The Weaklings
A native of Southern California, and born in 1953, Dennis Cooper is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Closer, Frisk, Try, Guide, Period, My Loose Thread, The Sluts, God Jr., the short story collection Wrong, and a collection of poetry, The Dream Police. For the past few years he has been living mostly in Paris, France where he has been working on theater productions with Gisele Vienne and maintaining a blog. His work with Vienne was featured in the 2012 Whitney Biennial and Cooper also curated a large group show at the Centre Pompidou in February of 2012. Cooper was awarded France’s Prix Sade for 2007, an award for writers “going beyond all forms of censure and who [defy] the moral or political order against all forms of intellectual terrorism.” He also continues to edit the Little House on the Bowery series of books, an imprint of Akashic books.
It was a great honor to publish this premiere edition of Cooper’s first collection of poetry in twelve years. The Weaklings was a beautiful book, made more so by the fabulous Cooper inspired drawings of Jarrod Anderson. A larger run paperback version is expected sometime in the future from Harper Perennial. Cooper’s first book with Harper Perennial is out now, the collection of short fiction, Ugly Man.
After the opening of Cooper’s theater production Jerk, Dennis came to New York for a reading of The Weaklings at John Connelly Presents on Thursday, March 13th, 2008 which was a success (and also a lot of fun, see pics here).
Below is a view of the book when it was fresh from the press, all 300 received on Valentines. All quickly sold out. Thanks to Teddy Telles for book photos below, Stan Wolkoff at Masterpiece Printers for such a fine job, Joseph Knight for his design and Alex Kasavin of VOID for the opportunity to do this book, – C.M..
