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A brilliant novel of LA’s underground from the author of Closer, “the last literary outlaw in mainstream American fiction” (Bret Easton Ellis).
Chris is a young porn star who wants to experience death at someone else’s hand; Mason has lurid fantasies about members of British pop bands; Sniffles is a teenage runaway whose need for love outweighs his attachment to life. Courtesy of a frankly manipulative author/narrator named Dennis, these characters move through a subterranean Los Angeles where hallucination and reality, sex and suicide, love and indifference run together in terrifying ways.
Guide, the fourth novel in a projected five-book cycle, continues to explore the boundaries of experience in the manner that has earned Dennis Cooper comparisons to Poe, Genet, and Baudelaire.
Chris is a young porn star who wants to experience death at someone else’s hand; Mason has lurid fantasies about members of British pop bands; Sniffles is a teenage runaway whose need for love outweighs his attachment to life. Courtesy of a frankly manipulative author/narrator named Dennis, these characters move through a subterranean Los Angeles where hallucination and reality, sex and suicide, love and indifference run together in terrifying ways.
Guide, the fourth novel in a projected five-book cycle, continues to explore the boundaries of experience in the manner that has earned Dennis Cooper comparisons to Poe, Genet, and Baudelaire.
196 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 1, 1997
28 people are currently reading
1891 people want to read
About the author
Dennis Cooper
109 books1,796 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 124 reviews
October 14, 2014
There's a philosopher's stone at the heart of this novel and it's a petrified lump of shit high up in the ass of a teenage junky. At first this lump is merely an erotic curiosity discovered during deep and relatively innocent digital anal probing, but later it becomes a potential mystical object in the hands of a sadistic dwarf. The "harvesting" of this stone provides the most potent image in the book - The dwarf slowly stabbing a willing boy to death during sex, then slicing around the boy's ass and lifting it off like a wilted manhole cover exposing the mystical shit lump deep in the gore. Intrigued, the dwarf washes the bloody spoils in a sink as the water turns thick and purple and drains away. He thinks he's happened upon something real special, but alas it is just a petrified lump of shit from the depths of a junky's ass. Then it's all downhill: no potential mystical breakthrough, no magic, only failed fairy tales and poop deck swabbing after messy deaths, and, yes, the search for love as one sifts through one's own violent fantasies and warped realities while navigating the world of blank narcissistic druggies and lost boys.
As should be evident this is a dirty book, but as with all the Cooper I've read thus far there's a purity and beauty also because of his spare and vivid style and his visionary power and polish.
As should be evident this is a dirty book, but as with all the Cooper I've read thus far there's a purity and beauty also because of his spare and vivid style and his visionary power and polish.
June 7, 2024
Dennis Cooper had sex with Leonardo DiCaprio. Maybe. At least in this novel. The mirror piece to Frisk in Cooper's meticulously constructed George Miles Cycle, "Guide" picks up on the same themes: Revolving around desires and obsessions that tear down the walls between fantasy and reality, the novel is once more narrated by a character named Dennis Cooper who, one more link to "Frisk", writes novels about serial killers. Another major parallel is the threat of HIV/AIDS that can be seen as the real-life catastrophe that manifests in some of the hallucinatory violent episodes we read: For the people in the book, the fascination lies in the control over bodily harm, while HIV/AIDS just strikes. Many characters affected in one way or another walk the line between life and death, an experience heightened by the major role of drugs (heroin as a means to prolong bardo and dissociative drugs as a means to destroy the order of reality).
As Dennis, our narrator, is not exactly a straight edge dude, his grasp on reality is fragile, and as the the real-life Cooper is fascinated by fandom culture (which will later give us the extremely dark comedic parable The Sluts), "Guide" involves 90's rock musicians like the members of "Blur" and "Silverchair" as well as, ähem, Leonardo DiCaprio. Another new twist to Cooper's pre-occupation with mediated culture is that apart from the filming of violent acts that (within the logic of the text) might be real or not, "Guide" also ponders the ethics of journalism and writing in general when it comes to representing marginalized people, and it wittily does so by rendering the Dennis-character highly dubious.
Aesthetically, the work is very ambitious: The text is fragmentary and told in interlocking story arcs, with a whole cast of characters. I sometimes struggled to get through the structure, because it's not written to be immersive, but in the end, I always wanted to know where this might lead. Still, I will not even bother to re-construct the plot, because really, it's about the aforementioned themes that are played out in nuance by employing a wide array of literary personnel.
Somewhere in there, we read the real story of how Cooper met George Miles and what happened to him - the author didn't even know when he published the beginning of the George Miles Cycle that his muse had shot himself. Now I can't wait to read how Cooper finishes the pentalogy with Period, and then I'm on to the coda I Wished.
Irvine Welsh interviewing Dennis Cooper about "Guide": https://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandc...
As Dennis, our narrator, is not exactly a straight edge dude, his grasp on reality is fragile, and as the the real-life Cooper is fascinated by fandom culture (which will later give us the extremely dark comedic parable The Sluts), "Guide" involves 90's rock musicians like the members of "Blur" and "Silverchair" as well as, ähem, Leonardo DiCaprio. Another new twist to Cooper's pre-occupation with mediated culture is that apart from the filming of violent acts that (within the logic of the text) might be real or not, "Guide" also ponders the ethics of journalism and writing in general when it comes to representing marginalized people, and it wittily does so by rendering the Dennis-character highly dubious.
Aesthetically, the work is very ambitious: The text is fragmentary and told in interlocking story arcs, with a whole cast of characters. I sometimes struggled to get through the structure, because it's not written to be immersive, but in the end, I always wanted to know where this might lead. Still, I will not even bother to re-construct the plot, because really, it's about the aforementioned themes that are played out in nuance by employing a wide array of literary personnel.
Somewhere in there, we read the real story of how Cooper met George Miles and what happened to him - the author didn't even know when he published the beginning of the George Miles Cycle that his muse had shot himself. Now I can't wait to read how Cooper finishes the pentalogy with Period, and then I'm on to the coda I Wished.
Irvine Welsh interviewing Dennis Cooper about "Guide": https://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandc...
August 22, 2008
after getting through this drug-blurred, blood-oily, post-sex sense-deracinating--i decided that DC is not so much a sadist or even really, fundamentally, a provocateur. that that's not his primary impulse, but rather it's indeed some kind of exploration of the ecstatic--in all its forms. and the ecstasy-explorer is searching out taboo and murder and drug-experience not out of a negative motivation, not for rage or violence against society, but much more basically out of a movement toward the transcendent.
or, i wouldn't think of his project as wish-fulfillment and certainly utopian isn't the first adjective that crosses the mind--but that's just what the DC character claims: "Then I remember what I do when I'm not stoned. You know, write novels that are essentially long, involved wishes for offbeat utopian worlds that I can't realistically enter" (65), which might in fact be one way to conceptualize this novel of kiddie-porn snuff films and HIV-infected rent boys and rape of all kinds.
...part of how GUIDE functions as (a kind of) wish fulfillment fiction is by maintaining an aura of non-fiction. (the fantasy is best for the narrator when it seems real / the fantasy is possible for the narrator because it isn't real.) and one very impressive thing about GUIDE is how its subtle structure effectively conflates reportage with fiction. as well, almost lost due to the virtuosic handling of its extreme materials is the sensitivity cooper has for tone-shifts, his beautifully efficient characterization, and the ability for just setting up and moving us almost breezily through his complicated apartment-scapes.
should say too: the feeling while reading it is pretty intense. "edgy" and "risky" seem too corporatized a language to describe it. i finished it maybe twenty minutes ago, and i still feel like it's a little hard to breathe. a gut-punch of a book.
from this interview:
Q: How did you protect the kids?
DC: Well, I used my late, beloved friend George Miles as the model for all the major young male characters in the cycle because he's the one person I would have protected at all costs. I think the way this protection panned out is that when most of the violence happens, the story becomes unrealistic and fantasy-like, as though it might or might not really be happening. Also, the young characters are always the most sympathetic. So I didn't manage to completely protect them, but the books (and I hope my readers) always care about them.
and on method:
Q: Kathy Acker published first drafts of things, wrote at the point of orgasm in order to hit on something true, but you polish and refine. Would you ever go down the automatic, exquisite corpse sort of route?
DC: It wouldn't work, because my first drafts are crap for the most part. I try to let myself go all out at first, then go back and rip apart what I've written then rebuild it, then shred it again, and so on. My real voice isn't exact or careful at all, and I spend much, much more time refining my prose than writing it. On rare occasions, a piece will come out nearly perfect the first time, but almost never.
or, i wouldn't think of his project as wish-fulfillment and certainly utopian isn't the first adjective that crosses the mind--but that's just what the DC character claims: "Then I remember what I do when I'm not stoned. You know, write novels that are essentially long, involved wishes for offbeat utopian worlds that I can't realistically enter" (65), which might in fact be one way to conceptualize this novel of kiddie-porn snuff films and HIV-infected rent boys and rape of all kinds.
...part of how GUIDE functions as (a kind of) wish fulfillment fiction is by maintaining an aura of non-fiction. (the fantasy is best for the narrator when it seems real / the fantasy is possible for the narrator because it isn't real.) and one very impressive thing about GUIDE is how its subtle structure effectively conflates reportage with fiction. as well, almost lost due to the virtuosic handling of its extreme materials is the sensitivity cooper has for tone-shifts, his beautifully efficient characterization, and the ability for just setting up and moving us almost breezily through his complicated apartment-scapes.
should say too: the feeling while reading it is pretty intense. "edgy" and "risky" seem too corporatized a language to describe it. i finished it maybe twenty minutes ago, and i still feel like it's a little hard to breathe. a gut-punch of a book.
from this interview:
Q: How did you protect the kids?
DC: Well, I used my late, beloved friend George Miles as the model for all the major young male characters in the cycle because he's the one person I would have protected at all costs. I think the way this protection panned out is that when most of the violence happens, the story becomes unrealistic and fantasy-like, as though it might or might not really be happening. Also, the young characters are always the most sympathetic. So I didn't manage to completely protect them, but the books (and I hope my readers) always care about them.
and on method:
Q: Kathy Acker published first drafts of things, wrote at the point of orgasm in order to hit on something true, but you polish and refine. Would you ever go down the automatic, exquisite corpse sort of route?
DC: It wouldn't work, because my first drafts are crap for the most part. I try to let myself go all out at first, then go back and rip apart what I've written then rebuild it, then shred it again, and so on. My real voice isn't exact or careful at all, and I spend much, much more time refining my prose than writing it. On rare occasions, a piece will come out nearly perfect the first time, but almost never.
September 8, 2013
In the full context of the George Miles cycle, this is the fourth, sitting symmetrically across the relative calm of Try from Frisk. Which is the other of these narrated from within by a writer named "Dennis" who is prone to murderous fantasies. But as opposed to the cold amorality of the Dennis in Frisk, this is an apologetic, sometimes antithetically sentimental Dennis. Who actually has a hand in more direct harm than Frisk's Dennis despite this. (Doubtless, though, neither Dennis seems likely to be more "real".)
Also like Frisk, this is a book about sublimation. A layer of artists interpreting the story for others, or working through their shit on various kinds of page. Eddie W spotted a philosopher's stone of sorts in here, even, that ultimate sublimator, and Cooper here aspires to alchemy in several senses. Does it work? The question itself is an oversimplification of the terms.
This is also about death and the sublime, which in this context definitely belong separated by only two short words. Drugs are a proxy oblivion, of course, so they're also close, but there are... problems to that approach, always. But through these and other mediums, Guide is suffused in a non-verbal hum, or exhalation, or static: a brush with the inexpressible, a single continuous murmur of collective unconscious. There's a collective conscious of sorts too, a constant mirroring buzz of pop lyrics, sometimes by literal and actual bands of the mid-90s, sometimes transmogrified into proxy selves to better be sexualized and dissected. Because here to sexualize is to dissect. Or to want to. And love? Cooper -- and "Dennis" -- keep a close eye on the abyssal spaces between love, sex, and desire at all times. But love is granted an unaccustomed level of... possibility this time. Despite all the other events that surround it in a dense and inextricable web of fabrication, obfuscation, and occasionally even truth.
Also like Frisk, this is a book about sublimation. A layer of artists interpreting the story for others, or working through their shit on various kinds of page. Eddie W spotted a philosopher's stone of sorts in here, even, that ultimate sublimator, and Cooper here aspires to alchemy in several senses. Does it work? The question itself is an oversimplification of the terms.
This is also about death and the sublime, which in this context definitely belong separated by only two short words. Drugs are a proxy oblivion, of course, so they're also close, but there are... problems to that approach, always. But through these and other mediums, Guide is suffused in a non-verbal hum, or exhalation, or static: a brush with the inexpressible, a single continuous murmur of collective unconscious. There's a collective conscious of sorts too, a constant mirroring buzz of pop lyrics, sometimes by literal and actual bands of the mid-90s, sometimes transmogrified into proxy selves to better be sexualized and dissected. Because here to sexualize is to dissect. Or to want to. And love? Cooper -- and "Dennis" -- keep a close eye on the abyssal spaces between love, sex, and desire at all times. But love is granted an unaccustomed level of... possibility this time. Despite all the other events that surround it in a dense and inextricable web of fabrication, obfuscation, and occasionally even truth.
February 25, 2024
I loved the prose of this book. I did have to just power through some of the very disturbing content though.
It was very disturbing and drew me into the very darkest corners of humanity. It was like watching a snuff film. I almost didn’t finish it because the first 40 pages were too intense for me but something drew me back a couple days later to finish it. I’m not used to shock literature ( if that’s what you call this?) but I also felt there was some heart in the characters and the writing. I didn’t understand any of the references cause I didn’t grow up in the 90’s but it was pretty clear to me.
This is my second book from Cooper and I’m so excited to read more.
It was very disturbing and drew me into the very darkest corners of humanity. It was like watching a snuff film. I almost didn’t finish it because the first 40 pages were too intense for me but something drew me back a couple days later to finish it. I’m not used to shock literature ( if that’s what you call this?) but I also felt there was some heart in the characters and the writing. I didn’t understand any of the references cause I didn’t grow up in the 90’s but it was pretty clear to me.
This is my second book from Cooper and I’m so excited to read more.
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August 21, 20242024 reread: probably hardly need to say how much dennis cooper's work means to me but he's the only writer who can actually really make me feel less alone
just talking to myself here so don't mind me; this was such an odd experience because i think this was objectively extremely interesting/complex, but it's by far maybe the book in this cycle i've had the most trouble connecting with...? obviously this is directly across from frisk, which i appreciated, but the dennis-narrator in this was so awash in shame/almost apologetic that it was so strange to experience the intrusion of the outside world in that. because all the books up to this point have been so insular, almost claustrophobic (especially given how much involves the insides of other people's bodies). though i guess that makes the distancing i felt in this one make sense, bc its all about the mutual recognition of shame in desire )( <- the immitigable chasm. anyway!
— “Now Phillip’s even more of a sicko than I am. That’s what I’m afraid of. That at the end of every fantasy, no matter how seemingly concrete, there’s always a “Yeah, but …”
— “A beautiful, interesting boy can be hot, but his body’s the same exact body that’s slept with a lot of other people. It’s only yours in the process of being absorbed. All of which is to say, the way things have worked themselves out, Luke will always be tantalizingly separate from me. He’ll never dissolve into all my imaginative bullshit. Whatever happens to me from now on, good or bad, he’ll be safe. That’s love, right? Anyway, that’s love to me."
just talking to myself here so don't mind me; this was such an odd experience because i think this was objectively extremely interesting/complex, but it's by far maybe the book in this cycle i've had the most trouble connecting with...? obviously this is directly across from frisk, which i appreciated, but the dennis-narrator in this was so awash in shame/almost apologetic that it was so strange to experience the intrusion of the outside world in that. because all the books up to this point have been so insular, almost claustrophobic (especially given how much involves the insides of other people's bodies). though i guess that makes the distancing i felt in this one make sense, bc its all about the mutual recognition of shame in desire )( <- the immitigable chasm. anyway!
— “Now Phillip’s even more of a sicko than I am. That’s what I’m afraid of. That at the end of every fantasy, no matter how seemingly concrete, there’s always a “Yeah, but …”
— “A beautiful, interesting boy can be hot, but his body’s the same exact body that’s slept with a lot of other people. It’s only yours in the process of being absorbed. All of which is to say, the way things have worked themselves out, Luke will always be tantalizingly separate from me. He’ll never dissolve into all my imaginative bullshit. Whatever happens to me from now on, good or bad, he’ll be safe. That’s love, right? Anyway, that’s love to me."
October 28, 2009
Beautiful, bold, and brilliant. A lot of Cooper's unique and trademark style has been carried over into Guide but with some innovation. For instance, Guide is much more personal, it seems. This episode of the George Miles series is, in my opinion, the best because it brings together the three previous novels and begins to explain who George Miles was to Dennis, why he is so important - how he changed Dennis forever. The novel somehow manages to be touching, heart-breaking, and disgusting all at once. Superb and unexpected.
September 14, 2022
Not good and not for me. Is it a classic LGBTQ book? Yes. Does that make it good? Probably not. Content was gross and crass and not in a fun way. The last chapter ¿Redeemed? It? It also had one fun notable stanza. That's what got it the second star.
August 8, 2021
[UPDATE: All five of my "George Miles" reviews, including this one, are now collected and available as a standalone book at Amazon!]
2021 reads, #46. This is volume #4 of my five-book read this month of the classic LGBTQ "George Miles" cycle by Dennis Cooper, one of the heralded "New Transgressive" authors of early Generation X that also included Poppy Z. Brite, Kathy Acker, Bret Easton Ellis and others (but for a lot more details, see my review of book #1 in the series, 1989's Closer; book #2, 1991's Frisk; and book #3, 1994's Try). This turns out to be a particularly interesting one as well, because Cooper decides to go in an entirely different direction here, beyond the arty disaffected numbed youth of the first two books and the simplistic torture porn of the third, which had been done in an attempt to capture a larger audience and more mainstream media attention right at the moment Corporate America in general started embracing Generation X in their usual attempt to make a buck off of the latest generation of twentysomethings. (Spoiler alert: it never really worked; so the moment the generation after them, the more earnest and more naive Millennials, started having discretionary income for the first time, Corporate America instantly switched over to pleasing them, because the vacuous boy bands and insipid reality shows that are now a permanent part of our culture worked a lot better on them than they did the cynical, skeptical, fun-hating Generation X.)
In Guide, we follow two very simplistic storylines, a more straightforwardly plotted book than any of the three before them. In one thread, we're having a direct conversation with a middle-aged writer named Dennis, who we've learned has become famous for writing a series of edgy novels in which disaffected numbed youth constantly do drugs and have unsatisfying sex in a failed attempt to experience any kind of real emotions in their lives, and who has recently been hired by SPIN magazine to write a nonfiction article about one such group of disaffected youth in the culturally empty suburbs of Los Angeles; while the other thread follows the adventures of these actual youths that "Dennis" has been hired by SPIN to follow, as they emptily follow a transgressive script so Cooperian in nature that it might as well be a kabuki stage play we're watching. So in this, then, you can very, very easily see both Dennis the novelist and Dennis the novelist-character almost instantly lose his interest in the actual young people he's been hired to write about, to instead spend more and more time relating a bizarre incident from his own '70s youth in which he believes he may or may not have actually met God after ingesting 90 tabs of acid over the course of 30 days during an extended family vacation to Hawaii, and who becomes more and more interested in exploring this mystical vision and parsing out what it means about faith, about the supernatural, and about whether there really is a ghostly little creature inside all of us, who up to now he and his friends had been essentially keeping unconscious through their rampant drug use and unceasing cruel sex acts. So in other words, a lot of this book reads like, "Yeah yeah yeah, kiddie porn, snuff films, heroin addicts, whatever, you sheep. But have I told you about the Good News of Jesus Christ Our Lord and Savior yet? And that you may or may not be able to get directly in touch with Him through the chaos magick rituals of Peter J. Carroll?"
This should actually come as no surprise; for as I've mentioned in all three of my Miles reviews before this one, in hindsight we now know that this is what happened to a whole lot of these edgy Generation X writers (and just Generation X in general), as the early '90s turned into the late '90s, and the need to write ever more outrageous storylines to justify their fame as transgressive authors eventually collapsed into a mess of B-grade horror tropes about serial killers and cannibals and morally troubled vampires -- that they emerged on the other side with this newfound interest in connecting with something mystical and that was bigger than themselves, whether that manifested as Jesus, Buddha, Allah or Oprah (that last reference of which I don't mean as a joke; these are precisely the years that the New Age movement first went mainstream and took over the middle-class suburbs), which then just increased tenfold in intensity once the 21st century greeted us with the events of 9/11 and the permanent destruction of the then 35-year-old Postmodernist art movement (that is, if like me you define the beginning of Postmodernism to coincide with Kennedy's assassination, although I acknowledge that there's some debate about this). I've been musing throughout this entire series about whether Cooper would ever reach this "I saw the light" moment in his own work; and sure enough, I turned out to be right.
It's also telling, I think, that after complaining in my review of the previous novel, Try, about how some of his teenage characters were now starting to suffer from Clueless Middle-Aged Writer Syndrome -- with one in particular who, despite the story taking place in 1994, might as well have been depicted as mindlessly staring at his iPhone and constantly muttering "whateeeeever" (the perpetual siren song of the clueless middle-aged writer attempting to flesh out teenage characters, who they no longer can relate to but only view with a mixture of contempt and confusion) -- here in the 1997 Guide this is exactly what we see many of these characters precisely and literally do and say, with Cooper in fact making a running joke throughout the manuscript about how often words fail these illiterate little brats so that they're forced to default back to the mindless "whatever" to express all their emotions. This is always a danger for authors who first got famous for being unusually insightful about the inner thoughts of teens, like the reputation Cooper has had for nearly his entire career; that as they first grow into the age group of parents and then into the lower boundary of grandparent age (Cooper was 45 when this book was published), they often simply lose the ability to write teenage characters in the probing, true-to-life way that made them famous to begin with, a problem you can very clearly see here as well. Whateeeeever!
I mean, let's make no mistake, there's just as much filth here as in all the other books, set in a world where every person who even exists is one of an infinite variety of The Ideal Object of Dennis Cooper's Affections, even if the ur-example of this object has changed from the first novel's Keanu Reeves circa River's Edge to now Alex James, the bassist of '90s Britpop band Blur (who actually appears as a character here in this novel, and proceeds to get roofied and then molested by Dennis's friend while Dennis watches in rapt adoration, which makes me wonder what exactly James thought of all this when the book first came out as the splashy, high-profile follow-up to his commercial breakthrough Try). And like always, the vast majority of the sex depicted follows Cooper's super-specific fetishistic obsession with ass-rimming, and especially his ongoing violent fantasy about encountering an ass so perfect and magical that people are compelled to chop it up with a knife so they can get into the religiously profound black hole found at the center of it (here finally played out to its cartoonishly extreme logical end by a sadistic dwarf [!!!], who does precisely this to one of our characters, just to find a "turd pearl" inside made up of a petrified piece of feces coated milky white from the dried semen of a thousand previous rapists, and if that image disgusts you then you're on the wrong freaking book page, my friend, and you need to leave right this second and forget that you ever heard the name Dennis Cooper to begin with).
But all of it just feels like window-dressing at this point, silly little stories designed specifically to keep the sociopaths at the MTV marketing department doing their happy little dances while green dollar bill signs flash in their eyeballs. The only parts truly interesting enough to indicate that Cooper actually gave a damn about them include the stuff at the beginning about his youthful adventures in religious revelation, and the part at the end where he finally explains why this entire book cycle is named after George Miles in the first place (who turns out to have been a very real person from Cooper's actual real life, who he met when he was 17 and George was 13, and who he developed a debilitating chaste love for that was never returned, with Cooper admitting that all the books in this series have been his attempt to try to capture those fleeting, intense kind of emotions that we only experience as teens when we fall in love for the very first time). That stuff is fascinating, and it's half-shame and half-tragedy that he felt the need (or perhaps the Corporate Machine around him felt the need) to surround this fascinating stuff with 150 pages of "The Poor Man's Jean Genet" material, which has long lost its shtick by this point in the series. Only one more book to go, blessedly, until I'm finally finished, 2000's Period (published just before the events of September 11th hammered the final nail into the coffin of the New Transgressive movement for good), so as always keep your eye out for that review in another few days.
2021 reads, #46. This is volume #4 of my five-book read this month of the classic LGBTQ "George Miles" cycle by Dennis Cooper, one of the heralded "New Transgressive" authors of early Generation X that also included Poppy Z. Brite, Kathy Acker, Bret Easton Ellis and others (but for a lot more details, see my review of book #1 in the series, 1989's Closer; book #2, 1991's Frisk; and book #3, 1994's Try). This turns out to be a particularly interesting one as well, because Cooper decides to go in an entirely different direction here, beyond the arty disaffected numbed youth of the first two books and the simplistic torture porn of the third, which had been done in an attempt to capture a larger audience and more mainstream media attention right at the moment Corporate America in general started embracing Generation X in their usual attempt to make a buck off of the latest generation of twentysomethings. (Spoiler alert: it never really worked; so the moment the generation after them, the more earnest and more naive Millennials, started having discretionary income for the first time, Corporate America instantly switched over to pleasing them, because the vacuous boy bands and insipid reality shows that are now a permanent part of our culture worked a lot better on them than they did the cynical, skeptical, fun-hating Generation X.)
In Guide, we follow two very simplistic storylines, a more straightforwardly plotted book than any of the three before them. In one thread, we're having a direct conversation with a middle-aged writer named Dennis, who we've learned has become famous for writing a series of edgy novels in which disaffected numbed youth constantly do drugs and have unsatisfying sex in a failed attempt to experience any kind of real emotions in their lives, and who has recently been hired by SPIN magazine to write a nonfiction article about one such group of disaffected youth in the culturally empty suburbs of Los Angeles; while the other thread follows the adventures of these actual youths that "Dennis" has been hired by SPIN to follow, as they emptily follow a transgressive script so Cooperian in nature that it might as well be a kabuki stage play we're watching. So in this, then, you can very, very easily see both Dennis the novelist and Dennis the novelist-character almost instantly lose his interest in the actual young people he's been hired to write about, to instead spend more and more time relating a bizarre incident from his own '70s youth in which he believes he may or may not have actually met God after ingesting 90 tabs of acid over the course of 30 days during an extended family vacation to Hawaii, and who becomes more and more interested in exploring this mystical vision and parsing out what it means about faith, about the supernatural, and about whether there really is a ghostly little creature inside all of us, who up to now he and his friends had been essentially keeping unconscious through their rampant drug use and unceasing cruel sex acts. So in other words, a lot of this book reads like, "Yeah yeah yeah, kiddie porn, snuff films, heroin addicts, whatever, you sheep. But have I told you about the Good News of Jesus Christ Our Lord and Savior yet? And that you may or may not be able to get directly in touch with Him through the chaos magick rituals of Peter J. Carroll?"
This should actually come as no surprise; for as I've mentioned in all three of my Miles reviews before this one, in hindsight we now know that this is what happened to a whole lot of these edgy Generation X writers (and just Generation X in general), as the early '90s turned into the late '90s, and the need to write ever more outrageous storylines to justify their fame as transgressive authors eventually collapsed into a mess of B-grade horror tropes about serial killers and cannibals and morally troubled vampires -- that they emerged on the other side with this newfound interest in connecting with something mystical and that was bigger than themselves, whether that manifested as Jesus, Buddha, Allah or Oprah (that last reference of which I don't mean as a joke; these are precisely the years that the New Age movement first went mainstream and took over the middle-class suburbs), which then just increased tenfold in intensity once the 21st century greeted us with the events of 9/11 and the permanent destruction of the then 35-year-old Postmodernist art movement (that is, if like me you define the beginning of Postmodernism to coincide with Kennedy's assassination, although I acknowledge that there's some debate about this). I've been musing throughout this entire series about whether Cooper would ever reach this "I saw the light" moment in his own work; and sure enough, I turned out to be right.
It's also telling, I think, that after complaining in my review of the previous novel, Try, about how some of his teenage characters were now starting to suffer from Clueless Middle-Aged Writer Syndrome -- with one in particular who, despite the story taking place in 1994, might as well have been depicted as mindlessly staring at his iPhone and constantly muttering "whateeeeever" (the perpetual siren song of the clueless middle-aged writer attempting to flesh out teenage characters, who they no longer can relate to but only view with a mixture of contempt and confusion) -- here in the 1997 Guide this is exactly what we see many of these characters precisely and literally do and say, with Cooper in fact making a running joke throughout the manuscript about how often words fail these illiterate little brats so that they're forced to default back to the mindless "whatever" to express all their emotions. This is always a danger for authors who first got famous for being unusually insightful about the inner thoughts of teens, like the reputation Cooper has had for nearly his entire career; that as they first grow into the age group of parents and then into the lower boundary of grandparent age (Cooper was 45 when this book was published), they often simply lose the ability to write teenage characters in the probing, true-to-life way that made them famous to begin with, a problem you can very clearly see here as well. Whateeeeever!
I mean, let's make no mistake, there's just as much filth here as in all the other books, set in a world where every person who even exists is one of an infinite variety of The Ideal Object of Dennis Cooper's Affections, even if the ur-example of this object has changed from the first novel's Keanu Reeves circa River's Edge to now Alex James, the bassist of '90s Britpop band Blur (who actually appears as a character here in this novel, and proceeds to get roofied and then molested by Dennis's friend while Dennis watches in rapt adoration, which makes me wonder what exactly James thought of all this when the book first came out as the splashy, high-profile follow-up to his commercial breakthrough Try). And like always, the vast majority of the sex depicted follows Cooper's super-specific fetishistic obsession with ass-rimming, and especially his ongoing violent fantasy about encountering an ass so perfect and magical that people are compelled to chop it up with a knife so they can get into the religiously profound black hole found at the center of it (here finally played out to its cartoonishly extreme logical end by a sadistic dwarf [!!!], who does precisely this to one of our characters, just to find a "turd pearl" inside made up of a petrified piece of feces coated milky white from the dried semen of a thousand previous rapists, and if that image disgusts you then you're on the wrong freaking book page, my friend, and you need to leave right this second and forget that you ever heard the name Dennis Cooper to begin with).
But all of it just feels like window-dressing at this point, silly little stories designed specifically to keep the sociopaths at the MTV marketing department doing their happy little dances while green dollar bill signs flash in their eyeballs. The only parts truly interesting enough to indicate that Cooper actually gave a damn about them include the stuff at the beginning about his youthful adventures in religious revelation, and the part at the end where he finally explains why this entire book cycle is named after George Miles in the first place (who turns out to have been a very real person from Cooper's actual real life, who he met when he was 17 and George was 13, and who he developed a debilitating chaste love for that was never returned, with Cooper admitting that all the books in this series have been his attempt to try to capture those fleeting, intense kind of emotions that we only experience as teens when we fall in love for the very first time). That stuff is fascinating, and it's half-shame and half-tragedy that he felt the need (or perhaps the Corporate Machine around him felt the need) to surround this fascinating stuff with 150 pages of "The Poor Man's Jean Genet" material, which has long lost its shtick by this point in the series. Only one more book to go, blessedly, until I'm finally finished, 2000's Period (published just before the events of September 11th hammered the final nail into the coffin of the New Transgressive movement for good), so as always keep your eye out for that review in another few days.
March 10, 2011
"Déjà vu," Luke muttered. He'd seen Scott reenter the room in that exact way before. Time was he'd have figured such thoughts were just fallout from LSD, DMT, Ecstasy. . . . Now he knew they were magical.
Truth is dry. You'll know the truth when everything in your world seems as if it's been cooked until nothing is left but the exact information that separates it from other things in the world.
I couldn't risk meeting his gaze for some reason. I sort of hate it when things get too obvious.
That's the thing. Without the imagination's elaborate input, dying's no different from breaking your leg.
In my memory of The Time Machine, which I haven't watched since late childhood at least, a man invents a contraption that allows him to travel through time. He ends up in a future society where everyone's young, white, blond, spacy, innocent, wearing a toga, and sporting a lame Dutch boy haircut. With the man's help, they overcome some sort of superstitious religious belief they'd adhered to unthinkingly. I think it involves them sacrificing themselves to the gods on their twenty-first birthday or something. To me it was just an amusing, dumb, inadvertently sexy idea. But memory's weird, and maybe the movie's point is that the time traveler's presence or knowledge or values or lack thereof inadvertently ruins something more beautiful than he could ever understand. God, I hope not.
Love's weird, like I said. Maybe it's sort of like those undetectable gas-heater leaks that asphixiate random families in their sleep.
Truth is dry. You'll know the truth when everything in your world seems as if it's been cooked until nothing is left but the exact information that separates it from other things in the world.
I couldn't risk meeting his gaze for some reason. I sort of hate it when things get too obvious.
That's the thing. Without the imagination's elaborate input, dying's no different from breaking your leg.
In my memory of The Time Machine, which I haven't watched since late childhood at least, a man invents a contraption that allows him to travel through time. He ends up in a future society where everyone's young, white, blond, spacy, innocent, wearing a toga, and sporting a lame Dutch boy haircut. With the man's help, they overcome some sort of superstitious religious belief they'd adhered to unthinkingly. I think it involves them sacrificing themselves to the gods on their twenty-first birthday or something. To me it was just an amusing, dumb, inadvertently sexy idea. But memory's weird, and maybe the movie's point is that the time traveler's presence or knowledge or values or lack thereof inadvertently ruins something more beautiful than he could ever understand. God, I hope not.
Love's weird, like I said. Maybe it's sort of like those undetectable gas-heater leaks that asphixiate random families in their sleep.
October 13, 2010
The skin on Luke's face was a fog. Scott could see, or almost see, his friend's skull or, more specifically, that curious object which certain historical types labeled "the skull." It was more like a pkhw . . . Words failed Scott. A filament? But weren't words too complex to manipulate properly? Luke, for instance, meant nothing compared to the word "Luke," because it defined a million people named Luke. Or take "love." "Love" was the world's favorite word. But it was also a lie that human beings made up to avoid actual knowledge, which was itself a lie. Or "cancer." "Cancer" was a word that encapsulated a thought which had never reached clarity, which was why the disease was incurable. If Scott could think clearly from morning till night every day of his life, he would never get cancer. Oh, my God. It was so fucking simple. No, it was.
December 17, 2021
How is Dennis Cooper’s writing so unbelievably good? We may never know the answer, but one hardly needs to when the books are so rewarding in and of themselves. Guide is one of his absolute best: on par with Try and The Sluts as definitive evidence of his literary wizardry. The penultimate volume in the epic George Miles Cycle, it provides the clearest articulation of the novels’ core themes: the dance between love and obsession, sex and death, intimacy and loneliness, fantasy and reality. It broke my heart, scared me half to death, made me laugh, stimulated my mind, occasionally turned me on, and overall had me completely spellbound for its entire length. What more could you ask?
Reread from December 10th to 17th, 2021: possibly my favorite novel from (certainly) my favorite writer.
Reread from December 10th to 17th, 2021: possibly my favorite novel from (certainly) my favorite writer.
Read
December 1, 2023Far and away the tamest of all Cooper books I’ve read, and for the position it takes up on the cycle, I think it fits.
This novel sees Cooper focus more intently upon the links between the characters, their wants, desires, and obsessions, and how these relationships play off of one another. They come across as far more grey when compared to previous instalments, as they’re still broken and lost, as well as noticeably hurtful and cruel, but they gave their own aims and goals in certain aspects. This is not to say those goals are even touching on acceptable, but the numbing effect of especially “Closer” and “Frisk” does not apply to the same heated level here.
Perhaps reading this amount of Cooper in such a short period of time has numbed me to the prevalent numbness. I may have been Cooperised. Who knows.
This novel sees Cooper focus more intently upon the links between the characters, their wants, desires, and obsessions, and how these relationships play off of one another. They come across as far more grey when compared to previous instalments, as they’re still broken and lost, as well as noticeably hurtful and cruel, but they gave their own aims and goals in certain aspects. This is not to say those goals are even touching on acceptable, but the numbing effect of especially “Closer” and “Frisk” does not apply to the same heated level here.
Perhaps reading this amount of Cooper in such a short period of time has numbed me to the prevalent numbness. I may have been Cooperised. Who knows.
February 21, 2022
No one else who's work I've come across has detailed and made examples of the subliminal dread I feel that I find almost impossible to describe in verbal language quite like Dennis Cooper's. Just touching on really abstract things like the sheer inaccessibility of me to myself even, let alone others. Somehow in the extreme nihilism and death theres a euphoric relief of the absolute piss nothingness of everything. You can pretty much forget about me.
September 1, 2025
5✩
— I wish the real me and the secretive me were united. I wish I could speak in one adequate, coherent voice and make sense. Or should I say, if I were a sane person that's what I'd wish for. But divided in two as I am, everything's subject to compromise.
— I hear the microwave ping in my kitchen. Because Luke must have caused it, it sounds like God, I swear.
— The way things have worked themselves out, Luke will always be tantalizingly separate from me. He'll never dissolve into all my imaginative bullshit. Whatever happens to me from now on, good or bad, he'll be safe. That's love, right? Anyway, that's love to me.
— But l'm organized in this particular way for a reason, I guess. Maybe I'm sort of like one of those jailed child molesters who practically beg not to be given parole. They'd rather lie in a cell jerking off with a copy of Bop magazine than live a celibate life among evil temptations. It's better for all if I stay locked in here. I.e., friendly and removed on the surface, but secretly lost in impossible thoughts and addicted to putting my weird fantasies into sadly inadequate words.
— I've always held myself back. I mean, my whole life. I keep seeking out people like George, hoping the mixture of my fascination with them and their need for attention will instigate an occasion through which I could go all the way. I.e., cross-fade myself into evil, insanity, magic? But when and if the bait does appear, I can't accept it, I'm not exactly sure why. Instead, I've made myself into the best friend, caretaker, fuck partner, archivist, and/or beloved of the beautiful and insane. I know the term "insanity" is vague and outdated. All I'm trying to say is, I have no idea what I'm after. I just know how it looks on the surface. Or maybe I can't quite describe what I'm after, except superficially. Maybe somebody out there can help me. Maybe Luke will. I wish.
— It's all come to nothing, I'm sure. You can basically forget us.
— I wish the real me and the secretive me were united. I wish I could speak in one adequate, coherent voice and make sense. Or should I say, if I were a sane person that's what I'd wish for. But divided in two as I am, everything's subject to compromise.
— I hear the microwave ping in my kitchen. Because Luke must have caused it, it sounds like God, I swear.
— The way things have worked themselves out, Luke will always be tantalizingly separate from me. He'll never dissolve into all my imaginative bullshit. Whatever happens to me from now on, good or bad, he'll be safe. That's love, right? Anyway, that's love to me.
— But l'm organized in this particular way for a reason, I guess. Maybe I'm sort of like one of those jailed child molesters who practically beg not to be given parole. They'd rather lie in a cell jerking off with a copy of Bop magazine than live a celibate life among evil temptations. It's better for all if I stay locked in here. I.e., friendly and removed on the surface, but secretly lost in impossible thoughts and addicted to putting my weird fantasies into sadly inadequate words.
— I've always held myself back. I mean, my whole life. I keep seeking out people like George, hoping the mixture of my fascination with them and their need for attention will instigate an occasion through which I could go all the way. I.e., cross-fade myself into evil, insanity, magic? But when and if the bait does appear, I can't accept it, I'm not exactly sure why. Instead, I've made myself into the best friend, caretaker, fuck partner, archivist, and/or beloved of the beautiful and insane. I know the term "insanity" is vague and outdated. All I'm trying to say is, I have no idea what I'm after. I just know how it looks on the surface. Or maybe I can't quite describe what I'm after, except superficially. Maybe somebody out there can help me. Maybe Luke will. I wish.
— It's all come to nothing, I'm sure. You can basically forget us.
October 12, 2022
"It'll all come to nothing, I'm sure. You can basically forget us"
okay, im a George Miles Cycle fan. however, i think this is the weakest of the first 4 novels. the metafiction elements are cool, but they outstrip the violence, characters, and relationships. as a result, the novel never really comes together. all the different characters are less an intricate web and more just.. an array? at least, none of them are as memorable as the characters in the past novels. however, some of the chapters, particularly the "spin" article work as incredibly rich pieces of short-fiction, at the expense of the whole novel gelling. idk though, it's still dennis cooper so it stumbles into moments of clarity, genius, etc., though maybe not as many times as he'd have liked it to
okay, im a George Miles Cycle fan. however, i think this is the weakest of the first 4 novels. the metafiction elements are cool, but they outstrip the violence, characters, and relationships. as a result, the novel never really comes together. all the different characters are less an intricate web and more just.. an array? at least, none of them are as memorable as the characters in the past novels. however, some of the chapters, particularly the "spin" article work as incredibly rich pieces of short-fiction, at the expense of the whole novel gelling. idk though, it's still dennis cooper so it stumbles into moments of clarity, genius, etc., though maybe not as many times as he'd have liked it to
March 4, 2025
“it’ll all come to nothing, i’m sure. you can basically forget us”
August 10, 2025
3.5/5 not sure how I feel about this one, so tender at some points tho. never before this have I had to put a book down because I felt like puking.
October 24, 2024
this is my favorite book in the george miles cycle. sometimes i get on the verge of recommending this book because it's the most tame and accessible book in the series (period i think is actually the tamest book in the series but it is the least accessible by far) but then i remember the dwarf murder scene and mason and the fourteen year old and the blur rape scene and also just how fucking weird dennis the narrator is. (edit to add: and that one scene with chris towards the beginning, you know what scene i'm talking about).
honestly, i think a lot of the reason why my two favorite books in the george miles cycle are frisk and guide because of dennis the narrator. to this date the hold dennis the narrator has over me is completely incomphrensible to me. normally, i'm decent at putting why a book does or does not work for me into words, but whenever i talk about the hold this book- or, quite frankly, any of the george miles cycle- has over me i cannot say anything of substance. maybe it's because even i don't want to confront why exactly this book- this series as a whole- makes the worms in my brain dance the way they do when i read them.
but going back to dennis the narrator, i do think he's a big reason why the george miles cycle is so divisive as a whole, because for a lot of people his narrative voice will absolutely not work at all. it's very distinct and also original- to date i've never encountered another author whose voice is anything close to dennis'. i don't even know how to describe his narrative voice- maybe it's the bouncing between the serious analysis he does of the social situations he finds himself in or his own weird psyche and him saying or doing something completely out of pocket or the book's- and him as a narrator's- strong sense of self-awareness. he's also very funny, and i don't think people talk about the humor of this series as a whole enough but especially in the books narrated by himself. like frisk and guide have some parts that make me audibly laugh but in a very distinct way. in frisk, it's a lot of nervous laughter, because frisk is a book designed to set you on edge and make you uncomfortable from the minute you open the book, but in guide it's more genuine, i think at least. like when he's talking about his relationship with paul and the weird collection he formed in paul's honor and the entire time you're reading this you're like "what the fuck dennis" and he's recounting it like it's normal behavior and then at the end he hits you with the "i should really throw that away" and that comedic self-awareness is enough to tip me over the edge.
a lot of that i think also has to do with tone, too. guide has a very flat tone, and despite how close dennis the narrator is to his subject matter he still feels distant enough that you never know quite how he feels about anything and about how you feel about him. he has this remarkable ability to remove himself from even things he's deeply entrenched in and the fact that i like distant, observer-type narrators is i think a big reason why i love this series so much but i also think that distance is one of the reasons why this series doesn't gel with some people (i mean, besides the obvious).
describing the plot of guide is impossible, and that's because there is no plot. this book is the definition of "no plot just vibes" which also explains a lot about why i love it. i can, however, see that testing the patience of a lot of readers. like for instance, there's a part of the book where dennis makes himself a cup of coffee and takes a moment to tell us about his favorite coffee cup and i feel like there's two reactions to that part, there's the "that's a cool cup, dennis" reaction which was mine and then there's the "what the fuck does that have anything to do with anything" reaction and if you have the second reaction you're going to have a bad time with this series and also dennis cooper as a whole because his usual writing style is this wonderfully psychotic blend of too much and not enough information. he'll tell you about his favorite cup or whatever, but then leave certain major pieces of information just hanging without explanation or he'll analyze himself or someone else to a certain point and then stop short of that final stretch. there's never any pay-off, this is not an "a little life" esque trauma novel where dennis the narrator (or any of the characters, really) reveals that he was molested or whatever and that's why he's so obsessed with sex and death and whatever, which i think adds to the unsatisfication that some people might feel with these books. we don't know why dennis the narrator acts the way he does. he never goes to therapy and comes out with a diagnosis attached- or if he did, he doesn't feel compelled to share that with the reader-, he never unlocks hidden memories, he just is. he's careful to never let the reader too in, and i can see why that's a frustrating character to some but to me it's very relatable because that's how i am.
anyway, great book, love it, 10/10, don't read it.
honestly, i think a lot of the reason why my two favorite books in the george miles cycle are frisk and guide because of dennis the narrator. to this date the hold dennis the narrator has over me is completely incomphrensible to me. normally, i'm decent at putting why a book does or does not work for me into words, but whenever i talk about the hold this book- or, quite frankly, any of the george miles cycle- has over me i cannot say anything of substance. maybe it's because even i don't want to confront why exactly this book- this series as a whole- makes the worms in my brain dance the way they do when i read them.
but going back to dennis the narrator, i do think he's a big reason why the george miles cycle is so divisive as a whole, because for a lot of people his narrative voice will absolutely not work at all. it's very distinct and also original- to date i've never encountered another author whose voice is anything close to dennis'. i don't even know how to describe his narrative voice- maybe it's the bouncing between the serious analysis he does of the social situations he finds himself in or his own weird psyche and him saying or doing something completely out of pocket or the book's- and him as a narrator's- strong sense of self-awareness. he's also very funny, and i don't think people talk about the humor of this series as a whole enough but especially in the books narrated by himself. like frisk and guide have some parts that make me audibly laugh but in a very distinct way. in frisk, it's a lot of nervous laughter, because frisk is a book designed to set you on edge and make you uncomfortable from the minute you open the book, but in guide it's more genuine, i think at least. like when he's talking about his relationship with paul and the weird collection he formed in paul's honor and the entire time you're reading this you're like "what the fuck dennis" and he's recounting it like it's normal behavior and then at the end he hits you with the "i should really throw that away" and that comedic self-awareness is enough to tip me over the edge.
a lot of that i think also has to do with tone, too. guide has a very flat tone, and despite how close dennis the narrator is to his subject matter he still feels distant enough that you never know quite how he feels about anything and about how you feel about him. he has this remarkable ability to remove himself from even things he's deeply entrenched in and the fact that i like distant, observer-type narrators is i think a big reason why i love this series so much but i also think that distance is one of the reasons why this series doesn't gel with some people (i mean, besides the obvious).
describing the plot of guide is impossible, and that's because there is no plot. this book is the definition of "no plot just vibes" which also explains a lot about why i love it. i can, however, see that testing the patience of a lot of readers. like for instance, there's a part of the book where dennis makes himself a cup of coffee and takes a moment to tell us about his favorite coffee cup and i feel like there's two reactions to that part, there's the "that's a cool cup, dennis" reaction which was mine and then there's the "what the fuck does that have anything to do with anything" reaction and if you have the second reaction you're going to have a bad time with this series and also dennis cooper as a whole because his usual writing style is this wonderfully psychotic blend of too much and not enough information. he'll tell you about his favorite cup or whatever, but then leave certain major pieces of information just hanging without explanation or he'll analyze himself or someone else to a certain point and then stop short of that final stretch. there's never any pay-off, this is not an "a little life" esque trauma novel where dennis the narrator (or any of the characters, really) reveals that he was molested or whatever and that's why he's so obsessed with sex and death and whatever, which i think adds to the unsatisfication that some people might feel with these books. we don't know why dennis the narrator acts the way he does. he never goes to therapy and comes out with a diagnosis attached- or if he did, he doesn't feel compelled to share that with the reader-, he never unlocks hidden memories, he just is. he's careful to never let the reader too in, and i can see why that's a frustrating character to some but to me it's very relatable because that's how i am.
anyway, great book, love it, 10/10, don't read it.
April 14, 2024
Hazy, prose that slowlt deconstructs and falls apart. Concise constructed crosscutting falling and falling down to cutting midsentence, fantasy--reality, reconciliation, speaking together with most notably Frisk (cooper is a characyer in both), where Frisk construcrs and deconstructs the image of violence amd fantasy. Guide specifically deals with amd reconciles the difference between the two, feeling like some strange inbetween of Trys humanesque feel and the more analytical tone of Coopers other works. Gutpunch of a novel like Coopers other works.
September 18, 2025
Bad vibes.
March 27, 2012
I read Guide in one sitting at the Berkeley Library feeling a little bit guilty, like the library would collapse upon my head if Berkeley's famously tolerant liberal parent population knew what was going on.
Guide is only the third or fourth of my Cooper explorations. It does not invoke the same level of oh-shit what-the-fuck-am-i-reading-omgNO-fist-rape-death-trip inspired panic as Ugly Man, which so far is my favorite for its florid visuals and DC's mastery of short prose form, but it does touch on the same themes and offers the reader a more thorough rumination on the taboos that Cooper's work flirts and is fascinated with. Guide is a very apt title, I think.
Since this is a very brief space for comments, I'll just note some things I really liked:
1. Lyrical descriptions of butts mixed with whatever dude-type dialogue. I think that perhaps this is an extension of the constant tension between literary novel and trash that Guide explores. One minute it's Keats, the next minute lo-budget gore, then fairy tale.
2. Troubled junky boys as sleeping beauties. I had always had a prejudice against my friends on too many opiates because they were hard to communicate with, annoyingly inward and consumed with narcissism. I think that seeing a representation framed from a different point of view was refreshing and very liberating.
3. Collapsing erotics. It would seem that though Guide's characters we're being offered a discussion of how materialism, enlightenment aesthetics, the history of love, and a more nihilistic/bestial approaches to our environment constitute modern attitudes. Whatever.
Guide is only the third or fourth of my Cooper explorations. It does not invoke the same level of oh-shit what-the-fuck-am-i-reading-omgNO-fist-rape-death-trip inspired panic as Ugly Man, which so far is my favorite for its florid visuals and DC's mastery of short prose form, but it does touch on the same themes and offers the reader a more thorough rumination on the taboos that Cooper's work flirts and is fascinated with. Guide is a very apt title, I think.
Since this is a very brief space for comments, I'll just note some things I really liked:
1. Lyrical descriptions of butts mixed with whatever dude-type dialogue. I think that perhaps this is an extension of the constant tension between literary novel and trash that Guide explores. One minute it's Keats, the next minute lo-budget gore, then fairy tale.
2. Troubled junky boys as sleeping beauties. I had always had a prejudice against my friends on too many opiates because they were hard to communicate with, annoyingly inward and consumed with narcissism. I think that seeing a representation framed from a different point of view was refreshing and very liberating.
3. Collapsing erotics. It would seem that though Guide's characters we're being offered a discussion of how materialism, enlightenment aesthetics, the history of love, and a more nihilistic/bestial approaches to our environment constitute modern attitudes. Whatever.
June 25, 2025
Öm och vacker i all sin svärta. Förvirrade pojkar som vill uttrycka sig men inte har något utlopp för sina känslor. Fantasi och verklighet, köttslig åtrå och besatthet kolliderar med mänsklig, själslig, kärlek på ett djupare plan, bortom fasaden. Dennis Cooper blottar sig för första gången. Visst, han var även med i sin tidigare bok Frisk, men det var inte han, det var en fantasiversion, ännu en fasad. En av de mest kalla och mörka författarna genom tiderna visar mer värme än någonsin tidigare, den är inte längre gömd, den har klösts och grävts ut, nu är den blottad och öppen. Något av det mest välskrivna och känslomässigt laddade jag upplevt på länge, George Miles Cykeln kan mycket väl vara en av de mest otroliga litterära verk som någonsin gjorts. Otroligt snyggt rakt igenom. Jag börjar uppskatta frisk nu i efterhand.
”You can basically forget us”
REREAD 25/6-25: har inte mycket att tillägga utom WOW! Nästan ännu bättre än jag mindes den. Dennis Coopers mästerverk? Förmodligen. Otroligt vacker odyssé i en värld där kärleken förvirras bort in i sex och våld, och där verkligheten och det fiktiva våldtar varandra. En av mina absoluta favoritböcker någonsin. WOW IGEN!
”You can basically forget us”
REREAD 25/6-25: har inte mycket att tillägga utom WOW! Nästan ännu bättre än jag mindes den. Dennis Coopers mästerverk? Förmodligen. Otroligt vacker odyssé i en värld där kärleken förvirras bort in i sex och våld, och där verkligheten och det fiktiva våldtar varandra. En av mina absoluta favoritböcker någonsin. WOW IGEN!
August 12, 2023
Being a Dennis Cooper fan is funny, because on the surface level his plots are elusive, almost incidental, and if you want to talk about him to the non-initiated you sound insane. Case in point - Guide is a beautiful rumination about love. This is partly expressed through the act of a midget murdering a junkie and rummaging around his asshole. Did I already say it was beautiful?
May 31, 2024
Dennis Cooper makes a convincing case for moral depravity in art.
December 16, 2023
on being so broken you’re not sure you can be put back together again
January 7, 2026
“He’s building imaginary lovers, friends, sons, younger brothers, slaves, gods. It’s a vaguely creepy thing, and it means a fucking ton to him”
My favourite (so far) of the George Miles cycle and the first text where I'm really impressed by Cooper's prose. At first I wasn't sure if I was just grasping at something to find good (to justify to myself why I'm reading this author?) — namely that the sentences are written and structured in a way that feels incredibly perceptive and genius in construction.
I'm not sure if it tops The Sluts for me (maybe!), but it's certainly much more powerful and "moving" — if that's the right word.
It's also the first book in the George Miles cycle (4 out of 5) where everything starts to make sense— his experimental use of narrative voice, the recurring obsessions, the psychoaffective and violent dimensions of authorship. I think Cooper is one of the only authors I've read (granted, that isn't very many) who thinks about the ethics of writing in a way that feels both mind-blowingly new and yet so right. But in no way does he moralise or prescribing any kind of moral program! That's what makes it so good I think. The writing here feels less gratuitous than some of the previous texts, but at the same time it sheds light on their gratuitousness.
What's the difference between being a pornographer or a writer? What violence do they both share? There's a strong, implicit analogy between writing and sexual violence. What is to be done with the violence inside us? Once again, Cooper seems to convince me that fiction — in general!— is perverted.
I know I'm not selling this, but it's def worth a read. I'm excited to get through the rest of the cycle — even though the works aren't continuous, it's like I'm following a second-order plot of how Cooper is consciously working through his psychic life.
Loved the indie rock soundtrack to the whole thing too. Listened to a lot of Pavement while reading this.
Maybe even a 4.5/5. Hard to tell because I had a bit of a break in the middle of reading it.
My favourite (so far) of the George Miles cycle and the first text where I'm really impressed by Cooper's prose. At first I wasn't sure if I was just grasping at something to find good (to justify to myself why I'm reading this author?) — namely that the sentences are written and structured in a way that feels incredibly perceptive and genius in construction.
"The boy was hunched over, playing a solo. He meant every predictable note."
I'm not sure if it tops The Sluts for me (maybe!), but it's certainly much more powerful and "moving" — if that's the right word.
It's also the first book in the George Miles cycle (4 out of 5) where everything starts to make sense— his experimental use of narrative voice, the recurring obsessions, the psychoaffective and violent dimensions of authorship. I think Cooper is one of the only authors I've read (granted, that isn't very many) who thinks about the ethics of writing in a way that feels both mind-blowingly new and yet so right. But in no way does he moralise or prescribing any kind of moral program! That's what makes it so good I think. The writing here feels less gratuitous than some of the previous texts, but at the same time it sheds light on their gratuitousness.
What's the difference between being a pornographer or a writer? What violence do they both share? There's a strong, implicit analogy between writing and sexual violence. What is to be done with the violence inside us? Once again, Cooper seems to convince me that fiction — in general!— is perverted.
“Maybe I’m sort of like one of those jailed child molesters who practically beg not to be given parole. They’d rather lie in a cell jerking off with a copy of Bop magazine than live a celibate life among evil temptations. It’s better for all if I stay locked in here. I.e., friendly and removed on the surface, but secretly lost in impossible thoughts and addicted to putting my weird fantasies into sadly inadequate words.”
I know I'm not selling this, but it's def worth a read. I'm excited to get through the rest of the cycle — even though the works aren't continuous, it's like I'm following a second-order plot of how Cooper is consciously working through his psychic life.
Loved the indie rock soundtrack to the whole thing too. Listened to a lot of Pavement while reading this.
Maybe even a 4.5/5. Hard to tell because I had a bit of a break in the middle of reading it.
October 28, 2023
3.5 ⭐️ rounded up?
this was very interesting. our narrator is cooper himself, or some version of him. as someone who as of right now doesn’t know much about cooper’s history, you could’ve told me this was autobiographical and i would’ve almost believed you.
as someone who lives on a whole other continent and was born approximately one to two decades after the time period this is set in, the world described in this book could not be further from my personal reality, or even my understanding. exactly that is what makes it’s so tantalising — this world of tragedy and depravity, of art and drugs, of music i have never heard before and will likely never attempt to find.
especially the fact that this book is narrated by cooper or a character wearing his name makes it so intriguing. how much of what he’s written here is real? how much of it reflects his personal thoughts, opinions, feelings, memories? especially towards the end it almost feels like an increasing blur between the author and the character, and the bits describing his supposed experiences and relationship with george miles was particularly noteworthy, to me at least.
in the context in the rest of the series, i’d say this book is by far the least graphic, in reference to sexual and non-sexual violence, and the most artistic in its language and stylistic aspects. i had a bit of a hard time finding my way around the narrative and the characters at first, but once you’ve gotten over this all-knowing-but-not-really central character, it’s quite easy to follow, and definitely draws you in until you can’t put it down anymore.
i think i could say more, but i’m not pretentious enough yet to write a fleshed out analysis in the goodreads review section, so i’ll leave it at that.
only one book left in the george miles cycle, and i’m already kind of grieving the end of this reading experience. i’ll most certainly be going through as much of cooper’s bibliography as i can over the next few weeks.
this was very interesting. our narrator is cooper himself, or some version of him. as someone who as of right now doesn’t know much about cooper’s history, you could’ve told me this was autobiographical and i would’ve almost believed you.
as someone who lives on a whole other continent and was born approximately one to two decades after the time period this is set in, the world described in this book could not be further from my personal reality, or even my understanding. exactly that is what makes it’s so tantalising — this world of tragedy and depravity, of art and drugs, of music i have never heard before and will likely never attempt to find.
especially the fact that this book is narrated by cooper or a character wearing his name makes it so intriguing. how much of what he’s written here is real? how much of it reflects his personal thoughts, opinions, feelings, memories? especially towards the end it almost feels like an increasing blur between the author and the character, and the bits describing his supposed experiences and relationship with george miles was particularly noteworthy, to me at least.
in the context in the rest of the series, i’d say this book is by far the least graphic, in reference to sexual and non-sexual violence, and the most artistic in its language and stylistic aspects. i had a bit of a hard time finding my way around the narrative and the characters at first, but once you’ve gotten over this all-knowing-but-not-really central character, it’s quite easy to follow, and definitely draws you in until you can’t put it down anymore.
i think i could say more, but i’m not pretentious enough yet to write a fleshed out analysis in the goodreads review section, so i’ll leave it at that.
only one book left in the george miles cycle, and i’m already kind of grieving the end of this reading experience. i’ll most certainly be going through as much of cooper’s bibliography as i can over the next few weeks.
November 24, 2022
Why are all DC’s books clear fivers? Idk. Because “They’re all about serial murderers. And all the victims are boys. And all the boys look exactly like me.” Namely elfin, translucent, and pouty as fuck. Reading DC’s writing is like continuously cashing in wan sleaze tokens—an endless jackpot. ‘Guide’ is a bit more ‘steeped in its sadism’ relative to its 3 predecessors, though it’s no less of a totally spellbound nightmare vacation. It’s “complicatedly mellow”. Some muzzy acid fallout where the characters see each other as mere context or totally fucking everything—no in between.
Read best in an incense-laden room, flecked by candelabras, drown out in Guided by Voices. Period.
Read best in an incense-laden room, flecked by candelabras, drown out in Guided by Voices. Period.
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