Frisk - (George Miles Cycle) by Dennis Cooper (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

"Dennis Cooper, a disturbing and transcendent artist, enters the mind of a killer and comes out with a genuine revelation."--Los Angeles Times

From the "disquieting genius" (Vanity Fair) Dennis Cooper, Frisk is the second novel in the controversial and award-winning George Miles Cycle--a murder mystery that implicates us all and a horror story in which the monster is love

When Dennis is thirteen, he sees a series of photographs of a boy apparently unimaginably mutilated. Dennis is not shocked, but stunned by their mystery and their power; their glimpse at the reality of death. Some years later, Dennis meets the boy who posed for the photographs. He did it for love.

Surrounded by images of violence, the celebrity of horror, news of disease, a wasteland of sex, Dennis flees to Europe, having discovered some clues about the photographs: "I see these criminals on the news who've killed someone methodically, and they're free. They know something amazing. You can just tell." What they know may lie in bodies themselves. Bodies are unavoidably real; what's in them must have something to say. An isolated windmill in Holland provides the perfect setting for Dennis to find out more about bodies-of which there are many-and what is inside them.

In Frisk, Dennis Cooper explores the limits of our knowledge and the dividing line between the body and the spirit. The body's power extends to us all, but what power do we have over it, over its appetites and satisfactions?

Review Quotes

Praise for Frisk:

"As intense a dissection of human relationships and obsession that modern literature has ever attempted."--The Guardian

"Frisk . . . is the work of a real writer, classical and aesthetic. That it is destined to classic status is upheld by its extraordinary vileness, the psychotic imagination of its violence and its bracing ugliness. Frisk exhilarates by the intensity of its language, and by the suggestion of a spiritual radiance at the core of its dark vision."--Los Angeles Times Book Review

"One of the few cutting-edge artists today still, thankfully, persevering with that beautiful and challenging medium of the novel."--Dazed and Confused

"Frisk is a significant work of fiction. Cooper . . . wants to lead us into the wormy heart of the murderous impulse."--Michael Cunningham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours

"Dennis Cooper, a disturbing and transcendent artist, enters the mind of a killer and comes out with a genuine revelation."--Michael Silverblatt, Los Angeles Times

"Frisk is a serious attempt to explore a remote and scary region of the human psyche; it is not, however, a novel for readers of weak stomach."--San Francisco Chronicle

"Dennis Cooper has written a clear and intentionally or unintentionally revealing description of how imperialism also invades and ravishes the everyday reality of its beneficiaries, its privileged serfs most of all. A book of startlingly stylized crisis managements."--American Book Review

"A violent, fascinating novel."--Bay Area Reporter

"A sober glimpse of aimless dissipated lives . . . Cooper paints a grotesque, effective portrait of disaffected and marginalized homosexuals."--Kirkus Reviews

"By no means an arid exercise in technique, Frisk, without the posturing or emotional deep-freeze we've come to expect from so much 'alternative' literature, explores this subject with a merciless, sometimes almost unbearable immediacy. It's Cooper's best and most challenging book."--Bay Windows

"Frisk is contemporary art's most unflinchingly brave contemplation of the tenuous bridge between imagination and reality, a visceral X-ray of the body and its relation to the limits of desire. And it's really cool."--Detroit Metro Times

"In Frisk, Dennis Cooper stabs at the current trend of violence, murder and sex with a fragmented, terrifying and ultimately thought-provoking novel . . . gritty, raw, entertaining and shocking."--The Northwest Gay and Lesbian Reader

"Frisk is an exceedingly rich, mesmerizing work. Cooper is a master of the novella form at a time when most fiction seems to become more bloated every year."--New York Native

"If you feel you have to read a novel about repulsive sexual fantasies and deadly realities in the United States today, try Frisk. Cooper writes with such considerable style, and his characters manage to come to life in spite of themselves. Bret Easton Ellis, take note."--Mirabella

About the Author

Dennis Cooper is the author of the George Miles Cycle of five novels, of which Closer is the first. He is also the author of My Loose Thread, The Sluts, God Jr., and The Marbled Swarm. Cooper's other works include story collections, poetry, and the essay collection Smothered in Hugs. He divides his time between Los Angeles and Paris.