Noumenal Net

It has been a long time since I’ve been so impressed with a book, so moved, so completely unnerved. When I first picked up Closer I had plenty of expectations. A little light reading, I thought. Some titillating gay erotica, probably a bit lurid, I thought.  At 130 pages, I would likely finish it in one sitting, I thought. Well I thought wrong.
   
    It took three days, rather than three hours to read this book. I had to pause after every chapter, catch my breath, and mentally prepare for the next chapter. The emotional intensity of Closer is breathtaking, its complexity dizzying. Having finished the novel, I still find myself dissecting the layers of metaphor and symbolism, puzzling my way through the labyrinth of shocking yet profound imagery. It would take another reading, perhaps, to fully appreciate the depth and inticracy of this carefully-wrought tale, but I don’t think I could physically endure reading this book a second time, at least not soon. Its that intense.
   
    Closer is the story of George, an aloof, beautiful and disturbed teen who is used and abused by a succession of ‘friends’. George becomes the object of their love, their passion, their obsession. Closer is also the story of surfaces - faces, clothing, skin, the banality of middle American life - and what lies beneath those surfaces. This book explores suburban America with the eye of a vivisectionist, and presents us with the sloppy red guts of reality.
   
  The characters are brilliantly crafted. We know them, though by the end of the book we may not want to. The ‘friends’, for the most part, are mundane creatures struggling to free themselves from the bonds of their own shallowness. George becomes their savior, their victim, their mirror. They seek in him the validation of their actions, an indication that they are more than they suspect they are. They seek in him the substance they lack and in the process, empty him. 

The character of George manages to be repulsive and lovable and pitiable all at once. Halfway through the book we are presented with the line that is the summation of George’s character: “Oh this is where I hide my feelings. In here they don’t get in anyone’s way.”        

The book is beautifully written; the prose is spare and forceful, vividly rushing us through a maze of tangled miseries. Dennis Cooper has a way of giving us the merest glimpse and at the same time making us feel as if we’ve seen too much. This book is in no way an easy or comfortable read, but it is not the graphic scenes of perversion or violence that are disturbing. I found the sheer force of the emotional content far more difficult to handle than the occasional coprophagic or necrophiliac scene.        

I did find one flaw in the book that marred the reading experience for me. If a writer is going to portray acid-heads, he should be one, or at least know one. Dennis Cooper’s knowledge of LSD seems to have come from a combination of government propoganda and information from some guy who ‘tried it once’. For a former acid-head like me, the almost cartoonish scenes involving drug use detracted from the raw intensity of the rest of the book, but this one minor flaw on the face of perfection is forgivable.    

    Perfection? yes I think this book comes near to perfection. It explores the bleakest and most horrific themes with sensitivity and portrays them with clarity and purpose. Closer manages to be both cerebral and visceral,  telling a dozen tales, all interlocked like the limbs of the orgiastic. Closer slices into our familiar landscape then turns it upside down, spilling its glistening entrails into the open. Closer gets a little too close, and I think it will take a long time to get this book out of my head.