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Title: my favorite one, next to his poetry.
Review: There are a few cliches to get your head round before reading Cooper and taking him seriously. One is the idea of the countercultural writer or punk poet. He is both of these, to an extent, but nothing like exclusively. If he borrows weight from any quarter it's in that he's gay and tackling the very established, even passe form of the pychological novel (see that blurb about Austen on the jacket). Anyone who knows Genet, though, will see the influence straight away - a writer besotted with the erotic and mythopoeic property of words, while staying far from any traditional level of erudition that could be used to boost his reputation or advance an idea of his 'level'. He is, in fact, a perfect modern incarnation of (or caterer to) Baudelaire's 'hypocrite lecteur'. He's 1% artist, and his books are 1% art, but don't underestimate that fraction's potency. Writes from the heart like no-one i know.
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