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The Farm
"So much of what we know of ourselves is a lousy God Damn lie", maintains the narrator of The Farm (1968), the audacious and supercharged final novel by a writer of both prodigal gifts and tendencies toward self-destruction. The Farm is a Dante-esque 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. It is a stylistic tour de force and one of the most honest and unrelenting novels dealing with drug addiction ever written.
240 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1967
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About the author
Clarence L. Cooper Jr.
7 books15 followersClarence 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.
He died penniless, strung out and alone in the 23rd street YMCA New York City in 1978.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 6, 2019
Incredible! Every page shimmers, glowers, aches or spits. By far the most underrated author of the last century.
January 20, 2009
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.
July 10, 2020
Raw and intense.
October 22, 2025
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.”
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.”
December 12, 2025
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
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
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews