The Sluts

Dennis Cooper’s The Sluts was published some 16 years ago, in 2004. The events described in the novel unfold over the course of a single year, between the summer of 2001 and the summer of 2002. Using a neo-epistolary format, the novel tells the “story” of an escort known as Brad over the course of that period of time, along with his various clients and possibly his pimp. At the time that the novel was written, the reliability of the internet as a source of information was hotly contested, there were no smart phones that accompanied a majority of the population in their daily lives, and apps as such did not exist. HIV was no longer a death sentence but much more stimgatized, as was unprotected or bareback gay sex. This was an era of anonymous message boards and underground websites, and when gay people were still not a part of the mainstream fabric of American life. This period also predated the advent of PreP, a daily regimen of the drug Truvada to prevent the transmission of HIV, social media and online dating or hookup apps as well as the boogeyman of fake news. It was published right when child pornography prosecutions were climbing in the wake of the Adam Walsh Act, and at a point in time in which snuff films were at once more of an urban legend and yet also more menacing than just a tired torture porn trope. Especially with the advent of the internet, file sharing and other new technologies that allowed people to anonymously access the darkest materials available. The novel is only superficially about extreme sex and violence. It forms the basis for the lurid fascination of the website participants and, by extension, the novel’s readers. That story is that of Brad, who may actually be named Steve, or may be someone else entirely. This is the story of Brad the escort serving as a sexual outlet for mostly older, wealthier men, who become increasingly extreme in their demands as the novel develops. His story is told largely through the accounts of others in the forms of reviews, sometimes through “Brad” in emails, sometimes through responses through his pimp, “Brian.” These accounts all differ, sometimes in subtle ways, sometimes in drastic ones. And that is what the novel is at base about: the way that the internet is unreliable not only because of what it contains, but what we bring to it. One participant in the book, “the webmaster,” asserts authority by corroborating or confirming this or that account, denying others or treating them skeptically, limiting or opening discussion, etcetera. But this is surely to drive up traffic to the site, to generate buzz if not (at this early time in the internet’s history) ad revenue. There is no way of independently verifying any of the information that the novel presents, or authenticating the various conflicting sources of that information. In many ways, this novel is about the fantasies that the site’s participants (and the novel’s readers, by extension) actually want to indulge in. Is it just rough bareback domination? There are entries for that, and a narrative that allows you to believe that’s the extent of Brad’s participating. Is it something more violent, humiliating or even lethal? There are entries and narratives that provide that. In some ways the effect of the novel’s conflicting entries is kind of a “choose your own adventure” story, and some entries give voice to dissenting moral views as well, views that reject the sexual exploitation of gay teenagers by Brad’s clients and the site’s users. The novel alludes to some kind of external reality, but ultimately it is the community of the site’s readers that create their own versions of Brad, their own understanding of who he is, what he looks like and what happens to him and the other participants in Brad’s stories, almost all of whom have their own (possibly fictional, always untrustworthy) accounts and entries on the site, be it in the form of a review or message in response, or through the account of another entry. Even when Brad himself appears to tell his own story, in the context of this anonymized internet website, it is just another contested claim of identity and narrative, one that is not necessarily more privileged than any other. Ultimately, the readers decide what to believe. Truth with a capital T may exist, but it is only pointed at and remains indeterminate and indeterminable in the context of the novel’s four corners. Possibly unknowable at a more base level as well. What is clear, however, is that this novel says much about the way that any community can weave together a yarn, even without any grand unifying narrative constraint beyond their base desires and impulses. Even when there are conflicting and contested narratives and identities and moral systems. Maybe even especially then. Finally, I want to address some of the critiques regarding characterization. I actually think that there is character development appropriate for this story. The entries differ based on the characters, and by far some of the most disturbing entries emerge in the section of the book that display “Ad” communications, including one by a father tired of taking care of his special needs son who is willing to sell him to be murdered. Another escort review entry by a disgraced physician is disturbingly clinical in its description of sexual violence. In both cases there is characterization appropriate for the particular entry. It is just the case that not much more is called for. This is my first Cooper book, but it will not be my last. Five stars, enthusiastically.

I'll give a short assessment of the work before I go into a more detailed review. The Sluts recounts numerous gay encounters through a variety of perspectives presented in new media forms like online reviews or forum exchanges. True to Dennis Cooper, the book is sexually charged in the best sense but also complex enough to deserve detailed analysis. The novel dances the line between high, experimental literature and candid gay erotic. Dennis Cooper has produced rare and, sure to be enduring, works of art, and The Sluts is probably his grandest achievement; this speaks volumes about Cooper's talent since the book is even more experimental than Cooper's already experimental body of work. Let's move on to a more in-depth examination. Forgive my starting this review by using a quote (I hate that tactic, but this aphorism is probably more applicable to this novel than any other work: “If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.” -Oscar Wilde Wilde's famous statement is a paradox, of course: how can one know if a book is worth reading again unless you've read it once? Dennis Cooper's The Sluts manages to solve the conundrum that Wilde presented more than a century ago: within the first few pages, you realize that this is a text that you will return to again and again. There are many works, especially works deemed canonical, that are worth reading hundreds of times, but it may take you time to realize that certain books deserve a second look. I wasn't impressed by The Brothers Karamazov during my first reading, but time passed and I now find Dostoevsky's novel as profoundly influential on my understanding of the world. What is impressive about The Sluts is how quickly you realize you are going to read this novel again. After reading a few of the review segments that make up the work, I was so entranced with the piece that I actually bought a second copy just in case something happened to the first. Enough of my anecdotes. The Sluts is composed of internet exchanges between men. The sections vary in the type of media format used: email exchanges with escorts, message board entries, and, most enticing of all, a series of exchanges posted on escort review sites that differ dramatically in content. You could approach this book as an anthology work consisting of separate forms of digital discourse, or you could attempt to perform the ambitious act of performing a unifying interpretation of the many parts (this formalist unification project is difficult in the escort review sections alone). Either way, Cooper leaves the approach up to you, mirroring the authority and protean identities we assume when we enter into realms of new media, assuming facades no matter how honest we think they are in their representations of ourselves. I will say that a holistic approach would probably reveal a quest to understand trust, deception, and authority in the digital age. These are the three major themes which Cooper interrogates, though reality and the virtual are constantly in dialog.. He isn't moralistic by any means. Any moral judgment assigned to the events of the narrative are brought by the reader through their own epistemic lens. The author's amoral narrative provides one of the only objectively leaning viewpoints of the work, objective in the sense that we know that every voice is subjective, thus able to be viewed at a distance at times. The rest is a pastiche of conflicting subjective accounts. Cooper's abstaining from moral judgments is furthered in terms of his attitude towards new media. He certainly isn't disparaging of it. Instead, he shows how so many individual needs, fetishes, and fantasies take on new forms through outlets like hook-up sites and ads written by men seeking sex, and he shows that older forms of cruising and hooking-up have survived the digital transmogrifications of how men ignite encounters. . Like the majority of Cooper's novels, the focus centers around same-sex desires and acts between men. You could see this work as an experimental extension of the George Miles cycle, where accounts of an individual are given but both don't rely on said individual's own perspective and shows the reports of others to be both conflicting and unreliable. The Sluts' deception and unreliability owes a great debt to Nabokov's Pale Fire, and rivals the older piece in its success in confounding the reader's quest for certainty. Returning to the three themes I mentioned earlier--deception, authority, and trust[and this is a reductionist view of the novel]--you must understand that a richer reading of this text evaluates these concepts as more accessible abstracts and as three loaded words redefined by new methods of connection. There are moments where you earnestly want trust even just one of the many many voices. Some seem earnest about their good intentions, and others appear just as reliable but have nothing but unapologetic, cruel intentions. Just so I am understood, Cooper leaves the judgments of his characters up to the reader. Those two assessments reflect my own views of characters that I have previously viewed as more virtuous and those whom I found repugnant. The novel is wonderfully sex-positive, with little dwelling on the shame associated with homosexual desires found in formative gay fiction. Cooper knows we've moved past that examination, and it is terribly refreshing to read a work by a writer who assumes that you have moved beyond the point of early internal conflict that is commonly associated with the coming out process and formative attitudes towards sex. Most of the depictions of sex are quite frank, though that is not to say that elements of emotional endearment are absent. Cooper's exploration of deception tends to cause the most confusion. The structure and aesthetic of the work is founded on lying to the reader, so piecing together plot is a process that is fraught with error from the beginning (though I'm not suggesting that piecing together this puzzle isn't worth it). One of my professors told me to think of Ulysses as a mystery to be solved: the same can be said for The Sluts. The characters; writings mostly seem to fulfill their own desires, and this is assuming they are accurately representing their want and, more importantly, themselves. To further the fantastic frustration provided by this frantic fairy tale, certain diction, descriptions, motivations, and the like overlap, suggesting that many of the personas that recount the encounters (particularly with the first escort sage with the hustler Brad) are fictions written by the same characters. You could argue that most of the book is written from the point of view of the same narrator who wants to escape into as many false, and hopefully authentic, facades as possible. While all three of the majors themes I've examined overlap constantly, authority is perhaps the most questioned concept in the work. It is possible that we hear the authentic voices of authentic characters, but we make these claims based on the authority established by their respective prose styles and both the amount and type of information they reveal to us. Authority in this chronicling of digital exchanges seems arbitrary and treacherous, but this isn't always shown to be negative. Early in the text, Cooper shows how it is easier to assess the authority of other voices by depicting the webmaster, who claims concern for the safety of clientele more so that Brad's more elaborated need for help, or at least support. This "concerned" webmaster allows the posts to play out, as if he is giving his patrons an exclusive look into the life of young hustler who might be suffer from mental health disorders, who might be in alcoholic, who might be dying, and who might be the target of a killer (these examples appear very early in the novel, so I wouldn't classify them as spoilers). This is a more didactic technique helping readers understand that the webmaster's authority is compromised: he's selling a brand of supposedly hyper-realistic erotic to anyone who hits up his site. Cooper also shows that we are desperate to trust, which requires relinquishing our personal authority. Such dis-empowerment can yield results ranging from the best sex one could ever have to hosting an unstable, possibly underage individual who is willing to threaten his client to get what he wants; all of this assumes the tales are reliable. Cooper doesn't push us to consider one theme or idea over the other. Since he has created a work that is so more shaped by reader expectations than other novels, he is also aware that the reader will bring with them a hierarchy of ideas that they will want to considered above others. The author's very rampant, though artful, twists and turns concerning what information is presented disrupts the reader's intention of how to interpret the book; leaving them in a state where they are more willing to consider alternative ways of examining Cooper's unsolvable mystery. One final note about how sexy the book is: the book is sexy. Portions of the work have appeared in a number of different formats, from the explicitly pornographic to more literary publications (at least I'm pretty certain about that second claim). The cover is sexy, but it is so appropriate: a beautiful young man who is shown to be partially obscured since the photo is fuzzy. One of the most appropriate covers I've even seen. If you're already a Cooper fan, and you've read this far, I'd implore you to buy a copy quickly. If you've never reader St. Dennis, The Sluts is an excellent starting point.

I find the acts described disturbing. To say the least, I am compelled to ask: what is the point of all this? And maybe that's the point. I don't know. Perhaps the author does. Maybe he's trying, in an inverse way, to ask the same question I have: why do people do these things to each other? Without asking why? What he describes is, sadly, actually "normal" behavior, in extremis. Why do most of these reprehensible acts constitute "normal" behavior during war? Why did Romans in amphitheaters enjoy watching beasts ravage men and men ravage men? Why did people in the middle ages and even later enjoy attending witch burnings, beheadings, and drawings and quarterings? As if they were a viable form of public entertainment? Why do people enjoy watching other people being tortured and torn apart? Is it some part of integral human consciousness? Why? Animals don't kill and maul for pleasure. It isn't torture. It's driven by survival, not pleasure. So why do people enjoy doing the acts detailed in these novels? Is this the question the author wants us to ask? Is it a form of mirror? Is he asking a question we refuse to admit even exists? Because we avoid the mirror. What I do see in this fiction is how - given a freedom of anonymity I don't have - my name is on this review - people will indulge in and unleash that part their being - the one they refuse to admit exists - the part they must deny out of shame, because it's against "society" and they no longer have amphitheaters to attend, only scandal by proxy on mass media. What good Christian would dare to admit expressing anger in -- well, you can't torture people who disagree with you to death anymore? Does the desire still exist? Well, you can do it online. And then there's the whole example of the distortion of information? How much of what you read is real or true? Or just extremely distorted gossip? The more lurid the better. I appreciate anything that might spur me to think or attempt to understand another state of consciousness.

This was a very disturbing book, I have read books with similar disturbing events. That said, this was very well done. I was not expecting it to be done in the way that it was, with reviews, and email, etc. It was the same surprisingly and brilliant way Dracula is written. The gross, depressing feeling you get with this book is authentic and very well done. This is so good and I recommend but don't at the same time. I would want to know that someone could take the horror genre like this before I recommend. If you can handle body torture and mutilation, then I recommend this book.

This book has been chosen by several reviewers as one of the most disturbing ever written, and I agree. It is very well written and structured, and once beginning it you may find it hard to put down. On the other hand, it is full of hard-core gay sex scenes, and if that offends you, better leave this one alone. Certainly not for everyone, bot a quirky classic nonetheless.

This novel is so bad that after trying to finish it, and failing,I threw it in the garbage. Poorly defined characters are linked to an impossible timeline and the drivel that passes for exploration is filled with truly disgusting images. Sensational just for the effect and not serious at all. Stay away from this garbage; if I could get my money back I would!

This book is insane. Really creatively written. Most entertaining book I've read in a long time. But, super messed up and takes things far past any lines of normal "acceptableness". This probably would've gotten canceled if it came out during the PC era. Super original. It blew my mind in a lot of ways, and even got meta with the idea of what is fiction and how is all of this real or wait no it's just a book - still processing lol

I just wanted to display it on my coffee table as something to joke about when people would come over. I did just that for almost a year and never read it. When I did finally come around to reading it I was just sitting there with my mouth agape for pretty much the entire thing. I read it over three nights as something to make my eyes tired just before bed. Its not a very long book. I have to say the violence was pretty intense and I don't know that I would have bought the darned thing if I had actually read the reviews or anything about it beforehand. Its definitely not a book for anyone who gets offended easily or is squeamish at all. Very very dark at times. Its an interesting read though. If the characters were a little more in depth I'd give it four stars, but pretty much everyone is one dimensional. I think it was written that way on purpose though because pretty much everything is from message boards in a fictional online community.

Great book. Came in good condition.

Worst book I have ever read. I never destroy books but I threw this one in the trash so that no one accidentally reads this. Depictions of extreme violence and sexual assault which served no literary or artistic value. Don’t waste your time with this awful book.

An important but notoriously hard to find book delivered promptly for a reasonable price.

El libro aún no lo leo pero en cuanto el pedido, llegó lastimado del lomo en la parte de abajo :(

Una historia contada online a través de una serie de reseñas, comentarios, respuestas y correos electrónicos. Escrito en 2006, es un estilo visionario. Pero no me gustaron las escenas de tortura y mutilación.