Wrong

“The time has certainly come for a large-scale study of Dennis Cooper, and Wrong is a major achievement that satisfies in every respect. Cooper is a truly tireless figure who has somehow managed to thrive outside the university and nonprofit industrial complex. He’s published poetry, fiction, and hybrid genres that cross four decades of literary innovation and numerous subcultures: liberation-era militancy, anarcho-punk, AIDS writing, and digital poetics. Hester’s book makes the definitive case for Cooper as both modern day Rimbaud and Sade. Unlike Rimbaud, however, Cooper never abandoned the literary enterprise and instead, like his peer Eileen Myles, kept reinventing his project, rarely repeating the same formal decisions in any two works. Further, he has been a figurehead in Los Angeles, New York, and Amsterdam, not to mention his presence as a juggernaut of blogging. Readers will not soon forget the scenes that come hurtling at us sideways in these pages: the young Cooper bludgeoned in the head with an axe, the suburban youth baptized by punk music, the friendship with George Miles (the ‘flickering presence’ of Cooper’s cycle of novels), the literary disputes of later years, and many more. Hester’s ferocious sleuthing conveys us to whole new areas of understanding about Cooper.”—Kaplan Harris, coeditor, The Selected Letters of Robert Creeley

“Diarmuid Hester unfurls a riveting chronicle of Dennis Cooper’s intertwined life and work, without circumscribing the possibilities that remain for readers to construct a Dennis of their own. Hester interprets Cooper’s creations within their historical, relational, and political contexts, and keeps alive the interpersonal spark that makes Cooper such an inspi­ration for rebels and artists everywhere.”—Wayne Koestenbaum, author, Camp Marmalade