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My Loose Thread
Following on from the stunning conclusion to his five-book cycle that was Period, Dennis Cooper reemerges with arguably his finest and most thought-provoking piece of writing.At the heart of the work is Larry, a teenager wrestling not only with his sexuality and the implications of a physical relationship with his younger brother but with the purpose and the reason to his existence. He is numb. Dead. Expression cannot contain reality. Yet . . .
As the book opens, Larry has been paid $500 by a senior high school student to kill a fellow pupil and retrieve the boy's notebook. It seems simple enough. However, once Larry ventures into the notebook, complications arise. Struck at once by both the beauty of articulation and the horror of its content, Larry longs for such an ability to communicate but feels powerless: is there a place for sincerity or concern, or indeed love?
My Loose Thread may share the anarchic sensibility of Cooper's earlier works and touch upon such themes as alienation, obsession, inarticulacy, longing, and frustration, but this is a new Cooper and signals exactly where he is heading as a novelist.
The writing is sparse, concise yet open, the consequence being that the reader falls into this world and is surrounded, submerged, and potentially overwhelmed by the text. My Loose Thread is a claustrophobic read and a harrowing piece of fiction that is all the more so for the gracefulness of the language.
As the book opens, Larry has been paid $500 by a senior high school student to kill a fellow pupil and retrieve the boy's notebook. It seems simple enough. However, once Larry ventures into the notebook, complications arise. Struck at once by both the beauty of articulation and the horror of its content, Larry longs for such an ability to communicate but feels powerless: is there a place for sincerity or concern, or indeed love?
My Loose Thread may share the anarchic sensibility of Cooper's earlier works and touch upon such themes as alienation, obsession, inarticulacy, longing, and frustration, but this is a new Cooper and signals exactly where he is heading as a novelist.
The writing is sparse, concise yet open, the consequence being that the reader falls into this world and is surrounded, submerged, and potentially overwhelmed by the text. My Loose Thread is a claustrophobic read and a harrowing piece of fiction that is all the more so for the gracefulness of the language.
121 pages, Hardcover
First published July 10, 2002
About the author
Dennis Cooper
108 books1,954 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 163 reviews
February 13, 2025
In his first novel after completing the George Miles Cycle (I'm still traumatized by Try, but somehow in a good way), it becomes particularly apparent why Cooper and Bret Easton Ellis are both considered members of the Blank Generation: In "My Loose Thread", alienation, detachment, sex and violence determine the experiences of a group of teenagers living in the shadow of the Columbine massacre. This could be a Larry Clark movie if Harmony Korine was a better psychological writer (sorry, Harmony, still love ya).
Our protagonist is teenage Larry, who is haunted by his (untrue) conviction that he killed a friend by punching him, when in fact, this friend later committed suicide - but unreliable narrator Larry, feeling numb to and alienated from his surroundings, has trouble keeping his psychological torment and reality apart. That's of course a typical Cooper theme, much like the fact that the teenagers he shows are neglected by cruel or incapable adults, in this case parents who are dying from cancer (Larry's dad) or drinking themselves to death (his mom). What's more unusual for this author is that he shows Larry struggling with his own sexual orientation, and connecting this confusion with the tendency towards violence - usually, Cooper (and Ellis!) show worlds in which people are just gay, period. Oh, and also, Larry has a sexual relationship with his brother and a girlfriend, and he agrees to help his sexual rival to kill a guy to collect money from a sexually confused Nazi. Dennis Cooper stuff, you know.
The text thrives on dialogue that focuses in on vagueness. Larry and his peers are confused, their communication is mostly a failed attempt to connect, as they are unsure about what they feel. Larry's hallucinatory accounts and his impulsive outbursts, his descriptions of the teenagers around him, the repression, confusion and self-hate paint an unsettling picture about the infliction of violence on the innocent and helpless - this is Cooper's take on school massacres. The stark sentences and the plot that for the longest time remains hidden behind Larry's angst and delusion make for a harrowing read that is, if you can take the intensity, smart and poetic in its very own way.
You can listen to the podcast gang discuss the German translation Mein loser Faden here: https://papierstaupodcast.de/podcast/...
Our protagonist is teenage Larry, who is haunted by his (untrue) conviction that he killed a friend by punching him, when in fact, this friend later committed suicide - but unreliable narrator Larry, feeling numb to and alienated from his surroundings, has trouble keeping his psychological torment and reality apart. That's of course a typical Cooper theme, much like the fact that the teenagers he shows are neglected by cruel or incapable adults, in this case parents who are dying from cancer (Larry's dad) or drinking themselves to death (his mom). What's more unusual for this author is that he shows Larry struggling with his own sexual orientation, and connecting this confusion with the tendency towards violence - usually, Cooper (and Ellis!) show worlds in which people are just gay, period. Oh, and also, Larry has a sexual relationship with his brother and a girlfriend, and he agrees to help his sexual rival to kill a guy to collect money from a sexually confused Nazi. Dennis Cooper stuff, you know.
The text thrives on dialogue that focuses in on vagueness. Larry and his peers are confused, their communication is mostly a failed attempt to connect, as they are unsure about what they feel. Larry's hallucinatory accounts and his impulsive outbursts, his descriptions of the teenagers around him, the repression, confusion and self-hate paint an unsettling picture about the infliction of violence on the innocent and helpless - this is Cooper's take on school massacres. The stark sentences and the plot that for the longest time remains hidden behind Larry's angst and delusion make for a harrowing read that is, if you can take the intensity, smart and poetic in its very own way.
You can listen to the podcast gang discuss the German translation Mein loser Faden here: https://papierstaupodcast.de/podcast/...
May 8, 2024
disturbing, the caprice and void flatness of youth and lack of empathetic affect turn this unreliable narrator into a maze of insecurities and the distinct lack of a future. cooper is skilled at mapping the ups and downs of the disaffected, the hopelessly self-involved hell of juvenescence and its overpowering pull of destruction. well worth a read into oblivion.
May 21, 2018
Repression has an ugly face, forcing urges into the psyche.
Larry loves a boy who loves his brother whom Larry loves. Murder, delusion, and lies ensue. Larry is confused.
Larry loves a boy who loves his brother whom Larry loves. Murder, delusion, and lies ensue. Larry is confused.
October 23, 2020
Extreme vagueness and disconnection. Nothing matters to no one and everyone is interchangeable. And maybe gay or something. Also, Columbine.
Very clever and original voice though, a reminder that culture can completely define and redefine the meaning of everything. Maybe what we think is the most horrific thing ever happens somewhere else, or in some other time, and nobody even cares. Which would be even more horrible, but it's so hidden beneath, in this case the deeply superficial, that it fails to register.
Fascinating and poignant. Creates a very deliberate effect that would have been unpleasant to read for any longer than 120 pages though--so I'm glad it knew when to stop!
Very clever and original voice though, a reminder that culture can completely define and redefine the meaning of everything. Maybe what we think is the most horrific thing ever happens somewhere else, or in some other time, and nobody even cares. Which would be even more horrible, but it's so hidden beneath, in this case the deeply superficial, that it fails to register.
Fascinating and poignant. Creates a very deliberate effect that would have been unpleasant to read for any longer than 120 pages though--so I'm glad it knew when to stop!
October 28, 2009
One of Dennis Cooper's most incredible works. Two gay brothers (one who accepts what he is, the other denies it) both fall in love with the same boy - a depressed teenager with no real capacity for love. The boys' rejection sends them into the arms of one another, fulfilling the sexual/physical desires they imagine having with their disturbed friend. The teen kills himself, which sends the brothers into confusion and insanity. Unbelievably sad, scary, and painful. Cooper is brutally honest in his depiction of gay teenage life, desire, and rejection - and all the psychological turmoil that can ensue. Cooper is a contemporary William S. Burroughs, holding back nothing - giving more than is perhaps consumable..
May 27, 2023
Twisted sentences etched on youthful skin; sex and despair entwined like their naked bodies; numbness given way to aggressiveness then the other way around; juvenile decay; elusive sex roles, fleeting, cruel urges; a never ending cycle of grief and desire; evil born from the ruins of a childhood; coming to terms with the black hole inside yourself; confusion bleeding through paper thin walls, there's nothing sacred about this house and the people living in it; like a queer Sophocles tragedy with modern sensibilities.
"Gilman looks at the stars. I mean the ones that are upside down and backwards and wavering a little on the pool. So I look at them too".
Edit: I'm bumping this one to a 4, this book was hurtful but in such a sensitive way, I've been reading Dworkin's Mercy and the subject of abuse is treated with brilliant nuance there, it inevitably reminded me of My Loose Thread (in this case from the abuser's perspective).
"Gilman looks at the stars. I mean the ones that are upside down and backwards and wavering a little on the pool. So I look at them too".
Edit: I'm bumping this one to a 4, this book was hurtful but in such a sensitive way, I've been reading Dworkin's Mercy and the subject of abuse is treated with brilliant nuance there, it inevitably reminded me of My Loose Thread (in this case from the abuser's perspective).
August 12, 2022
The sparsest expression of Dennis Cooper’s Bresson-influenced minimalist aesthetic, as well as his deepest and most unmediated foray into the troubled adolescent male psyche: none of the formal artifice or playful structuring of the George Miles Cycle to be found in this one, folks, just a direct and scary outpouring of fractured impressions from Larry’s fucked-up mind. Confusion is the dominating theme here, the principle not only of the obscure, recursive narrative drive and gaps in scene sequence, but of the constant and distressingly ambiguous destabilization of Larry’s interrelationships (brother or lover? straight or gay? guilty or not guilty? dead or alive?), reflected in his tortured syntax and the virtual interchangeability of bland boy names (Larry, Jim, Pete, Gilman, Will, Tran) and faceless figures. The only sure thing is death. This is all unbelievably frightening—probably the most frightening work in Cooper’s oeuvre, which is really saying something if you’ve read even one of his other novels—and, speaking from experience, I don’t recommend reading it before bed or if you’re having fits of insomnia (it wound up completely informing the texture of my nightmares), unless, like me, you’re into that sort of thing. Of course, codependent with the dread, this is also just extremely, painfully tragic, a tragedy rooted in inexpressible empathy for the suffering of this deeply mixed-up kid. In finishing this I’ve finished all of Dennis Cooper’s published novels, and while that makes me sad on some level, I’m gratified in the knowledge that I inadvertently ended on one of his very best.
February 1, 2016
Despite the extreme emotions (actually extreme numbness mixed with emotions), and continual extremes of plot movement and backstory, this is actually sort of straight-forward for Dennis Cooper. He includes a notebook within the story which you might expect to modify the reader's certainty of whose narrative they're actually reading, but that never really happens. Instead this all feels strangely unconceptual and direct. Any confusion here isn't generally structural or philosophic so much as just the muddled sensations of teen years (taken to notable extremes). I dunno, that's all well and good, but without more theoretical aparatuses in place, this reads more like a catalogue of dissociated disturbing actions, more like Less Than Zero than The Notebook, The Proof, and The third Lie, say. AND it seems to be written at least in part in response to one of the media hot button topics of its era, one which I've only really seen addresses effectively when way more oblique than this.
October 21, 2025
I have just purchased a copy of this novel and reread it in March 2024. I was going to write a new review but my feelings of love and admiration towards this book have not diminished, if anything they have increased. Great writing emerges from, but is not trapped by, the circumstances that inspired it. When I first read this novel and even later, reviewers couldn't get past the Columbine High School Shootings. They insisted on seeing the novel as not simply a response but a retelling or interpretation. In 2024 many readers will miss the few Columbine references and, if they identify them, will probably have to Goggle them and the Columbine story.
Columbine is history (sadly school shootings in the USA are not - but that is another story) Cooper is literature - great literature because it is written with passion and deep sensitivity. It is a great novel.
My original review is below:
Dennis Cooper is an author that you either love or hate - I love his writing and although his name has become a descriptive term for a particular type of writing - usually it is bandied about lazily and inaccurately by people who have not read Cooper and probably haven't read the book they are comparing to Coopers'- that involves teenage boys and sexual violence. That is so lazy and reductive it makes me want to scream. He has so much more to say. Those who treat him as pornography or cheap thrills or to find an easy target for moral superiority are simply part of the hypocrisy and stifling non culture that Cooper is railing against. Cooper's novels should shock, not because of under age sex but because his characters are trapped in a hopeless world without any depth or meaning. The sadness, despair and hopelessness is enough to make anyone cry.
I loved this novel/novella (I can never remember what is the difference between the two) and believe it it is one of his finest. If you like Cooper's writing then you can't miss this book.
By the way this is probably the third time I have read this title and it will repay reading again.
Columbine is history (sadly school shootings in the USA are not - but that is another story) Cooper is literature - great literature because it is written with passion and deep sensitivity. It is a great novel.
My original review is below:
Dennis Cooper is an author that you either love or hate - I love his writing and although his name has become a descriptive term for a particular type of writing - usually it is bandied about lazily and inaccurately by people who have not read Cooper and probably haven't read the book they are comparing to Coopers'- that involves teenage boys and sexual violence. That is so lazy and reductive it makes me want to scream. He has so much more to say. Those who treat him as pornography or cheap thrills or to find an easy target for moral superiority are simply part of the hypocrisy and stifling non culture that Cooper is railing against. Cooper's novels should shock, not because of under age sex but because his characters are trapped in a hopeless world without any depth or meaning. The sadness, despair and hopelessness is enough to make anyone cry.
I loved this novel/novella (I can never remember what is the difference between the two) and believe it it is one of his finest. If you like Cooper's writing then you can't miss this book.
By the way this is probably the third time I have read this title and it will repay reading again.
October 13, 2008
Jayita recommended this to me and I was knocked out by it. The back cover description would never have compelled me to pick this up, but I'm glad I did. (Though both Jayita and I noted that the emotional punch of the book lingered, so take that into account if you have an overactive imagination and propensity for insomnia.) The book is an incredible example of structure and pace being utilized to create parallels between the reader's experience of the book and the protagonist's experience of the world. Dark, dark, dark, but the craftsmanship cannot be denied.
October 29, 2016
Inmensely powerful work that explores teenage depression, moral vacuity and the confusion of love, all set to the backdrop of a culture where violence is often the only way one can be heard.
January 31, 2021
supremely underrated dc imo
October 12, 2020
It’s hard to describe the effect of reading this...kind of like if you fired a bullet and didn’t protect your ears. There’s violence and rage, and a crushing sense of inevitability, and it’s muffled by the protagonist’s indirect language. You don’t quite grasp the implications as the bullet fires, but then almost as soon as it’s started this short read is over, and the ringing stops, and all that’s left is to survey the damage.
December 18, 2018
Wow what a sad, messed up little story. If this is the type of stuff I can expect from Dennis Cooper I'm gonna have to read all of his work.
January 26, 2022
unreal. painful.
January 25, 2026
⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2 Muy enfermo todo. La historia, que incluye incesto, violación, violencia extrema. La forma de narrar, párrafos cortos, oraciones precisas, elipsis ente párrafos. Grata lectura para estómagos no sensibles.
April 1, 2012
In My Loose Thread, Dennis Cooper peers through the eyes of a teen psychotic to paint a convincing portrait of contemporary high school as a limbo of repressed and confused sexuality, inhabited by teens experiencing various gray shades of depression and blood/drug/alcohol toxicity levels. It's not a novel to sit down and savor, but one that yanks you in, perhaps against your wishes. By the end, you no longer wonder how tragedies like Columbine happen, but why they don't happen more often.
The dissociating narrator of this disturbing tale is a convincing psychotic named Larry whose dad has debilitating cancer and whose mom is an alcoholic. Larry fears that he might be gay, and lashes out violently in moments of uncomfortable sexual ambiguity: "I just hit Pete, not that hard. It was either hit him, or turn gay. I think I was gay for a minute."
Larry has been sleeping with his brother Jim (but it's Jim who's gay, not him, Larry thinks); meanwhile, he has been hired by the school nazi, Gilman, to kill Bill, Jim's best friend. Gilman seems to draw people to him simply because his beliefs remain fairly constant, even if they are rancid. In an emotionally harrowing scene, a physically scarred, martyrlike Bill makes an impression on Larry with his honesty, both in person and in the journal notebook he's written, which Gilman wants destroyed. But Larry decides the notebook contains truth and that it should be burned because truth is what he and all his friends are most afraid of.
Cooper's novel reads a bit like a macabre after-school-special enactment of Wilhelm Reich's The Mass Psychology of Fascism, narrated in a flat free-verse style by a trailer park Holden Caulfield with serious rage issues. But My Loose Thread depicts an all-too-believable battlefield of teen insecurity where the characters' fear of their own sexuality and lack of ability to express affection drives them to grotesque acts of violence against innocent others: If they strike first, then maybe no one will find their soft underbelly.
The dissociating narrator of this disturbing tale is a convincing psychotic named Larry whose dad has debilitating cancer and whose mom is an alcoholic. Larry fears that he might be gay, and lashes out violently in moments of uncomfortable sexual ambiguity: "I just hit Pete, not that hard. It was either hit him, or turn gay. I think I was gay for a minute."
Larry has been sleeping with his brother Jim (but it's Jim who's gay, not him, Larry thinks); meanwhile, he has been hired by the school nazi, Gilman, to kill Bill, Jim's best friend. Gilman seems to draw people to him simply because his beliefs remain fairly constant, even if they are rancid. In an emotionally harrowing scene, a physically scarred, martyrlike Bill makes an impression on Larry with his honesty, both in person and in the journal notebook he's written, which Gilman wants destroyed. But Larry decides the notebook contains truth and that it should be burned because truth is what he and all his friends are most afraid of.
Cooper's novel reads a bit like a macabre after-school-special enactment of Wilhelm Reich's The Mass Psychology of Fascism, narrated in a flat free-verse style by a trailer park Holden Caulfield with serious rage issues. But My Loose Thread depicts an all-too-believable battlefield of teen insecurity where the characters' fear of their own sexuality and lack of ability to express affection drives them to grotesque acts of violence against innocent others: If they strike first, then maybe no one will find their soft underbelly.
February 26, 2015
Gregg Araki style teen nihilism featuring an endless scorecard of kids murdered just so our hero could protect his flagging masculinity.
The symbolism of a journal full of secrets in a backpack was straight out of Creative Writing 101, it wasn't terribly clever.
Our hero Larry was emotionally constipated, taking credit for a murder he assumed he committed, crying every two and a half pages, and incapable of differentiating between love and lust. Yes, teenagers can be inarticulate and confused but Larry was an imbecile!
Plus, there were more bodies dropping dead before the final curtain fell than a Shakespearean tragedy. This book should be called Shamlet.
The symbolism of a journal full of secrets in a backpack was straight out of Creative Writing 101, it wasn't terribly clever.
Our hero Larry was emotionally constipated, taking credit for a murder he assumed he committed, crying every two and a half pages, and incapable of differentiating between love and lust. Yes, teenagers can be inarticulate and confused but Larry was an imbecile!
Plus, there were more bodies dropping dead before the final curtain fell than a Shakespearean tragedy. This book should be called Shamlet.
January 20, 2016
Dennis Cooper novels are a bit like anal sex. Hard to get into at first but then open and enjoyable. However, this novel was just painful. After hearing lots of positive things I was really excited to read it but I was just disappointed from beginning to end. The plot was underdeveloped, the characters even more so, it just didn't go anywhere. "I'm not gay" was basically the plot. Loved a lot of his other works but this was awful. Sorry, Coops.
Read
December 28, 2023this was the last of dennis cooper's fiction i had left/wanted to read and i was admittedly dragging my feet because i didn't want to read anything about school shootings but as usual my main man came through with an extremely intense mangled portrait of being a teenager
— "I think that fantasy is the truth, which is why it won't happen, and no one ever comes out."
— "I think that fantasy is the truth, which is why it won't happen, and no one ever comes out."
September 12, 2020
"The notebook's in my trunk, but Pete agreed to say it got burned. Either that, or I'll tell everyone that Pete's gay. So he's pissed off, and saying how I'm the one who's gay and insane and a liar. Then we get to Gilman's house. His bedroom's painted black, and has some chairs for his Nazi group meetings. I went to one, but couldn't make up my mind. There's a poster of Harris and Kliebald, the two Columbine guys. Gilman made it in Photoshop, and put the words 'Coming Soon' across the top so his parents would think they're a rock band. They're his heroes, and that's part of my problem. Of all the guys who shot other guys at their high schools back then, they're so boring."
My first Cooper, glad I finally read him. Almost as if The Lime Twig was written by Jean Genet. Great place to start with him. Will definitely read more.
My first Cooper, glad I finally read him. Almost as if The Lime Twig was written by Jean Genet. Great place to start with him. Will definitely read more.
March 2, 2026
4.5 stars. Fellas, is it gay to have sex with your kid brother because you're both in love with the same guy? Also, gun violence. Insufferable and gladly suffered, this has the heightened-but-stunted emotional register that best evokes adolescence, plot placed between the staccato, sparse, dialog-first lines of scenes where the protagonist repeatedly bumps against the limit of his emotional capacity. More than 120 pages would be too much, and yet I'm putting the rest of Cooper's oeuvre on my TBR & this one on my list of books to reread. It really worked for me.
February 15, 2026
This almost reads like a script. It’s just a bunch of people talking and vague references to movement. I could barely understand what was going on half the time. The plot was interesting but it was executed so poorly :/
January 23, 2026
Confusing and disturbing, as always
August 30, 2026
"Pete got the job. But he asked me to help. I don't know the senior's name or what his problem is yet. I like the boy just enough to pretend like we're friends. He's not my thing, but he's an awful example of someone's, I guess. Two days ago, as a favor to me, Jude got drunk enough to seduce him. I pretended to pass out, then watched. It upset me so much that I decided to kill him already. So I guess it worked. She and I haven't talked about any of that, but it changed me. There are little behavioral things, I can tell. Like this afternoon. Before I took off, I told her she didn't love me enough. Then she said almost the same thing more angrily to me. After I left, I got upset about that. Maybe after I've killed him, I'll shoot myself in the head. That's different."
4.5
Like absolutely everything that Dennis Cooper writes, My Loose Thread is fucking tragic. It's disgusting and grotesque, and, it almost makes you wonder what a shotgun would taste like. As depressing as this book is, I don't think anything Cooper writes will ever traumatize me as much as the George Miles Cycle did, however, My Loose Thread comes very fucking close. In keeping with standard Cooper tradition, sex, violence and unbridled drug abuse make up most of the narrative. Unusually, for Cooper, however, My Loose Thread doesn't exist in a world where the characters are just, gay. In fact, what we get here, is an exploration into a character that is deeply struggling with their sexual identity, it's a very unusual, but welcome thing, to explore in a Cooper novel. My Loose Thread is a novel of vagueness and repression, the story thrives on, and relies on mostly dialogue.
Which makes reading My Loose Thread feel a little like staring into the void. This is some real bleak shit. It is such a disturbing and tortured novel, but, there's some real gorgeous, poetic, beautiful writing here. Personally, I'm biased when it comes to Dennis Cooper, I think that, he is an author who can do no wrong, and I also think that, he's an author who can write like no other, because, Cooper doesn't just write novels, he writes hellscapes that you'll be lucky to survive. My Loose Thread is a brutal, nasty, disgusting work of art, and it really makes you suffer for it. Perhaps this is one of Cooper's most brilliant works. Twisted and sickening, My Loose Thread will make you want to take several long showers after finishing it and also might make you want to skin yourself alive, there's just something so sad, and so upsetting about this one.
At the very best of times, Dennis Cooper novels lean towards the minimalist, his writing is always very stripped down, beautiful, enrapturing, but, bare - My Loose Thread feels like the sparsest thing that Cooper has ever written, it's so blunt and to the point... This is just such a cruel, horrific book, and, there's almost nothing here to remind us of the Cycle, all we really have are the eerie glimpses into the main character's fucked-up mind. Experiencing this book feels like you're getting your face grated off or your teeth drilled out. What Cooper has created here is a teenage dystopian nightmare of post Columbine depression, it's a savagely horrible beast of a novel, and I truly believe Cooper is the only author who would have pulled this off. Despite the content of this novel, it's elegant, even if it feels illegal to be reading something like this.
"Words used to interest me, but I guess he just wanted the love. So I pretended with him. I didn't know he loved Rand, and he was pretending with me. Maybe if I'd realized that, I wouldn't have pretended. Maybe Rand knew I would love him too much, and thought Jim was like him. I mean so depressed all the time he couldn't really love anyone. But Jim could, and I couldn't. I don't know what made us not love one another. I just know that what we did or didn't do in those days is what made me insane. I don't know about them. I think if I could write all that down, Jim would understand why I don't love him, if he cares. Then I could kill myself. But I'm sure it would only make him miss Rand, and want to kill himself again, so I won't."
4.5
Like absolutely everything that Dennis Cooper writes, My Loose Thread is fucking tragic. It's disgusting and grotesque, and, it almost makes you wonder what a shotgun would taste like. As depressing as this book is, I don't think anything Cooper writes will ever traumatize me as much as the George Miles Cycle did, however, My Loose Thread comes very fucking close. In keeping with standard Cooper tradition, sex, violence and unbridled drug abuse make up most of the narrative. Unusually, for Cooper, however, My Loose Thread doesn't exist in a world where the characters are just, gay. In fact, what we get here, is an exploration into a character that is deeply struggling with their sexual identity, it's a very unusual, but welcome thing, to explore in a Cooper novel. My Loose Thread is a novel of vagueness and repression, the story thrives on, and relies on mostly dialogue.
Which makes reading My Loose Thread feel a little like staring into the void. This is some real bleak shit. It is such a disturbing and tortured novel, but, there's some real gorgeous, poetic, beautiful writing here. Personally, I'm biased when it comes to Dennis Cooper, I think that, he is an author who can do no wrong, and I also think that, he's an author who can write like no other, because, Cooper doesn't just write novels, he writes hellscapes that you'll be lucky to survive. My Loose Thread is a brutal, nasty, disgusting work of art, and it really makes you suffer for it. Perhaps this is one of Cooper's most brilliant works. Twisted and sickening, My Loose Thread will make you want to take several long showers after finishing it and also might make you want to skin yourself alive, there's just something so sad, and so upsetting about this one.
"I'm in the cabin's livingroom with Pete. He's out of beer, and lying back on the couch all upset about that. First I climbed off Jim. Then Jude helped him stand up. I know I hit him harder than I hit the boy, but he can still talk to her. So I came out here and asked Pete what he was going to tell me those times if it wasn't that he loved me. That's what's been happening. He's still telling me he doesn't. I'm just not listening now because he's moved on to something gay that explains Gilman's thing with the boy. I don't care at this point. When I climbed off the boy, and walked into the woods, he wasn't dead yet. That's the thing. So Pete strangled him to death. The boy even begged Jude to stop Pete, but I guess she loved Pete and wouldn't. So I've been telling the truth and the world was the lie. Or it feels like that now. Maybe when I'm dead, I'll make sense. Or I'll destroy everyone who's alive and loved me like Rand did."
At the very best of times, Dennis Cooper novels lean towards the minimalist, his writing is always very stripped down, beautiful, enrapturing, but, bare - My Loose Thread feels like the sparsest thing that Cooper has ever written, it's so blunt and to the point... This is just such a cruel, horrific book, and, there's almost nothing here to remind us of the Cycle, all we really have are the eerie glimpses into the main character's fucked-up mind. Experiencing this book feels like you're getting your face grated off or your teeth drilled out. What Cooper has created here is a teenage dystopian nightmare of post Columbine depression, it's a savagely horrible beast of a novel, and I truly believe Cooper is the only author who would have pulled this off. Despite the content of this novel, it's elegant, even if it feels illegal to be reading something like this.
"Words used to interest me, but I guess he just wanted the love. So I pretended with him. I didn't know he loved Rand, and he was pretending with me. Maybe if I'd realized that, I wouldn't have pretended. Maybe Rand knew I would love him too much, and thought Jim was like him. I mean so depressed all the time he couldn't really love anyone. But Jim could, and I couldn't. I don't know what made us not love one another. I just know that what we did or didn't do in those days is what made me insane. I don't know about them. I think if I could write all that down, Jim would understand why I don't love him, if he cares. Then I could kill myself. But I'm sure it would only make him miss Rand, and want to kill himself again, so I won't."
February 23, 2025
Verwirrte Teenager zwischen Sexualität und Mord: Protagonist Larry soll im Auftrag eines Neonazis einem Mitschüler erledigen, hat jedoch Skrupel. Gleichzeitig macht ihm die (inzestuöse?) Beziehung zu seinem kleinen Bruder zu schaffen. Harter Tobak, erzählt in einem fast schon halluzinatorischem Ton, der in Kombination mit dem unzuverlässlichen Erzähler für eine alptraumhafte Atmosphäre sorgt. Cooper ist also wieder in seinem Element, allerdings blitzt hier sprachlich deutlich(er) der Lyriker durch, weshalb mich Die Schlampen unterm Strich mehr begeistern konnte.
Mehr zum Buch in unserer ausführlichen Besprechung @ Papierstau Podcast: #317: Perverse Perversitäten Deluxe
Mehr zum Buch in unserer ausführlichen Besprechung @ Papierstau Podcast: #317: Perverse Perversitäten Deluxe
November 28, 2018
Und gleich wieder High-School, diesmal aber völlig anders bei Noltes "Alff", sehr nah an den psychisch völlig zertstörten Protagonisten, größtenteils im Präsens verfasst, ein bedrückender Trip ins Innenleben emotionaler Verwahrlosung. Jeder Wunsch, jede Sehnsucht ist so weit weg wie die Sterne und hier bleibt nur Verwirrung, Missbrauch und Gewalt. So stell ich mir einen Haneke-Film über ein High-School Shooting vor. Bret Easton Ellis ist sicher neidisch.
February 13, 2024
Dennis Cooper writes novels like British playwrights wrote their plays during that same period.
In-yer-face theater speaks through its violence, its not realistic dialogues, its paper thin characters that at the same time don't feel without depth, they feel more as if what's happenning to them has stripped them from what makes them human. They're now just depressed, full of violent thoughts, violence guided to others and to themselves. Full of sexual thoughts, animal instincts lead them.They can't think or speak straight, but what is amazing is how they fight.
They fight for the day to day life, to keep moving, even with no understanding of what they're doing. Like they're stuck in mud and fighting to get out, desperate to get out. They can't think of who they harm along the way. The only thought is to keep moving forward.
This book and its characters have all these qualities. It is probably the only novel I physically could not continue reading at one point, I had to have a break.
I'm not sure if I would suggest anyone read this, it's pretty confusing among other things. I could not keep the story straight at first, I got confused about what's real and what's not later, I still don't know what Peter wanted to say to Larry, or if it's possible to burn a dead body in a fireplace. Also, it hits many weak spots, especially the characters of Larry's parents, tragic figures, dad being a disabled person and mom being his caretaker.
But it's definitely intertestingly written, super quick read, even with the heavy subject matter. The blurb gives you no idea of what's to come , something I appreciate in every such book I read. Dennis Cooper's style of writing is unique in a way I can't explain, other than the parallels I drew with in-yer-face theater earlier. I enjoyed it, and I'll also read the George Miles cycle soon.
---
Dennis Cooper novels I've read so far:
The Sluts (2004)
My Loose Thread (2002)
In-yer-face theater speaks through its violence, its not realistic dialogues, its paper thin characters that at the same time don't feel without depth, they feel more as if what's happenning to them has stripped them from what makes them human. They're now just depressed, full of violent thoughts, violence guided to others and to themselves. Full of sexual thoughts, animal instincts lead them.They can't think or speak straight, but what is amazing is how they fight.
They fight for the day to day life, to keep moving, even with no understanding of what they're doing. Like they're stuck in mud and fighting to get out, desperate to get out. They can't think of who they harm along the way. The only thought is to keep moving forward.
This book and its characters have all these qualities. It is probably the only novel I physically could not continue reading at one point, I had to have a break.
I'm not sure if I would suggest anyone read this, it's pretty confusing among other things. I could not keep the story straight at first, I got confused about what's real and what's not later, I still don't know what Peter wanted to say to Larry, or if it's possible to burn a dead body in a fireplace. Also, it hits many weak spots, especially the characters of Larry's parents, tragic figures, dad being a disabled person and mom being his caretaker.
But it's definitely intertestingly written, super quick read, even with the heavy subject matter. The blurb gives you no idea of what's to come , something I appreciate in every such book I read. Dennis Cooper's style of writing is unique in a way I can't explain, other than the parallels I drew with in-yer-face theater earlier. I enjoyed it, and I'll also read the George Miles cycle soon.
---
Dennis Cooper novels I've read so far:
The Sluts (2004)
My Loose Thread (2002)
August 1, 2022
TW: Rape, violence, language, bullying, sex workers, cancer, incest, school shooting, depression, suicide
*****SPOILERS*****
About the book:Larry is a teenager wrestling not only with his sexuality and the implications of a physical relationship with his younger brother, but with the very point of his existence. He is numb to almost all that surrounds him. As the book opens, Larry has been paid $500 by a senior to kill a fellow student and retrieve the boy's notebook. It seems simple enough. However, once Larry delves into the notebook, complications arise. An immensely powerful work that explores teenage depression, moral vacuity, and the confusion of love, this is a claustrophobic and harrowing piece of fiction.
Release Date: May 1st, 2003
Genre: Queer Fiction
Pages: 128
Rating: ⭐ ⭐
What I Liked:
1. A character struggling with his sexuality
What I Didn't Like:
1. The characters are confusing
2. When people talk it feels like the same tone
Overall Thoughts:I honestly wish I was impressed by this book. So far every page I read feels like 5. This book isn't even that long. I can pretty much summarize what this book is about in a sentence. Pretty much this whole book is just about these guys accusing each other of being gay and no one wants to admit that they're gay. Pretty much all it is.
I'm also annoyed that whenever someone tells someone to "just say it" the other person says "nothing". So so annoying.
You go through this whole book with the character, Larry, as be struggles to know what makes him gay. You'd think this would make the book interesting but it doesn't. Something is missing because this book comes off boring and by the half way point of Larry questioning things I just did not care. I mean clearly he has gay sexual urges since the people he is hurting all men and he has a desire to have sex with them.
We get to the ending and Gilman decides he's going to shoot up the school and that's the end.
Final Thoughts: I think this is my last book from this author for a while. The Sluts was/is his best book to date.
Recommend For:
• Complex friendships
• Confusing sexual orientation
• Cross the line family relationships
• Novelas
IG | Blog
*****SPOILERS*****
About the book:Larry is a teenager wrestling not only with his sexuality and the implications of a physical relationship with his younger brother, but with the very point of his existence. He is numb to almost all that surrounds him. As the book opens, Larry has been paid $500 by a senior to kill a fellow student and retrieve the boy's notebook. It seems simple enough. However, once Larry delves into the notebook, complications arise. An immensely powerful work that explores teenage depression, moral vacuity, and the confusion of love, this is a claustrophobic and harrowing piece of fiction.
Release Date: May 1st, 2003
Genre: Queer Fiction
Pages: 128
Rating: ⭐ ⭐
What I Liked:
1. A character struggling with his sexuality
What I Didn't Like:
1. The characters are confusing
2. When people talk it feels like the same tone
Overall Thoughts:I honestly wish I was impressed by this book. So far every page I read feels like 5. This book isn't even that long. I can pretty much summarize what this book is about in a sentence. Pretty much this whole book is just about these guys accusing each other of being gay and no one wants to admit that they're gay. Pretty much all it is.
I'm also annoyed that whenever someone tells someone to "just say it" the other person says "nothing". So so annoying.
You go through this whole book with the character, Larry, as be struggles to know what makes him gay. You'd think this would make the book interesting but it doesn't. Something is missing because this book comes off boring and by the half way point of Larry questioning things I just did not care. I mean clearly he has gay sexual urges since the people he is hurting all men and he has a desire to have sex with them.
We get to the ending and Gilman decides he's going to shoot up the school and that's the end.
Final Thoughts: I think this is my last book from this author for a while. The Sluts was/is his best book to date.
Recommend For:
• Complex friendships
• Confusing sexual orientation
• Cross the line family relationships
• Novelas
IG | Blog
May 19, 2026
Didn't like this one as much as some of his others which isn't saying much because I didn't really like his others either
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