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Gone: Scrapbook 1980-1982
Put together in secrecy during late 1980 until early 1982 GONE is a tour de force into Dennis Cooper’s most private obsessions and forbidden fantasies. We’ve never seen him exposed like this before, without leaning on (or hiding behind) his remarkable craft. Cooper mingles picture- and text collages, prose and poetry with news reports and pornography. The tabloid killings of William Bonin, Dean Corll and John Wayne Gacy – the victims catalogued repeatedly like Warholian icons – bleeds into late 70s/early 80s teen stars and anonymous, forgotten porn actors in a crude, yet rigorously composed collage of Sadeian proportions. This is the template of the inner drives that later would spawn the masterpiece “The George Miles Cycle”.
- GenresArtTrue CrimeNonfiction
196 pages, Softbound
First published May 1, 2014
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123 people want to read
About the author
Dennis Cooper
109 books1,812 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 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 13, 2022
In the interview that opens this edition, Cooper calls this scrapbook (which, we must always keep in mind, was never ever intended to be public) a deeply immature work. And it’s true: this is an intensely rudimentary, juvenile, awkward, and crude rendering of the impulses and ideas that would reach incredibly sophisticated expression in Cooper’s actual literature. It’s exactly this crudeness (as counterpointed with Cooper’s ultimate achievement), though, that makes Gone such a fascinating read. It’s a perfect document of the artist’s process. You can literally see Cooper struggling to work out these associations—sex, death, beauty, destruction, etc.—on the page, really grappling with this material and his relationship to it, in ways that clearly anticipate his great success in the actual novels. Along with being as frightening, erotic, and funny as his serious writing, this functions as a compelling glimpse into the troubled, protean process of creating a great work. And I find its juvenile quality inspiring. Knowing the absolute perfection of the writing that eventually resulted from this, the youthful roughness of the process documented in Gone might almost deceive you into thinking you could do something similar yourself, eventually.
October 4, 2023
it does everything you expect it to do. it’s horrifying, sexy, and sometimes beautiful. mostly snippets from newspapers, some pieces written by dennis, and these disgusting and depraved collages which feature lines like “you’re supposed to rape me first, you jerk.” i’m so endlessly fascinated by dennis cooper that this has a feeling of invasiveness that i adored. and it’s true, he has a type, and the ones who aren’t underage are understandable. a perverse and telling piece of literary history, and the history of obsession. a must-read for the diehards.
worth the trip to the british library but very difficult to conceal in the reading room!
worth the trip to the british library but very difficult to conceal in the reading room!
June 20, 2014
Nice to have, but not necessary to have.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews