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Dennis Cooper

God Jr. Kindle Edition

by Dennis Cooper (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

17 ratings

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The author of Closer “transcends the formulaic with exquisite writing on the level of Rimbaud’s Illuminations . . . an American masterpiece” (James McCourt, Los Angeles Times).

God Jr. is the story of Jim, a father who survived the car crash that killed his teenage son Tommy. Tommy was distant, transfixed by video games and pop culture, and a mystery to the man who raised him. Now, disabled by the accident, yearning somehow to absolve his own guilt over the crash, Jim becomes obsessed with a mysterious building Tommy drew repetitively in a notebook before he died. As the fixation grows, Jim starts to take on elements of his son—at the expense of his job and marriage—but is he connecting with who Tommy truly was?

A tender, wrenching look at guilt, grief, and the tenuous bonds of family, God Jr. is unlike anything Dennis Cooper has yet written. It is a triumphant achievement from one of our finest writers.

“This beautiful book is a first-person narration of how grief grows and morphs after a death, and its style and naked pain make the reader feel like he has suffered a concussion . . . Carefully wrought in Cooper’s trademark short, clipped sentences. There’s no room for the pain to hide, and Cooper lays it bare with humor and striking honesty.” —Time Out Chicago

“God Jr. is probably Cooper’s richest, most philosophical novel to date. If the cycle were a video game, this would be its Easter egg.” —SF Gate

“Absorbing . . . carefully spare, pop-cultures prose that has earned him a cult following.” —Entertainment Weekly

Print length

180 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Black Cat
Publication date

December 1, 2007
File size

441 KB
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Dennis Cooper is an American novelist, poet, critic, editor and performance artist. He is perhaps best known for the George Miles Cycle.

--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Try making up a world where having killed someone you love isn't important." Cooper (Closer, etc.) does just that—and it works, for a while. Pot-smoking, 40-something L.A. depressive Jim rammed his Lexus into a telephone pole, sending his son, Tommy, flying through the windshield and leaving himself crippled. He has subsequently lied about the cause of Tommy's death (Tommy lived long enough to wander from the scene) and begun working at a children's custom clothing company run by an all-handicapped crew. Upping his pot intake and drifting further from his wife, Bette, Jim has been obsessively constructing a monument to Tommy in his yard that has drawn media (and litigious) attention. Cooper's genius has always been for dialogue: the clipped marriage and workplace exchanges feature searing ironies and delicate nuances that are arresting. In the lyrical but muddled passages that dominate the book's second half, Jim loses himself in a video game of Tommy's, communicating mystically with the video game's flora and fauna while searching for a meaning to Tommy's life and death. Cooper leaves Jim and Bette stranded in their grief, and the various forms of sage-like solace he proffers fail to add up to much, either for Jim or for us.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B005BCVB32
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Black Cat (December 1, 2007)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ December 1, 2007
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 441 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 180 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #324,360 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #156 in LGBTQ+ Family Life Fiction (Books)
- #521 in LGBTQ+ Literary Fiction (Books)
- #545 in LGBTQ+ Literary Fiction (Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews:
17 ratings

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mikedoeseverything

So, what's up with the bird on the cover?

Reviewed in the United States on June 20, 2016

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Amazing sentences. The, "What is this about" is sort of Lifetime-like. Dad & son are involved in car crash (with light post) and dad kills son because son goes through windshield. (But if son wasn't wearing seat belt ...right?) After that, rest of book is pretty inventive. Dad is obsessed with drawings he believes son drew. Begins to play Banjo Kazooie-esque video game his son played a lot. Son was a pothead. Dad is a pothead. Wife is wanting to leave dad. Kind of funny to read something so intellectual about what equivocates to a stupid video game overall. The vide game bits probably make up 2/3 of the book. Anyway, dad becomes super-involved in said video games and then novel sort of ends super abrupt-like. A little infuriating as I feel the one thing I really loved (Cooper's use of sentence structure here) was also, at the same time, sort of confusing to me. In the way that Cooper never really explicitly states or ever explains exactly what is happening. A lot is implied and then <> left up for interpretation. I don't like that. Sometimes, I like to be told what is actually going on. And Cooper doesn't do that a lot here. But certainly, I have never read another book like this (yet). Sort of shows that you can really meditate on just about anything and make it your own story. There's a part (actually, there are a lot of parts) where the dad just watches the video game character of the bear sitting there idly, but as is the case in many modern video games, characters rarely ever sit there idly doing nothing, so he sort of zones out a lot (the dad) and ends up watching the video game character (a bear) do things like scratch his ass and huff & puff and then we are privy to his inner-musings. Overall, this is three and a half stars, but it was the classic, "More questions asked than answered." And I dunno, I guess I was more in the, "Let's get some answers here, please," camp, while reading this. Definitely going to have to revisit in the coming years. And now that I think about it some, the abrupt ending sort of definitely makes sense.

One person found this helpful

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Jose Jones

Weird, idiosyncratic, and beautifully simple.

Reviewed in the United States on April 11, 2006

Verified Purchase

I've often wondered why someone as talented as Cooper never explored another genre. I was curious how his stripped-down writing style would feel in a world not brimming with violence, murder and sex. "God Jr." answers all of those questions.

"God Jr." is about soul-crushing grief and loss, and about how a father builds a tangible monument to his son to compensate for feelings he probably never had. The son died in a car accident while driving with his under-the-influence father. His parents find drawings of an odd structure and in homage to their dead son begin to build it -- at great expense -- in their backyard. Turns out the son didn't even draw it and that it is, in fact, just something he picked up from a videogame. Later in the story the father "enters" this videogame to try to discover who his son was. The son kept the main videogame character in a spot so long that the animals of the game became self-aware and began asking questions. They want to know who they are and why they're here. Because the son brought about this enlightenment, they assume he's God.

The most amazing thing about this book, for me, is Cooper's prose. He's reduced his writing to the absolute bare minimum. There is not a single wasted word here. He has sharpened and sharpened his meticulous prose with a razor and the result is simple yet stunning.

This book -- really a novella -- is a good companion piece to Kathryn Harrison's "Envy." It's interesting to see how two very different but equally capable writers handle similar subject matter so contrastingly.

4 people found this helpful

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Karin S. Chenowith

amazing- and no gore!

Reviewed in the United States on November 20, 2005

Verified Purchase

I'm a dennis cooper fan. I've always respected his choice to use "out there" subject matter. But that's not why i like his books. The draw for me is the writing itself. What is made of the subject. Period is my favorite still. But this one now takes second place. The fantastical dialogue reminds me a bit of Kurt Vonnegut. With this book (devoid of any trace of gore, pedophelia, homosexuality, mayhem, heroin, etc) all of the fainter-hearted readers out there will have a chance to enjoy the genius of Dennis Cooper.

7 people found this helpful

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calvin w. atwood

My favorite book

Reviewed in the United States on May 1, 2019

My favorite book

Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 2009

What is death? What is life for that matter? What do our spaces, both real and virtual tell us about ourselves? Themes of transference, distortion and escapism abound in this terse, crackling novella that speaks volumes about who we are as both an addictive culture and a culture immersed in our ubiquitous virtual realities. A fine, fast read that lingers long after the story ends. Dennis Cooper can turn a smart phrase like a short-order cook but there's much more to God Jr. than a quick meal. This is deceptively powerful book that I've read twice now and will read again.

One person found this helpful

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Buddy

An Unexpected Gem

Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2009

For the first time, since years ago, when I first picked up a Dennis Cooper novel (one of the early George Miles cycle books) I was actually surprised by the subject matter of a Cooper work. That's not to say that I don't enjoy or appreciate Dennis Cooper's work; in fact, I'm an avid fan - having now read all but one of his novels. Still, Cooper tends to be predictable in subject matter, theme, and plot. This time, however, Cooper has done something completely new. The plot is innovative, creative, and haunting. The story itself is still Cooper-esque, disturbing and a bit sick, and it is still an examination of death. Except, this time, rather than death as a scientific experiment - in body function, sensory reaction, sexuality, etc., Cooper is explaining death through grief and love - the loss of a child and how his already troubled father tries to cope. Truly brilliant - I read it in one sitting, in a matter of 90 minutes.

2 people found this helpful

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