All Ears: Cultural Criticism, Essays and Obituaries

by Dennis Cooper

Dennis Cooper is author of six novels with Grove Press and a Contributing Editor at Spin. His novels are fantastic, brooding and violent.As a journalist, he is solid and well-formed. He has an approachable informality, unawed by massive celebrity His straightforward interviews with Leonardo Di Caprio, Courtney Love, Keanu Reeves, and Bob Mould disarm their subjects to find an urgent, everyday humanity. The feature articles on AIDS, youth culture, and contemporary art take their subjects passionately. But the obituaries for Kurt Cobain, River Phoenix, and William Burroughs are as bracing as a stoic's evaluation of a dead god.

All Ears for the first time collects this major 20th-Century novelist's lesser-known work. It will also include several new unpublished piece. All Ears pours necessary critical insight onto the time's leading cultural luminaries.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Music, Art

146 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Dennis 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.

Reviews

[Imogen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pssh, like I was not gonna give this five stars: my life is basically an attempt to answer the question, "What if I had been the gay boy I should have been in 1995, and also what if 1995 had never ended?" This book is full of: Dennis Cooper being a homo interviewing Keanu Reeves, Dennis Cooper being a homo interviewing Leonardo DiCaprio just before Titanic came out, Dennis Cooper writing a 20-page biography of Nan Goldin (I got so sucked into this that I missed my bus stop), Dennis Cooper writing about heroin and Kurt Cobain and raves and, y'know, it's basically him taking all the things I like (including jaded old punk bullshit, self-conscious self-obsession, and pretending not to smirk) that i've mixed up and made my blood out of, and de-alchemizing them into their individual ingredients.

Pretentious! All I'm saying is, I wish that Dennis Cooper was my dad. I've wished this on goodreads before.

Also, I think I've read most of these articles already. I think the Couertney Love one was cover article in the first issue of Spin I ever bought! Man, I don't even care that it gets more and more lazily copyedited toward the end, dropping punctuation and even letters. Who cares! It is punk rock apathy, which was HOT in 1995.

[naomi :•)]

came for the unabridged version of the malkmus interview, stayed for the unabridged version of the malkmus interview so i’m pleased they put it near the end

[ezra · Rating 4 out of 5]

(typed this on my computer at work a few days after i finished the book, posting with some slight edits on 21/06/2024)

It is no secret that I love absolutely everything that Dennis Cooper writes, and who would've thought that even his nonfiction would be included in that love? (Everyone)

I don't generally like or care for interviews, though I do have to admit I've read my fair share of interviews done *with* Cooper, favourite author and whatnot, but it was certainly interesting to see a younger Cooper interact with some of the people that I know as the big stars of today before they were those big stars. Still doesn't change that I don't love interviews, though, so I was always glad when those parts were over, base emotion of enjoyment aside.

What I loved much more were the articles/essays (I'm using a / bc I quite literally don't know). As I already loved Cooper's writing in his novels it was predictable that I would love his nonfiction writing as well. Cooper, as a person, fascinates me a lot, and I look up to him, so anything I get to learn of the man behind the novels I so love is appreciated. I also have an endless fasciantion with any cultural movement that predates my birth, especially any queer and counterculture related movements, so this was a real treat for me, introducing or expanding my knowledge of several different subjects.

One piece on this, Cooper's piece on Aids, seemed very familiar to me, but I really can't pinpoint where I read it before — will have to look through my copies of his books to figure that out.

Overall I absolutely loved this, and it has definitely motivated me to get back to reading more of Cooper's blog (as I used to).

[Larry-bob Roberts]

This is a collection of non-fiction essays by Dennis Cooper, best known for his monosylabically titled novels involving fucked-up gay youths. Most of the pieces deal with music, and many were published in venues such as Spin magazine. Cooper explains that these pieces are not as polished as his fiction, and he thinks of these as collaborations with editors. As he points out, the Sonny Bono piece has been rendered completely bland by editorial intervention, with the only hint of life being a comment from John Waters, who incredibly utters the cliche "team player." Oh yeah, beside the famous people stuff, there's article "AIDS: Words from the front," about HIV positive kids on the street, which was remixed into a chapter of Cooper's last novel, Guide. It's interesting to do a side-by-side comparison; names and phrasing changed; in the novel, there's a subplot where the narrator Dennis ends up having sex or something like it with one of the kids; that's not here. The pieces are largely arranged in chronological order (although the obituaries are all grouped at the end.) This makes it possible to read the book as a work with reoccuring characters, as in interviews and articles the same names pop up; the pieces are largely written in the present tense, a present tense that keeps rolling past life and death. Kurt Cobain in particular haunts the book. While still alive, he hovers at the edge of the Courney Love profile. His death is repeatedly referenced (though there is no specific obituary for him.) It's surprising how harsh Cooper is on William Burroughs, who is the subject of two pieces, an article on his shotgun paintings and an obituary; perhaps it's more accurate to say he's critical of the fame machine that surrounded Burroughs. Cooper manages to tease interest even out of the actor interviews with Keaunu Reeves (who knew he liked Big Black?) and a pre-Titantic Leonardo DiCaprio, wearing a barette in his hair. There is no pretense of journalistic distance; Cooper is there, interacting with the famous subject; he is our proxy. By including himself in the pieces, Cooper includes the audience and the ways in which we remanufacture meaning from commercial cultural art products; the ways in which we utilize music, movies, books and art are as or more important than the intentions of the creators.

[David Corvine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mixed bag ... some pieces more interesting than others. Some reminiscent of the sort of material you'd expect in a college fanzine.

[Paige · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5. Man, that was good. I only wish I was familiar with more of the subjects of many of these essays.

[Rainb0warri0r · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Come tutti i tossicomani, non ero particolarmente felice o depresso. Ero semplicemente lì, con le spalle al muro..."

Tutt'orecchi è una raccolta di scritti, interviste, reportage e più semplicemente opinioni (non) richieste a cura di Dennis Cooper, che, con il suo solito stile e la sua solita arguzia, scrive dei temi a lui più cari: AIDS, omosessualità, droga, giovani sbandati, artisti sbandati e attori sbandati. Tra le sue interviste, si annoverano personaggi del calibro di Kurt Cobain e Courtney Love, William Burroughs e Allen Ginsberg, River Phoenix e Leonardo DiCaprio, nonché di un giovanissimo Keanu Reeves, colto durante la preparazione del film My Own Private Idaho di Gus Van Sant. Questi gli artisti più celebri, o almeno, quelli che personalmente conosco, ma ve ne sono ancora altri, perché davvero Dennis Cooper riesce ad entrare nelle zone più nascoste della società statunitense degli anni '90, rivelandone il volto occulto.
Insomma, un piccolo gioiellino che, come i suoi romanzi e forse anche più, ci rivela come Dennis Cooper vede se stesso e il mondo che lo circonda.

[Gary Lee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Published in 1997 -- ten years on, this collection of Cooper's journalism, interviews and occasional music writing seems a bit dated. But, it has a nice piece written about Bob Mould during the high-profile era of Sugar that is worth checking out.
The rest is highly uneven and does little more than showcase Cooper's obsession with the death of Kurt Cobain.

[Jerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bought in a used bookstore in Hamptons with Joanna & P. Great little find. Unusual to read journalism like this after the fact: for example, the Spin essay on Husker Du's Bob Mould (who was only newly "out") and know that he now he does gay bear dance nights. Also the Courtney piece and others are worth reading.

[Ebenhicks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cooper's fiction is hard territory to tread. Those who find it difficult might do well to read this collection, which provides a solid and plainly humanistic background to his other work; the man has a soul. If Jean Genet had interviewed Jimi Hendrix, it might have been something like this. But probably less fun.