Full name: Wrong: Stories

Author: Dennis Cooper Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Amazon Goodreads ISBNs: 9780802133670 0802133673

As is typical for me, I'm more pulled in by longer-form storytelling, so the winding, desperate opener here, "The Herd", was the highlight. Even moreso than Cooper's first novel, Safe, a generous inclusion here that still felt a bit like three separate stories tied together in order to trace a common contour. Other highlights: timeless punk band story Horror Hospital, and the sequencing slight-of-hand that follows up the blunt detailing of a sex act in "Dinner" with a sort of narrative art criticism article on the aesthetics of pornography. Which really explains a lot of how Cooper works -- not the article itself, but this self-reflexive sequencing of idea that constantly reframes and studies its own tendencies. Actually, it's all pretty solid Cooper, just not quite as great as the entire Cycle that started just after Safe with Closer.