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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A COMPLEX EXPLORATION OF CHILD ABUSE, 11 Sep 2000
Although a lot less superficially shocking than his previous novel 'Frisk', Dennis Cooper's third work of fiction is in many ways infinitely more dangerous and disturbing, dealing as it does with the profoundly contentious issue of homosexuality's relationship with paedophilia. Ziggy is the adopted son of two gay men, whose attempt at heterosexual-style domesticity has collapsed spectacularly. Now a deeply disturbed teenager, Ziggy lives with one father in Los Angeles who has been raping him since he was eight, while his other dad, a music critic in New York, has only reestablished contact with his son as a result of his own sexual agenda towards teenaged boys in general. Added to this are Ziggy's Uncle Ken, a producer of home-made kiddie porn who spends most of the novel in the company of Robin, a thirteen-year-old Heavy Metaller who has come to Ken's house in the expectation of payment for sex; Nicole, a poor-little-rich-kid who is interested in Ziggy principally as a status symbol; Cricket, a teenaged transvestite with an Edward Furlong obsession; and Calhoun, Ziggy's herion-addicted 'best friend', whose drug dependence inspires in Ziggy an intense love and protectiveness which Calhoun cannot reciprocate. The novel follows the lives of these characters over several days as their paths cross and collide, charting their abortive attempts to articulate what they think and feel, frequently revealing their inability to actually feel anything.In Ziggy, Cooper manages to capture the psychology of the helpless victim more convincingly than any other sufferer of literary sex abuse. The complexity of the character stems from his capacity to experience a wide variety of contradictory emotions simultaneously. The prolonged persecution he has faced from those who should have protected him only causes Ziggy the persecute himself even more, while his crippling 'neediness' makes him cling feebly to his abusers - his fathers, Uncle Ken - or to those he knows cannot or will not return his affection - Calhoun. As is usual in Cooper's work, most of the characters try to blot out, or at least blunt, the harsh realities of their lives through drugs, a strategy which ultimately only makes things all the more confusing or depressing, no matter how much they might help in the short term. In this book, Cooper goes some way towards jettisoning the more deliberately sensationalist aspects of his previous work in favour of a deeper, more emotionally complex study of an intricate and unhappy situation. Given the explosive nature of the subject matter, the novel is actually remarkably tender and funny. His ongoing struggle to find a vocabulary to describe such a complicated set of cirsumstances is more immediately evident in the text than ever, filled as it is with 'um's, 'er's and innumerable sentences which trail off with a... It's also the first of his novels to come with something approaching a soundtrack, and a knowledge of the bands Husker Du and Slayer certainly contributes to a greater appreciation of the book. Having attained this new level of complexity in his work, having said pretty much everything there is to say about perversity and obsession, Cooper's subsequent novels begin retreating into increasing minimalism and self-referentiality. Situated in the centre of his five novel cycle, 'Try' is perhaps the most emotionally accessible, but also the most emotionally disturbing of the lot. It is also, in my opinion, the best.
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by Dennis Cooper
by Dennis Cooper
by Dennis Cooper
by Dennis Cooper
by Dennis. Cooper
