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Guide (George Miles Cycle) by [Dennis Cooper]

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Dennis Cooper

Guide (George Miles Cycle) Kindle Edition

by Dennis Cooper (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

32 ratings

Book 4 of 5: George Miles Cycle

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A brilliant novel of LA’s underground from the author of Closer, “the last literary outlaw in mainstream American fiction” (Bret Easton Ellis).

Chris is a young porn star who wants to experience death at someone else’s hand; Mason has lurid fantasies about members of British pop bands; Sniffles is a teenage runaway whose need for love outweighs his attachment to life. Courtesy of a frankly manipulative author/narrator named Dennis, these characters move through a subterranean Los Angeles where hallucination and reality, sex and suicide, love and indifference run together in terrifying ways.

Guide, the fourth novel in a projected five-book cycle, continues to explore the boundaries of experience in the manner that has earned Dennis Cooper comparisons to Poe, Genet, and Baudelaire.

“The most seductively frightening, best written novel of contemporary urban life that anyone has attempted in a long time; it’s the funniest, too.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

“With Guide, America’s most daring novelist has given us his masterpiece.” —The Face

“Make[s] American Psycho and Lolita seem tame . . . A brilliantly base tale of human self-destruction for the brave.” —The Times (London)

“Dante’s Inferno with George Bataille as your escort, damaged yet exhilarating.” —Arena

“Though the story is as compelling as it is perverse, Cooper purposefully overrides it with an innovative style and raw, truthful character studies . . . With Guide, Cooper claims his place, alongside Genet and Burroughs, as a master of his own disenfranchised generation.” —Library Journal

Print length

196 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Grove Press
Publication date

December 1, 2007
File size

755 KB
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Next 2 for you in this series See full series

Total Price: $10.98

Books In This Series (5 Books)

Complete Series

George Miles Cycle

Kindle Edition

Page 1 of 1Start OverPage 1 of 1

1
Closer: A Novel
Dennis Cooper

(62)

Kindle Edition

$11.99
2
Frisk: A Novel (Cooper, Dennis)
Dennis Cooper

(49)

Kindle Edition

$9.99
3
Try: A Novel
Dennis Cooper

(50)

Kindle Edition

$10.69
4
Guide (George Miles Cycle)
Dennis Cooper

(32)

Kindle Edition

$1.99
5
Period (Cooper, Dennis)
Dennis Cooper

(32)

Kindle Edition

$8.99

Dennis Cooper
32
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $8.99
Dennis Cooper
50
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $10.69
Dennis Cooper
62
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $11.99
Dennis Cooper
49
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $9.99
Dennis Cooper
32
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $14.99
Dennis Cooper
17
Kindle Edition
1 offer from $8.99

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Over the past 15 years Dennis Cooper has established himself as the preeminent spokesperson and chronicler for angst ridden teens in Los Angeles. In Closer, Frisk, and Try, Cooper delineated the existential crisis of gay teen boys with no place to go but down, nothing to look forward to but death. Cooper's plots usually revolve around the idea that there are people--usually older men--who are willing to help them with this last desire. Cooper tells a similar tale in Guide, but has placed himself in the middle of the action as a participant. Beautifully and chillingly written, Guide is Cooper's most disturbing, transgressive tale yet. A visionary masterpiece as sublime as it is frightening. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Review

?The last literary outlaw in mainstream American fiction? Brett Easton Ellis, New York Post ?Dennis Cooper tears into his latest novel with the assurance of a rock star strumming a power chord? New York Times Book Review ?Does for Clinton America what The Tin Drum did for postwar Germany? Gary Indiana, L.A. Times --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

About the Author

Dennis Cooper is the winner of the Ferro-Grumley Award for Closer, and Guide was a Los Angeles Times bestseller and one of its Ten Best Books of the Year. He lives in Los Angeles. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From the Back Cover

Narrated in a voice that at times may be construed as the author's own, Guide is the story of the conflict between a novelist's fantasy life and his inability to represent it in language. Remembering the clarity and omnipotence he felt during an LSD trip in his teens, "Dennis" drops acid and attempts to write a novel that will make sense of his life, his desires, his friends, and his art, and distinguish what is real from the distortions created by his overactive imagination. Dennis's sexual relationship with Chris - an addict who fantasizes about being killed - pushes him to the very edge of emotions he has only imagined. His platonic love for Luke, an imaginative, but far more innocent, friend, offers possible salvation from his otherwise crazy life. In episodic chapters that criss-cross through time, Guide weaves together Dennis's story with these and other characters, including Goof, a young and amazingly innocent porn star, Sniffles, a teenage runaway whose need for love outweighs his attachment to life, and Mason, whose lurid desires are rivaled only by Dennis's own. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Library Journal

Those familiar with Cooper's work (Wrong, LJ 5/15/92) know that his fiction makes use of some unsavory, at times shocking, subject matter. Necrophilia and child pornography may be taboo in Cooper's world, but they are practiced nonetheless. Against a backdrop of pop culture, this first-person narrative chronicles the exploits of a half-dozen teens viewing life through the heavy veil of drugs and apathy. Though the story is as compelling as it is perverse, Cooper purposefully overrides it with an innovative style and raw, truthful character studies. Deeply lonely, the characters don't trust their own feelings and experience life in spurts. Interaction with anything outside themselves is a contest without a prize. There is a real elegance to the choppy waves of prose, which allow this work to transcend the form of the novel while working within it. With Guide, Cooper claims his place, alongside Genet and Burroughs, as a master of his own disenfranchised generation. For all literary fiction collections.?Douglas McClemont, New York
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Kirkus Reviews

More transgressive meanderings from shock jock Cooper (Try, 1994, etc.), who seems--as far as the dance of death is concerned- -to have all the steps down pat without the first clue of where he wants to go with them. ``Luke at Scott's. Mason's home jerking off to a picture of Smear's bassist, Alex. . . Robert, Tracy, and Chris are several miles across town shooting dope. . . Pam's directing a porn film. Goof is the star. He's twelve and a half. I'm home playing records and writing a novel about the aforementioned people, especially Luke. This is it.'' In its very first lines, the story is laid out pretty clearly. Like most of Cooper's previous works, this is an account of life among the addicts and prostitutes of the gay urban demimonde, this time in Los Angeles. The narrator is a novelist and magazine reporter who comes into contact with a clique of teenaged hustlers while working on an article about AIDS among the runaways and drifters of West Hollywood, but from his descriptions of his daily routines one could suppose that he had grown up in Covenant House himself: ``All the beauty in my life is either sleeping, unconscious, or dead.'' And how: When he and his friends aren't shooting up or having sex on camera, they are usually fantasizing about killing or being killed. Goof, for example, ODs during a porn shoot. Then Drew gets knocked out cold when someone whacks him with a skateboard during a bit of rough sex. The narrator dreams of eviscerating people from time to time and seems to be obsessed with a very young streetwalker named Sniffles, who likes to be beaten up in bed. After a while he tracks Sniffles down to the AIDS hospice where he's dying. When he gets home, he finds that Drew may in fact be dead. He sits down to finish his novel. As offensive in its aimlessness as it is in its perversity. Cooper should be ashamed of himself. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B005FFPUT6
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Grove Press; 1st Pbk. Ed edition (December 1, 2007)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ December 1, 2007
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 755 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 196 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0802135803
Lending ‏ : ‎ Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #654,150 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #976 in LGBTQ+ Literary Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #1,145 in City Life Fiction (Books)
- #1,944 in City Life Fiction (Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews:
32 ratings

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Dennis Cooper

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Customer reviews

5 star		68%
4 star		19%
3 star		7%
2 star		5%
1 star		2%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Steven Carrier

Dennis Cooper, a master

Reviewed in the United States on June 11, 2020

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Dennis Cooper is an incredible writer who dares to go places very few other authors refuse to touch. His books are shocking, grotesque but also masterfully structured, beautifully written and seem even more vital than ever in 2020. If you can stomach the extreme depictions of sexual violence you’ll find an incredible and indelible voice you’ll never forget.

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Jemiah Jefferson

sick, wrong fun

Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2002

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I don't think there's anything profound about Dennis Cooper. As far as I can tell from having read this book and "Frisk", he writes the exact same book again and again, just changing the characters and circumstances slightly. Dennis has an agenda, and that's to make you squirm, if not with his nihilistic political worldview, with his graphic depictions of all manner of sexual expression, from remarking on the prettiness of pre-adolescent boys to rape, drugging, and dismemberment.
"Guide" is, as widely dicussed, probably the most celebrated piece of fanfiction ever written. Cooper gets props for writing a thinly disguised interlude wherein Alex from "Slur" gets picked up, stuffed full of roofies, and used as an amusing pawn in someone's fantasy life. It is extremely funny if you know anything about fanfiction, and has guaranteed him hundreds of sales from Blur fans desperate to pick up anything even vaguely smacking of their messiahs. (I am a fine example of this, as well as being interested in Cooper's oeuvre, and wondering if I could get through another of his books).
"Guide" is a little funnier than "Frisk", and that makes it a lot easier to get through. If you are even slightly upset or traumatized by the concepts of gay sex, pedophilia, or sexual violence, you would be well advised to stay away. However, if you think "Naked Lunch" is charming and brilliant, and you enjoy the smellier bits of "Le Chants de Maldoror" or "Our Lady of the Flowers", you'll totally dig "Guide", because it is really funny, if totally offensive to pretty much every slightly healthy member of society.

19 people found this helpful

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Victoria R. J. Franco

Raw, sad and beautiful, violent yet so sensitive, nihilist yet pouring meaning

Reviewed in the United States on April 30, 2012

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I cant say ENOUGH how much I ADORE this..and I hate it, cause is a hard, painfull book to read..but yet so very beautiful. I fell in love with Cooper's work reading "The slts" and went straight to "Guide", and to my surprise it was very different, and still very similar at one point. I think both are very raw, sad, painfull, and plays with different perspectives of life and desire, good/evil, and man's mind, ulterior motives..But "The slts" is much of a "the experiences" book, confusing and much more of actions, while in Guide you can see much clearer Cooper's development of a solid thinking association, that lead us to a lot of concepts, perspectives, thinking, things, leading us to..nothing. Thats why is a hard book, everyone here has its motives and their own "personal lawn", and you cant even say its wrong/right, cause just there isnt something like that, those thinking association constantly keeps you from holding to something..The book show us theres so much more in the deep parts, it never stops, and it takes it to its raw form, words, meanings, relashionships, yet full of every character meaning, which leads us to a lot of interesting things, and yet leads us to zero stuff..and solitude. I love how this book was developed, but its hard to read it, and much more knowing it will end, cause you keep looking for something real to hold on to, but you never get it. At "Guide" I suffered for the boys, but a lot for Cooper too, what a TOUGH thing must be being the creater of those books, yet it is all there, we know it..and someone has to say it. Yes, its violent, but theres violence in the world, all kinda of ***, and is painfull but Im glad there's someone so sensitive as Cooper to talk about all of this crazyness in such a refined/beautiful form, cause it gives voice to all this stuff that happens, in a victim/abuser perspective. And I think it can show us how victims and abusers can mix together, like the victim can be the ultimate abuser of himself as finding someone to do stuff he "thinks" he wants, and how DANGEROUS it is when we cross the thin line of thinking and doing. And in a terrifying, yet charming, funny as **** way, this book can be hilarious, but so sad..Oh, and about the "drug, song stuff", I love it, cause with the solid stuff Cooper show us how "real experiences, reall stuff" can be the truestest things you'll ever have, cause its in pure form and shape, and anything you have to try finding the meanings, can be sad and ridiculously missleading, cause it leads to "lies" (not true/solid stuff) and misunderstandings. Thats why I love the "xyxjxyx" parts! Now Im officially a Cooper's fan, and my tip would be: it can be a tough book to read, hard to get, but it can be beautiful, so give it a try?

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Raymond Jarvis

Four Stars

Reviewed in the United States on August 28, 2017

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in line with other works

Reviewed in the United States on November 19, 2014

Perfect Condition!

One of America's best novelists

Reviewed in the United States on May 13, 2009

This one or "Try" are the novels I usually offer to those of my friends who have not read Cooper yet but may be uneasy about some of the content. What is often missed is his pitch-perfect ear for contemporary dialogue, his wit and marvelously graceful prose. Some compare him to Jean Genet. This is fair, and perhaps a nice thought to have when you begin reading his work, but in fact Dennis Cooper is better than that. Better than William Burroughs as well. He is one writer here now who will definitely be read in one hundred years (if people still by then read -- which I think they will).

2 people found this helpful

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Furryguy_1998@yahoo.com

This book is a complete waste of time!

Reviewed in the United States on October 20, 1998

I was eagerly looking forward to reading this book, as I thought it would be full of raw rough sex. What a disappointment! You have to wade through page after page of drug-related nonsense, most of which makes no sense whatsoever. What little sexual content there was was filtered through a drug-induced haze, making it seem totally unreal, disconnected, and obtuse. The author's obsession with children as sexual objects is hard enough to tolerate, but his refusal to write a coherent text with understandable plot, characters, and format is just a waste of time! Snuff-related erotica (especially gay related) is something very rare and hard to find. It seems to me the author could have been more graphic and straight-forward with his narrative, rather than being so "weirded-out" in his bizarre style of incomprehensible verbage that only someone in the drug culture could understand. This author is obviously intelligent, and I think he could have written an exciting, readable novel. But instead he chose to ramble on in a way that very few people could really understand. Such a waste! I hope his next novel will be more "traditional" in style (meaning simple and readable), while still being at the cutting edge of rough gay fiction.

2 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Ralph

Not what I would call an entertaining read. The reviews show people like it but it left me cold. My copy went to a charity shop.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 26, 2016

Verified Purchase

This book has some very good reviews. I read it from start to finish. There was a story there but frankly I had lost interest by the end of the book. Its a short read but really I did not enjoy the book and I will hesitate in reading anything else by Dennis Cooper.

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