’re new to his novels, I’d recommend reading My Loose Thread and/or God Jr before tackling this. Some goodwill and patience may be required to fully appreciate a novel that reshuffles itself with each chapter and delays its emotional wallop until the very last sentences. It’s also a book that gives up its mysteries slowly and I look forward to reading it again before the year’s out.
September 26, 2018
Abuse as a system of language. A stunner.
October 15, 2014
It wouldn't be correct to say I detested this book: that's the reaction that the author is going for, whereas in fact I was too bored to muster any type of strong feeling at all. Mistaking the use of cannibalism, kiddy rape and incest for some type of cooler-than-thou nihilist credo, and sophomoric pretension for eloquence (the titular "marbled swarm"), this book is something like a French rewrite of Less Than Zero - except stripped of the wit, intelligence, self-awareness and satirical vigor that made that book so worth reading.
I feel uncool posting this, because all of my hip writerly friends think this book is the shit...but, well, yeah.
I feel uncool posting this, because all of my hip writerly friends think this book is the shit...but, well, yeah.
August 26, 2020
Rugs pulled from under rugs pulled from under rugs pulled from under rugs pulled from under rugs all founded on the charisma of a contrived dialect that haunts the pages, completely unspoken. And apparently that's all a misdirection.
Read
November 30, 2021OK, so I read Closer as a teenager, and not gonna lie, the fact that Bradford Cox from Deerhunter/Atlas Sound kept name-checking him was an influence on my decision to do so. Not long after, I ran into Bradford Cox at a warehouse party in Brooklyn, first thinking "hey, that dude looks like Bradford Cox" before realizing he was indeed Bradford Cox and I proceeded to be weird and starstruck and I mentioned something about Dennis Cooper before returning to the more familiar comforts of my 40-ouncer.
Got that name drop out of the way.
So Closer seemed, even when I was an adolescent, to be a bit too damn adolescent, in the same way that Larry Clark's Kids seemed eye-rollingly infatuated with teenage excess. If the word "cheugy" had existed in the late '00s, that's the word I would have used. Many years later, I would encounter countless examples of aging men, many gay but many straight as well, who would cling onto teenage edginess, and it was painful to be around (I say as I slowly make the transition from fuckboy to dirty old man).
And The Marbled Swarm comes off the same. While there is none of the frantic buttfucking as an antidote to suburban boredom, there is something even worse -- francophile decadence and casual acts of sexual deviance to signify an all-pervasive transgression for transgression's sake (I say as I delight at the French conversations I was able to pull off on Friday night and the handcuff marks on my wrists).
And what's doubly sad is that the linguistic premise had so much promise. Cooper could have done so much more with his tools, but he settled for the easy self-aware avant-porn thing (I say as I realize that what pisses me off so much about Dennis Cooper is the way in which his own flaws mirror the worst of my own).
Got that name drop out of the way.
So Closer seemed, even when I was an adolescent, to be a bit too damn adolescent, in the same way that Larry Clark's Kids seemed eye-rollingly infatuated with teenage excess. If the word "cheugy" had existed in the late '00s, that's the word I would have used. Many years later, I would encounter countless examples of aging men, many gay but many straight as well, who would cling onto teenage edginess, and it was painful to be around (I say as I slowly make the transition from fuckboy to dirty old man).
And The Marbled Swarm comes off the same. While there is none of the frantic buttfucking as an antidote to suburban boredom, there is something even worse -- francophile decadence and casual acts of sexual deviance to signify an all-pervasive transgression for transgression's sake (I say as I delight at the French conversations I was able to pull off on Friday night and the handcuff marks on my wrists).
And what's doubly sad is that the linguistic premise had so much promise. Cooper could have done so much more with his tools, but he settled for the easy self-aware avant-porn thing (I say as I realize that what pisses me off so much about Dennis Cooper is the way in which his own flaws mirror the worst of my own).
Read
July 3, 2014The book has me at a loss. Layers of story, inside an unreliable narrative, opening out into language, hidden within a secret, artificial tongue that is never used. The book exceeds my ability to comprehend or appreciate it, making any rating I may make pointless.
December 14, 2023
unceasingly awful but i mean that in a good/dennis cooper enjoyer way. and not to sound pretentious but this replicated the simultaneous tedium and bewilderment of reading french critical theory, which again was entirely intentional on cooper's part however it did make me want to bludgeon myself with a rock multiple times. all that being said it's extremely worth it just to get to the last chapter
— “At some point, he’d made a showgirl vanish for several minutes. While her reemergence rolled my father’s younger eyes, he said he’d felt disturbingly unworried while her disappearance was an issue.
Instead, he’d wondered what she would be thinking, poised backstage, he guessed, surely peeking through some curtain slit, waiting for her cue, watching strangers’ eyes shred the stage in search of her, knowing that, in her nonexistence, she was briefly more important than the billion times more popular magician.”
— “At some point, he’d made a showgirl vanish for several minutes. While her reemergence rolled my father’s younger eyes, he said he’d felt disturbingly unworried while her disappearance was an issue.
Instead, he’d wondered what she would be thinking, poised backstage, he guessed, surely peeking through some curtain slit, waiting for her cue, watching strangers’ eyes shred the stage in search of her, knowing that, in her nonexistence, she was briefly more important than the billion times more popular magician.”
February 4, 2012
To distill this review into one sentence, I suppose I could write Lolita and David Lynch have a baby in the dungeon of a chateau, who grows up being filmed by his father, who hides with his camera behind fake walls that contain secret rooms and tunnels that eventually lead the boy to deviant cannibalism and and a gift for unwielding long stories within stories attached to houses within houses, which he narrates to a mirror with us on the other side.
November 29, 2011
I think its a novel about the French language, especially literary language, how seductive it once was and how it declined. And oddly enough is written is wonderfully capacious english. Dennis Cooper is a ####ing genius.
Literary French seduced a continent for several centuries, but its descendants have misheard it, in this account. And in any case the world now speaks English. So this is more an elegy for the 'marbled swarm' of FR writing, from Laclos and Sade to Rimbaud. The beginning of the end for the narrator is Bataille's Story of the Eye, not to mention Reage's Story of O, where it all becomes a parlour game.
Actually, its all about parlours. Its a book about how interior literary French is, how it peeps through imaginary peep holes into drawing rooms and bed rooms. You could also read it as a letter (in English) addressed to Michel Houellebecq about how to write French!
Literary French seduced a continent for several centuries, but its descendants have misheard it, in this account. And in any case the world now speaks English. So this is more an elegy for the 'marbled swarm' of FR writing, from Laclos and Sade to Rimbaud. The beginning of the end for the narrator is Bataille's Story of the Eye, not to mention Reage's Story of O, where it all becomes a parlour game.
Actually, its all about parlours. Its a book about how interior literary French is, how it peeps through imaginary peep holes into drawing rooms and bed rooms. You could also read it as a letter (in English) addressed to Michel Houellebecq about how to write French!
April 14, 2012
seemed like a mix of bret easton ellis and edgar allen poe.
unapologetically violent, yet all said with a cool baroque flair as the book pushes you off while pulling you back in by your hair.
unapologetically violent, yet all said with a cool baroque flair as the book pushes you off while pulling you back in by your hair.
June 16, 2021
I've been thinking about The Marbled Swarm a lot since I finished reading it. Trying to put my thoughts in order. I've got a ton of feelings about the book, but trying to sort them out and put them into words is proving to be a herculean endeavor, titanically difficult. More than anything, a sisyphean task... and other Greek idioms.. Which makes perfect sense, because this book is a winding labyrinth with a minotaur at the center. The Marbled Swarm is less a novel, and more a transgressive literary experiment. It's fun. I promise.
Maybe labyrinthian isn't exactly right though. Synecdochal? That sort've works.. The titular "Marbled Swarm" refers to the twisted winding prose of the narrator, itself a bastardization of the flowery manipulative French his father (a billionaire Svengali-type with a penchant for perversion) speaks, which is then twisted and confused again through the translation to English. But it also refers to the narrator's crimes, ALSO a bastardization, mistranslation and failed copy of his father's. So it's a synecdoche right? The Marbled Swarm is both a microcosm and a macrocosm of its constituent parts. The title, the prose, the plot.
No. That doesn't feel right either though. Recursive? I guess, but also not as specific as I want.. Maybe fractal is closer to how I feel? Would I feel pretentious as fuck saying, "The Marbled Swarm" is the novelization of fractal geometry? Definitely. Lets go with it.
You know how when you zoom in on a fractal you get recursive structure? As you zoom into the center of this book you get recursive structure. Every character has a doppelganger, every estate has a copy (and mazelike secret tunnels), every transgression has a doubling. Every action is nested within itself.
For example, there's a scene near the exact center of this book where the main character is being told a story by his lawyer about a woman being told a story by her son about a surreal Kafkaesque play he performed in (written by a doppelganger of the main character's father) spanning the course of days which is a near perfect recursion of the plot of the entire novel.
Then at the same time I think it's a statement on modern transgressive fiction? A transgressive author transgressing transgressive fiction by parodying it and himself? TOO MANY LAYERS I CAN'T KEEP UP. SEND HELP.
On a side note, what's with me and fiction involving cannibalism lately? It feels like every other book I've read this year trades heavily in cannibalism as symbolism. There's something about the allegory that I just find.. tasty (pun nintendo). It probably has something to do with the last 5 years in the world and the gross hyper-capitalistic dystopia we live in that treats humans as consumable and disposable? Something for me to chew on I guess.
Aaaaaannnyyyway. 4/5. A Baudelairean nightmare, a Sadeian fever-dream. I recommend this book to no one.
Maybe labyrinthian isn't exactly right though. Synecdochal? That sort've works.. The titular "Marbled Swarm" refers to the twisted winding prose of the narrator, itself a bastardization of the flowery manipulative French his father (a billionaire Svengali-type with a penchant for perversion) speaks, which is then twisted and confused again through the translation to English. But it also refers to the narrator's crimes, ALSO a bastardization, mistranslation and failed copy of his father's. So it's a synecdoche right? The Marbled Swarm is both a microcosm and a macrocosm of its constituent parts. The title, the prose, the plot.
No. That doesn't feel right either though. Recursive? I guess, but also not as specific as I want.. Maybe fractal is closer to how I feel? Would I feel pretentious as fuck saying, "The Marbled Swarm" is the novelization of fractal geometry? Definitely. Lets go with it.
You know how when you zoom in on a fractal you get recursive structure? As you zoom into the center of this book you get recursive structure. Every character has a doppelganger, every estate has a copy (and mazelike secret tunnels), every transgression has a doubling. Every action is nested within itself.
For example, there's a scene near the exact center of this book where the main character is being told a story by his lawyer about a woman being told a story by her son about a surreal Kafkaesque play he performed in (written by a doppelganger of the main character's father) spanning the course of days which is a near perfect recursion of the plot of the entire novel.
Then at the same time I think it's a statement on modern transgressive fiction? A transgressive author transgressing transgressive fiction by parodying it and himself? TOO MANY LAYERS I CAN'T KEEP UP. SEND HELP.
On a side note, what's with me and fiction involving cannibalism lately? It feels like every other book I've read this year trades heavily in cannibalism as symbolism. There's something about the allegory that I just find.. tasty (pun nintendo). It probably has something to do with the last 5 years in the world and the gross hyper-capitalistic dystopia we live in that treats humans as consumable and disposable? Something for me to chew on I guess.
Aaaaaannnyyyway. 4/5. A Baudelairean nightmare, a Sadeian fever-dream. I recommend this book to no one.
September 9, 2020
One of the most unique novels I have ever read.
But agree with the other reviewers, this is definitely NOT for everyone. The subject matter is extremely transgressive and will put off most readers from finishing the book.
That said, if you're up for a dark adventure (which in the age of Jeffrey Epstein, maybe even received as a social commentary), the writing is brilliant...
I would sum up the novel up as journey into the twisted psyche of a sociopath...think Jeffrey Epstein meets Patrick Bateman (from American Psycho), and you have the protagonist down...
Now imagine the narrative told in the first-person, where the protagonist enjoys speaking to the reader and breaking the 4th wall...
Definitely planning to read more Dennis Cooper, all I can say is wow...
But agree with the other reviewers, this is definitely NOT for everyone. The subject matter is extremely transgressive and will put off most readers from finishing the book.
That said, if you're up for a dark adventure (which in the age of Jeffrey Epstein, maybe even received as a social commentary), the writing is brilliant...
I would sum up the novel up as journey into the twisted psyche of a sociopath...think Jeffrey Epstein meets Patrick Bateman (from American Psycho), and you have the protagonist down...
Now imagine the narrative told in the first-person, where the protagonist enjoys speaking to the reader and breaking the 4th wall...
Definitely planning to read more Dennis Cooper, all I can say is wow...
May 25, 2012
Chasing the intriguing mystery-story plot as it reflects down and back a hallway of mirrors may set you up for a slight feeling of disappointment on the last page, but this book isn't actually quite done with you yet, and there's much fun to be had arranging and processing this books many vivid symbols with the benefit of hindsight. Even if the repulsive brutality sours you on prolonging your exposure to the marbled swarm, I'd still say this narrator's voice alone is kind of unmissable. It's like virtuoso power metal in more ways than one.
I also found that this guy pairs nicely with (instrumental obvs) Coil, particularly Time Machines & The Remote Viewer.
I also found that this guy pairs nicely with (instrumental obvs) Coil, particularly Time Machines & The Remote Viewer.
August 25, 2017
Feels like Cooper was impatient to finish this. Similar to the Wallace-circa-Jest in its focus on communication and in the style of its prose, at times funny, at times surprisingly, commendably poignant.
December 1, 2014
Note to self: re-read.
July 12, 2022
this book is only 200 pages long but the reality of reading it felt much slower because almost every paragraph is so dense that if you unbent it completely and laid it flat it would occupy the entire page, and the page would have a physical dimension as well, a depth, each letter raised to a height where its serifs look like model skyscrapers or stairwells. all of the cooper novels i’ve read are obsessed on some level with the (flimsy, unstable) division between reality and fantasy but this is the first one since period and maybe the end of frisk that made me feel like he was using language as a portal between the two, fantasy an eyelet in a wall that peers into reality from a secret passage, or vice versa. but the marbled swarm’s extra special metatextual quality is the way it draws your attention to language's constant manipulations of reality, reordering and reinventing events from behind the scenes like a poltergeist opening and slamming psychic doors. it’s funny that i can write all of this without touching on the fucked up and gruesome shit that constitutes the book’s “events,” and how generations of abuse can be stored in something as vaporous as speech which disintegrates as soon as it’s spoken, or cooper’s whole thing with doppelgängers, who tend to be young, abused, suicidal twinks who get sufficiently pared down into the same face staring upward, eyes unfocused, pupils like watercolor UFOs or holes that lead somewhere, spirit departed, a face that's like an open transom between life and death, a face that must be indented in cooper’s subconscious, a face that, as far as i can tell, he desperately wants to rescue from its circumstances but can’t because the earth is overrun by already-ruined adults who would only use this face as as pale stage for their most depraved fantasies and delusions. it’s probably the most amazing novel i’ve ever read and i can’t emphasize enough how advancing through it was like descending a ladder rung by rung into a place where i didn’t want to be at all
July 29, 2013
I just finished this.
Voyeurism, incest, molestation, pedophilia, child rape, murder, cannibalism...just another day at the office for Dennis Cooper.
If you've read his earlier works--for instance, the George Miles cycle--the disturbing themes should come as no surprise, but here his writing style is quite different. Whereas in his earlier works the style was flat, laconic, and minimalistic, here it is wordy and intentionally convoluted.
I think in the earlier books his characters didn't know how to communicate, and as a result spoke vaguely. Here, as befits a child of the Internet age, the narrator doesn't know how to communicate, and so speaks in a blathering torrent of words--practically a word salad--albeit one designed to hide, confuse, obfuscate, and trick.
The plot is a Mobius strip. If you can get through the book and say definitively what was real and what was an elaborate lie, you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din. I'm still not entirely clear as to the ending, and I suspect that might be Cooper's whole point.
Voyeurism, incest, molestation, pedophilia, child rape, murder, cannibalism...just another day at the office for Dennis Cooper.
If you've read his earlier works--for instance, the George Miles cycle--the disturbing themes should come as no surprise, but here his writing style is quite different. Whereas in his earlier works the style was flat, laconic, and minimalistic, here it is wordy and intentionally convoluted.
I think in the earlier books his characters didn't know how to communicate, and as a result spoke vaguely. Here, as befits a child of the Internet age, the narrator doesn't know how to communicate, and so speaks in a blathering torrent of words--practically a word salad--albeit one designed to hide, confuse, obfuscate, and trick.
The plot is a Mobius strip. If you can get through the book and say definitively what was real and what was an elaborate lie, you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din. I'm still not entirely clear as to the ending, and I suspect that might be Cooper's whole point.
November 14, 2011
i have never read anything like this before. one of my favorite novels.
February 17, 2017
I just bought Dennis Cooper's Closer on my Kindle and I am already terrified that someone is going to look at my Kindle and start reading it and see that it is not only pornographic, but pornographic in the most disturbing sense possible. I am fully convinced that e-Readers were invented for the sole purpose of being able to hide all your erotica from your friends.
Dennis Cooper scares me, yet The Marbled Swarm was still one of the most interesting novels I've read this year. The Marbled Swarm refers to the narrator's manner of speaking. It's a style that is both intricate and convoluted, but the most interesting thing about this Marbled Swarm is how it is also reflected in the plot itself: the plot continually stops, regresses, or goes off on a permanent tangent. The language is formal, and this formality is represented by a stunning lack of emotion in the narrator. Cannibalism, incest, rape, and abuse are revisited again and again as the plot circles around and around, attempting to avoid the whole point of the novel entirely. The events are terrifying and, in some ways, darkly funny. Yet it is an emotionless journey for the narrator, until the time comes when the heart of the novel cannot be avoided any longer.
In short, it's The Story of the Eye for the 21st century. (Which I had no problem sharing with all my friends. I was too enthralled by my own deviousness.) This novel is hard to simplify and dismiss it as a gross-out novel, because there is some real pain here. Cooper is too intelligent to let himself be reduced so easily. I don't want to call it a masterwork, but it's damn brilliant.
Dennis Cooper scares me, yet The Marbled Swarm was still one of the most interesting novels I've read this year. The Marbled Swarm refers to the narrator's manner of speaking. It's a style that is both intricate and convoluted, but the most interesting thing about this Marbled Swarm is how it is also reflected in the plot itself: the plot continually stops, regresses, or goes off on a permanent tangent. The language is formal, and this formality is represented by a stunning lack of emotion in the narrator. Cannibalism, incest, rape, and abuse are revisited again and again as the plot circles around and around, attempting to avoid the whole point of the novel entirely. The events are terrifying and, in some ways, darkly funny. Yet it is an emotionless journey for the narrator, until the time comes when the heart of the novel cannot be avoided any longer.
In short, it's The Story of the Eye for the 21st century. (Which I had no problem sharing with all my friends. I was too enthralled by my own deviousness.) This novel is hard to simplify and dismiss it as a gross-out novel, because there is some real pain here. Cooper is too intelligent to let himself be reduced so easily. I don't want to call it a masterwork, but it's damn brilliant.
January 2, 2023
Cooper problematizes the narrative of The 120 Days of Sodom by inseminating it with Borgesian labyrinths - both physical and metaphysical - consequently producing a potent Lynchian atmosphere of confusion, perfect for Marbled Swarm - the dialect of substance, devoid of essence. Thus, this fanged linguistic is freed to flourish as a form of hypnotic communication, and as such, those with the knowledge of Marbled Swarm, as well as the adequate wit to wield it, are demonic creatures in possession of absolute control, for, after all, Marbled Swarm has accursed roots, being originally devised as a mechanism for aestheticization of violence with a final aim of totalitarian domination over its audience.
July 2, 2021
This is the first book I’ve read by Dennis Cooper. It’s also the last book I’ll read by Dennis Cooper.
This guy makes Chuck Palahniuk look like Dr. Seuss.
Once again I was seduced by false reviews using words like, “Mystifying”, and “Courageous”, and , my favorite…”Ghost-Haunted”!
This novel is so disgusting I found myself scanning more pages than deep reading. If offensive is what you’re after, look no further.
I’m sorry I wasted time and money on this rubbish.
This guy makes Chuck Palahniuk look like Dr. Seuss.
Once again I was seduced by false reviews using words like, “Mystifying”, and “Courageous”, and , my favorite…”Ghost-Haunted”!
This novel is so disgusting I found myself scanning more pages than deep reading. If offensive is what you’re after, look no further.
I’m sorry I wasted time and money on this rubbish.
May 4, 2022
I was absolutely not cut out for this book. The writing was good tho
May 4, 2026
"Serge was, in the shorthand of that era's therapists, a cutter. When he was sad, which, judging from my initial scar count, appeared to have been often, he would hold a razor to his pasty limbs and slice into the flesh. Mostly, he'd left rows of unimaginative zigzags up and down his forearms. Occasionally, however, he'd gone bonkers and carved a word-I spotted "shit" and "kill"-or an occult-looking symbol, all for the purpose of... Well, God knows."
The Marbled Swarm is perhaps the most incomprehensible, inaccessible and indecipherable novel that Dennis Cooper has ever written - this doesn't mean, however, that it's any less fantastic than his other works, this book is a god-damn masterpiece. I'm openly, and quite disgustingly, extremely biased when it comes to Dennis Cooper. I truly believe that, not only is Cooper incapable of writing a bad novel, he's in fact, one of the greatest living authors there is. Dennis Cooper could quite literally beat me across the head with this book and I'd still think both he and the book were sort of genius. Even for Cooper's most ardent fans, I think The Marbled Swarm will be... A lot, to digest. This certainly isn't the book to start your Dennis Cooper journey with. Nor is this the book for readers who believe that art owes us any kind of morality.
This is, however, the perfect book for those of you who are looking to feel disgusted with yourselves for the kind of literature you enjoy, or for those of you reading this who are depressed emo boys who use ":3" unironically and wish to be brutally murdered by your boyfriends. Honestly speaking, The Marbled Swarm is fucking disgusting, this is an abhorrent, cruel, filthy, and sickening book, and, at times, it's difficult to comprehend the sort of mind that could have created this. But, it's also beautiful, and powerful, and poetic, just, in the same sort of way that staring at a roadkill possum might be. No matter how grotesque of a book this is, it feels like it's essential that everyone experience the horror that is The Marbled Swarm.
Without a doubt, The Marbled Swarm is Dennis Cooper's most demanding book, it absolutely requires every ounce of your attention at all times. It's one of those books that seems designed to make us think about where the line really is between art and just "this is some really fucked up shit." None of us reading this book will relate in any way to the protagonist, but, I don't think that's the point of any of Cooper's works (My theory is that we're meant to relate heavily to the victims, however...) I do think that the obsessive, desperate, heart-broken melody Cooper has penned for us here is something we're supposed to find some meaning in beyond just, this is a brutal rape book. The Marbled Swarm abuses the English language so beautifully, and, despite the horrifying content, it was a joy to read.
"Azmir's penis pinned my brother's asshole to his deepest pelvic bones, then, it seemed to me, tried to erase it like a stray pencil mark. He scrubbed the stain until the ass itself appeared to change metabolisms-wilting, liquefying, and sloshing up against my brother's skeleton before it finally jelled and shrink-wrapped what was basically a crater."
The Marbled Swarm is perhaps the most incomprehensible, inaccessible and indecipherable novel that Dennis Cooper has ever written - this doesn't mean, however, that it's any less fantastic than his other works, this book is a god-damn masterpiece. I'm openly, and quite disgustingly, extremely biased when it comes to Dennis Cooper. I truly believe that, not only is Cooper incapable of writing a bad novel, he's in fact, one of the greatest living authors there is. Dennis Cooper could quite literally beat me across the head with this book and I'd still think both he and the book were sort of genius. Even for Cooper's most ardent fans, I think The Marbled Swarm will be... A lot, to digest. This certainly isn't the book to start your Dennis Cooper journey with. Nor is this the book for readers who believe that art owes us any kind of morality.
This is, however, the perfect book for those of you who are looking to feel disgusted with yourselves for the kind of literature you enjoy, or for those of you reading this who are depressed emo boys who use ":3" unironically and wish to be brutally murdered by your boyfriends. Honestly speaking, The Marbled Swarm is fucking disgusting, this is an abhorrent, cruel, filthy, and sickening book, and, at times, it's difficult to comprehend the sort of mind that could have created this. But, it's also beautiful, and powerful, and poetic, just, in the same sort of way that staring at a roadkill possum might be. No matter how grotesque of a book this is, it feels like it's essential that everyone experience the horror that is The Marbled Swarm.
"Well, there are these seven... wait, nine guys I used to chat with who, if I know them, and I don't, probably tell their friends they raped some Emo loser," he said. "It's true when we were instant messaging, they were all, like, 'Rape, rape, pound your ass, and blah blah blah, you little whore.' But when they saw... that I was serious, it was all, like, 'You shouldn't cut yourself, you're really nice,' and then they'd get my face alone and maybe jack off in my mouth if I was lucky. I just... was happy that you didn't act all psychiatric and... you remind me of my brother, which I know is sick and..."
Without a doubt, The Marbled Swarm is Dennis Cooper's most demanding book, it absolutely requires every ounce of your attention at all times. It's one of those books that seems designed to make us think about where the line really is between art and just "this is some really fucked up shit." None of us reading this book will relate in any way to the protagonist, but, I don't think that's the point of any of Cooper's works (My theory is that we're meant to relate heavily to the victims, however...) I do think that the obsessive, desperate, heart-broken melody Cooper has penned for us here is something we're supposed to find some meaning in beyond just, this is a brutal rape book. The Marbled Swarm abuses the English language so beautifully, and, despite the horrifying content, it was a joy to read.
"Azmir's penis pinned my brother's asshole to his deepest pelvic bones, then, it seemed to me, tried to erase it like a stray pencil mark. He scrubbed the stain until the ass itself appeared to change metabolisms-wilting, liquefying, and sloshing up against my brother's skeleton before it finally jelled and shrink-wrapped what was basically a crater."
February 17, 2024
regrettably unimpressed by this one. I tried to warm to the writing style but found it too tedious and almost cringeworthy more often than not, although there are the odd really fantastic paragraphs here and there which motivated me to keep reading. not only did I find the narrator obnoxious - not because of his depravity, actually, but because he often times reads like a teenager with a contrarian complex (oh, wait…). I’m also really not sure whether the inventiveness of both the “marbled swarm” and the labyrinthine structure of both the narrative and language is grossly overexaggerated or not. I don’t find the gruesome aspects of the book worth remarking on - in the sense that although I enjoy reading “”disturbing”” books, I’m largely indifferent to whether it elevates the story or not.
and to be fair, I am not that familiar with the works of, say, De Sade and Bataille (Cooper’s literary heroes) yet, and maybe The Marbled Swarm really isn’t an “inferior” version of a similar sort of story and the problem lies with me.
and to be fair, I am not that familiar with the works of, say, De Sade and Bataille (Cooper’s literary heroes) yet, and maybe The Marbled Swarm really isn’t an “inferior” version of a similar sort of story and the problem lies with me.
September 13, 2024
"What are we, some kind of marbled swarm?"
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