Dennis Cooper interviewed by Chris Kelso.
You can find the first part of this interview here, and you can listen to the conversation here.
CK: Speaking of Gisèle [Vienne], I adore your previous work together, Dennis. It’s nothing new to suggest that you explore taboo themes in a way that’s uniquely and oddly compassionate. To me, Jerk is a fascinating example of this, fascinating in both its execution and eventual life cycle. Jerk first appeared as a short story in your Ugly Man collection but more recently was staged as a marionette show, directed by Gisele Viènne, featuring music by Peter Rehberg and puppetry performed by French ventriloquist Jonathan Capdevielle. Could you see a cinematic adaptation of Jerk in the future, or has the medium of puppetry become key to its genetic material?
DC: It’s already a film, actually. It just got released in France two weeks ago.
CK: Just when I think I’ve got my finger on the pulse of what you’re doing!
DC: Actually, several people have asked if there’s a screener with English sub—it’s in French. So, if I get hold of one, I’ll send it to you because a bunch of people have asked me for that. It turned out really well. We adapted it because Jonathan performed that. As you’ll see he did it for such a long time, touring the show and he flew all over the world to do it. Then he was like ‘I can’t do this anymore’. So, he stopped. I mean, it depends on him so much that we decided to just make this film. It’s actually really good. It’s a very intense piece. I don’t know if you’ve heard that, but it’s very intense. I mean, people faint and stuff.
CK: Wow.
DC: It’s kind of strange how that worked out. It just sort of came out.
CK: That sounds fantastic—and when you were talking about The Has Been being an audio experience, I know you’ve also branched out into video game territory, a kind of virtual walk-through of a haunted house that premiered at The Pinault Collection in Paris. The project brought together a lot of interesting creative voices, from curator Sabrina Tarasoff to musician Puce Mary. There’s a lot of collaboration happening with curators and musicians. So, I’ve got two questions: how do you feel about video games? And the second question you’ve answered already, but how important is collaboration to you? Like the process of it?
DC: I love video games. Um, they’ve been a really big influence on me. I wrote a novel called God Jr that mostly revolves around that world. I’m like a Nintendo guy, so it’s mostly Nintendo. It’s just because I don’t like conventional fiction, I just don’t, and I’m always looking for different ways to make things move forward in an unusual way. And I really got obsessed with how in video games, there’s this forward movement and you have a certain amount of freedom. It’s very simple what happens, but you have to solve puzzles, or you have to do this and this. So, I got really excited by that idea.
CK: Totally.
DC: And I also really like the space inside video games. I think it’s very beautiful. It’s very immersive and you kind of believe it, but it’s so fake, and everything’s kind of cute, but you just go with it. They were a big influence on me. The Marble Swarm is probably really influenced by the video games and stuff too. And I’ve always collaborated. I mean I always collaborated. There were times early on when I was in charge. I mean, when I was a really little kid. I set up a theatre in our attic and I got together with my siblings and people from the neighbourhood and we put on shows. We had a theatre company and put on plays. So, I was doing that when I was like 10. And then I used to do haunted houses in our basement, and I was the boss. But all the other people collaborated with me. I really, really liked it. I really liked it a lot to this day. Especially because with being a writer, you know this very well too, it’s like you’re God when you’re a writer. You can basically do whatever you want. But when you’re collaborating, you have to listen to what other people are saying and think about their work or consider their things. The theatre is really interesting as a jumping-off point for me. It all started with the theatre thing and now it’s like I have to think about what Gisèle wants. And then you have to adjust what you’re doing to kind of fill them in or, you know what I mean?
CK: Mm-hmm.
DC: So that was really exciting to me considering I’d always just made everything up, but to have the kind of like limitation of having a physical person there—it’s a welcome limitation and it’s also really exciting…
CK: You still enjoy collaborating in the theatre…
DC: I like working with theatre, but the films are great too. I’ve gotten kind of spoiled because Zac and I are so likeminded. I mean, I’ve worked with Gisèle forever and I don’t have any ego about that kind of stuff. It’s really, really easy for me to just take a backseat and fill in what they need. I don’t have issues about control. I don’t even know any control freaks.
CK: That’s probably one of the keys to a successful collaboration, right? There can’t be any ego or total control. I feel the same about my own writing, but I also like to professionally collaborate as well. It’s very fulfilling. I’ll never collaborate with people that I don’t admire or respect. So, I’m never forced to collaborate with people. It’s not as if it’s going to be two completely diametrically opposed visions colliding. They’re going to be kind of similar. And you know, I’m probably a bit more insecure in my ability and vision so I always think that whatever somebody else brings to the table is a great idea. It just enhances it.
DC: Just the other day I was wondering how you collaborated with David on the Cronenberg book. Like how did that work? How did you guys do that?
CK: That was really easy. It was very similar to you and Zac probably. Sure, he’s a Harvard-educated American with an academic background and I’m a sort of, you know, I’m like an average student from this nowhere place called Cumnock, which was voted the worst place in the UK not that long ago. So on the surface, we’re these radically different people with different upbringings, but the influences that comprise our artistic personalities are almost identical. Plus, David is no control freak and I’m not controlling. I think as long as nobody is a maniac for control it’ll all work out pretty well. Then it’ll be fine. It was so easy, and then I wrote a story with Brian Evanson recently, and—
DC: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. How was that?
CK: Again, just really easy.
DC: You sent the story back and forth?
CK: Just back and forth. And it was, it was so easy. I’ve never had a negative collaboration. Have you? You don’t have to name names, but have you ever had a negative experience collaborating?
DC: Not that I followed through on. There was a guy who asked me to collaborate with him and I was super interested, but then when we started working together it didn’t pan out. Actually, I still regret this. It was a long time ago. I was going to write a film for this young director, and he was David Lynch’s assistant. In fact, his name’s all over Lynch’s work. And he, David Lynch, gave him a million dollars to make a film and he wanted to work with me on the script. And I was really excited because, this guy was cool, but we could not agree. We simply could not agree on anything. He just kept wanting to do all this shit and I didn’t want to do what he was going to do. So ultimately, I was just like, ‘dude, you have to do this yourself. Cause I can’t. We don’t agree.’ And it’s just frustrating to me. And then of course he never made it anyway. So it’s all kind of sad, but so yeah, there’s one.
CK: I’m curious as to how you felt about Diarmuid Hester’s critical analysis, Wrong? I’ve heard that there are a few factual discrepancies and there may be aspects of Diarmuid’s interpretation of your work that you feel are overextended—yet Wrong is such an undeniably intense labour of love. You strike me as a man of great humility, so was it surreal having such a comprehensive and academic retrospective written about you?
DC: It’s definitely surreal. Over time I’ve been sort of figuring out how to deal with that whole situation. I’m really, really, really grateful and blown away that he did it and he did a lot of work. He says a lot of great things in it and, you know, I’ve talked to him about it. It’s just that he had an idea of how to interpret my work that’s totally wide of the mark. And I understand that’s what they do, right? So, it’s like, okay, I’m going to do it through punk or whatever. I have this idea of my life and what influenced me and stuff that’s bigger than that, you know? Well, dude, you didn’t mention the influence of psychedelic music in the sixties. You never mentioned low-fi indie rock or early techno, which was just as important to me. You know? I don’t have a huge problem with it. Just when people ask me, sometimes they’ll say my anarchism was influenced by Paul Goodman. I read a paragraph of Paul Goodman in 1970. I didn’t like it. So, I’m just like, dude, that just didn’t happen. He made it seem like I’m friends with Patti Smith. I’m not friends with Patty Smith. I’ve never been friends with Patti. So, I’m like where did you get this? It’s like that. Cause he came here and interviewed me, and I’d say, well, ‘don’t you want to ask me about this’? And he’d be like, ‘well, I already read this stuff online’. So, you know, there are little things, but generally, I’m happy with the book and I’m super grateful and it’s just little things. People like to pick an angle and then they see your work through this angle. It’s completely normal.
CK: It’s great mythologizing on Diarmuid’s part. So, last question, because I know you’re busy as well and I can hear the baby screaming, so—
DC: Oh no!
CK: You’re much more than a writer, as evidenced by your work with Zac. In a way, do you feel like I Wished was a concluding statement to, not just the long-running George Miles Cycle, but also to your writing of novels in general? Or can we expect a foray into standard genre fiction? I’d love to see a Dennis Cooper science fiction story…
DC: I don’t know how to do it. I never studied fiction. I play on experimental stuff, and I do all these other things, but I don’t know how to do a lot of stuff and I don’t wanna know how to do them. I never learned how to do those things. I can’t do it. I don’t like plot. I don’t like psychological development. I don’t like all that stuff, but I also don’t have a fucking clue how to do it. I’ve read very, very little science fiction literature, like very little, very little. I like genre. I used to like detective novels and stuff. I used to really like, you know, all those guys, but I can’t imagine doing it. I mean, I can, maybe, but it would be very, very difficult. I think I had to stick to my weird shit. The book I Wished, you know, it wasn’t meant to be a part of the Cycle or anything like that. It’s just that I wanted to write a really, really personal book that was emotional. I’d never done that before. I chose George because that’s the most difficult thing for me. And so, I did that, and then it’s like, well, if I’m going to do right by George, I have to mention the Cycle because I wrote the Cycle for him. But I understand why people say it is, but I don’t think it’s part of the Cycle. I feel like if you read I Wished and you didn’t know what the Cycle was, you could just think I made it up or something.
CK: I was going to ask you, do you ever think that, because I Wished is such a personal book, people asking you questions about it kind of trivializes the impact or memory of—
DC: No, no. With a book like that, you have to really understand that they’re really outside you and they don’t know George. I mean, no one has overstepped the mark yet. I haven’t had a problem with that at all. I have problems with different kinds of things. I have problems when people who read books try to objectify the characters and think they’re hot or something. To me, that seems so disrespectful. Cause I try so hard not to make them just sexy boys, you know? I hate that stuff. So that bothers me. But no, it is weird to talk about that book. I kind of know how to deal with it now.
CK: Yeah.
DC: Either you feel it, or you can’t relate to it or something.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chris Kelso is an award-winning writer and editor. He recently edited Children of the New Flesh: The Early Work and Pervasive Influence of David Cronenberg with David Leo Rice. The book is scheduled for release in June through 11:11 Press.
