The Sluts - BookWyrm

Paperback, 304 pages

English language

Published Sept. 28, 2005 by Carroll & Graf.

ISBN:: 978-0-7867-1674-6
OCLC Number:: 62110717

(2 reviews)

Set largely on the pages of a website where gay male escorts are reviewed by their clients, and told through the postings, emails, and conversations of several dozen unreliable narrators, The Sluts chronicles the evolution of one young escort's date with a satisfied client into a metafiction of pornography, lies, half-truths, and myth.

Explicit, shocking, comical, and displaying the author's signature flair for blending structural complexity with direct, stylish, accessible language, The Sluts is Cooper's most transgressive novel since Frisk, and one of his most innovative works of fiction to date.

2 editions

Otts reviewed The Sluts by Dennis Cooper

Same ol’ Cooper … but on the internet

1 star

I mean, this cover, that title: how could I not? I read Cooper’s “Closer” and Frisk” in the 90s, and it felt transgressive, dangerous: everything the world told me gayness was. This was also a heady time of increasing representation, navigating sex, morality, pleasure while narrowly missing AIDS’ clutches.

But Cooper’s only got one set of tricks, as it were. The same repugnant characters preying on each other … psych! 🥱

JoeJoh reviewed The Sluts by Dennis Cooper

Review of 'The Sluts' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Cooper writes about the intersection of sex and violence. This novel, mostly told through anonymous message boards provides a slew of unreliable narrators. While Cooper is often labeled as a transgressive writer, I really believe he transcends such labels, and it would be reductionist to say that his novels are transgressive. I find them wrapped in so many layers of honesty that isn't always present in the works of other transgressive writers. Highly recommended unless you have a low tolerance for sadism.

Subjects

General & Literary Fiction
Literature of special Gay interest
Modern fiction
Fiction
Fiction - General
Gay
Fiction / Gay