The Farm

by Clarence L. Cooper Jr.

THE FARM is a Danteesque tour of the levels of hell to be found in a federal drug rehabilitation center and a powerful story of love growing in the most unnatural conditions. One of the most honest and unrelenting novels dealing with drug addiction ever written, based on the author's own experience.

Genres: Fiction, Addiction, Crime

160 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1967

About the author

Clarence Cooper Jr. wrote seven crime novels, which describe life in Black America, in the underworld of drugs and violence and in jail (The Farm). Cooper worked as an editor for The Chicago Messenger around 1955. He was said to have started taking heroin at this time. His first book, The Scene was a success with the critics. It had been published by serious Random House, but his other three books were published by Regency, a pure paperback publisher, while Cooper was in prison in Detroit: Weed (1961). The Dark Messenger (1962) and Yet Princess Follow together with Not We Many, as Black: Two Short Novels (1962). Harlan Ellison was his editor. His last book, The Farm, plays at the Lexington prison for drug addicts, once called U.S. Narcotics Farm. Cooper' s addiction and a growing alienation from those around him, perhaps driven by the hostile response to his fiction all contributed to his early destitute death.

He died penniless, strung out and alone in the 23rd street YMCA New York City in 1978.

Reviews

[Kris Needs]

Incredible! Every page shimmers, glowers, aches or spits. By far the most underrated author of the last century.

[Salina]

This is a book written by a black drug addict in the sixties. It is his expierence in a rehab in new york. it's hard to get used to the way he writes but once you do it's awesome. It had me laughing out loud half of the time. Very entertaining.

[Amethyst Travis]

Raw and intense.

[Mad Medico]

The Farm is an excellent African American novel about John, an erratic sociopath serving time in eponymous Farm, a federal drug rehabilitation centre. It's largely non-narrative - scenes come and go, mirroring the endless stream of happenings in prison/rehab: the main strands concern John's engagement (or lack thereof) in the rehab measures, such as at his 'job', on the patient council and with psychiatrists and therapists; his reintroduction to grass Bob Trent, whom he attempts to murder in the concluding scenes of the novel (which leads to his removal back to prison); and his blooming relationship with Sonja, an ex-whore whom he catches the eye of, conducted through both the authorised Pink Mail and the Underground mail system, as well as in person meetings (most notably a sexual encounter organised by Pepper, a screw John has dirt on).
The novel uses an almost nadsat-style colloquial language, with words fused with each other to mimic the pidgin of prison/rehab and the distinct cosmology which erupts from the bizarre situation. The setting is richly detailed and fittingly strange - patients/inmates watch the cows grazing from their cell windows, the boundaries between male and female spaces are strictly policed, meaningless political arguments are waged in council and discussion sessions, and the boundary between inmate/patient and staff becomes blurred.
John's character is brilliantly observed and remains totally opaque; he's an educated man, constantly wary and questioning of authority, understanding that everything that goes on in the facility is a cynical distraction rather than an earnest attempt to cure (as is confirmed by Dr Cambridge in the closing scenes), initially using Sonja for his own satisfaction (like his dead ex Joyce) but coming to genuinely love her. It's difficult to pin down his mental pathology, but it is clear that John is depressed and sociopathic - he hangs up a picture of a Klansman in his office, and when asked why he replies: 'I guess I've just never seen the face of a man who looked as sad as I feel'.
One particularly enlightening passage shows John picking up Underground mail from Pepper (which serves as the blackmail he uses to manipulate the screw for his own ends); the letter reads like the scrawlings of an illiterate, much in contrast to John's studied, intelligent writings and considerations - the scene suddenly puts in sharp contrast the reality that the institutional lines between inmate and screw are paper-thin.
My one criticism is that, due to the non-narrative style, the novel does become baggy and a little plodding around the middle section, and the uniformity of the situation and daily life there leads to chapters falling into one another. I think this may be the intention, but it leaves one with the feeling of an amorphous collection of chapters and I would have preferred something slightly more solidly constructed.

[Joseph Hirsch]

This thing’s about as bleak and misanthropic as it gets. It’s also written in a experimental, sometimes slapdash style that would make Hubert Selby Jr. knit his brow as he tried to read along. And still it has flashes of heart, moments of compassion, brief stretches where the disjointed style gels.
It is an autobiographical novel by Clarence Cooper, Jr., a brilliant and ornery black autodidact junky, recounting his time in a court-ordered dry-out clinic for addicts. Clarence’s alter-ego is a strange cat, probably much like the real Clarence was in his short, tumultuous life. Despite not having an education beyond the crummy grammar schools in the slum where he grew up, he routinely outwits everyone around him. He also keeps a photograph of a Klu Klux Klan leader on the wall of his workspace in the prison. Why on Earth have that on your wall? his friend asks him. Clarence’s answer? He likes the Klansman’s sad eyes, and thinks the colors of the man’s silk robes and the cross burning blackly in the night present a pretty contrast. This answer, like everything else about its enigmatic author, is impossible to parse, as to its tone. Is he being serious? Is he nuts? Maybe both.
Most of the book follows Clarence’s attempts to forget the past and delay the future, live stoically in the moment. He’s happy when no one is talking to him, and unhappy at almost every other juncture. Then he meets a woman at an intergender recovery meeting and begins sending her love letters. This is good, as like a lot of men who hate almost everything, he still likes women. As for heroin, it’s uncertain whether he’s going to stay clean when he gets out. He smokes “mace” a few times while in prison, but I was too lazy to look up what that meant in sixties prison argot.
It’s also frankly uncertain whether this guy will in fact ever get out of prison. Sure, he’s only doing a five-year bid, but the cat who finked on him to the cops just got transferred to the clinic-slash-prison. Naturally, the urge to cave this man’s head with a pipe is strong, and that is just the kind of behavior the authorities frown upon.
Needless to say, this is not a book for everyone. It’s not even a book for those specifically looking for dark tales of addiction. But it is an original offering by a sui generis author who only wrote a handful of works before leaving this sad Earth behind.
And what a weird ride it was. It kind of makes me wonder what Herr Cooper would have done if he had lived longer, and avoided dope. He certainly would have had more advantages had he been born white (provided he didn’t grow up dirt poor), but I’m not sure he would have preferred that. I think he liked having the odds stacked against him, and like Edward Bunker (another con-turned-writer) it’s only “when things get too hard for everyone else that they’re just right for me.”

[Natalie]

This book was recommended to me after reading Blueschild Baby - I enjoyed this much more. The prose/style oddly reminded me of Catch-22. Raw, funny, a mix of all our basest desires and faults, a hodgepodge of racial politics to how addiction is introduced to a person, the punishment of a disease being prison time - even drug experimentation on inmates is touched on. Can feel a bit disorienting at times but overall solid read.

Even though I felt a tiny sense of hate for him, I couldn’t blame him. He knew nothing but the gist of me, but this is all you need to know of anyone. 192

[Gyula Papp]

I was slow to get into the style of writing and the narrators voice, but once I submitted to the pulp, this book really starts to shine in a dirty way.