These bodies are to be worshiped to death. As always, disturbing and terrible, yet in such a blase fashion - as if these lives are only worth something in their destruction. Slicing up a worthless identity in search of something sub-surface, and acting out sexual fantasies in the process. Cooper's early inclination toward the sexually deviant and grotesque are certainly found in the shorter pieces - fiction and poetry - but 'A Herd' seems to be the true starting point for what will later become Cooper's signature 'George Miles Cycle.' The horrible fasciniation with 'the underworld' in plain view - drugs, burnouts, the wish to die and to kill in ways so as to make life, or at least the human form, have some kind of meaning. It is made up of two parts: the first is a collection of very short stories and poetry the second is a short story titled 'A Herd.' Many of the pieces in Part I are found in other Cooper collections, but I had not encountered 'A Herd' elsewhere and it is this piece which is the crowning acheivement of the collection.

The Tenderness of the Wolves is Dennis Cooper's second collection. Other works include the short-story collections Wrong and Ugly Man, poetry collections The Dream Police and The Weaklings, as well as the recent Smothered in Hugs: Essays, Interviews, Feedback, and Obituaries.ĭennis Cooper currently spends his time between Los Angeles and Paris. His post-George Miles Cycle novels include My Loose Thread, The Sluts and God, Jr. In 1985, he moved to Amsterdam for two and a half years, where he began his ten year long project, The George Miles Cycle, an interconnected sequence of five novels that includes Closer, Frisk, Try, Guide, and Period. From 1983 to 1985, he lived in New York City. From 1980 to 1983 he was Director of Programming for the Beyond Baroque Literary/Art Center in Venice, California. In 1976, he founded Little Caesar Magazine and Press, which he ran until 1982. He then attended one year of university at Pitzer College in Claremont, California, where he studied with the poet Bert Meyers. He attended Pasadena City College for two years, attending poetry writing workshops taught by the poets Ronald Koertge and Jerene Hewitt. While at Flintridge, he met his friend George Miles, who would become his muse and the subject of much of his future writing. He attended LA county public schools until the 8th grade when he transferred to a private school, Flintridge Preparatory School for Boys in La Canada, California, from which he was expelled in the 11th grade. He wrote stories and poems from early age but got serious about writing at 15 after reading Arthur Rimbaud and The Marquis de Sade. He grew up in the Southern California cities of Covina and Arcadia. Dennis Cooper was born on January 10, 1953.

The tenderness of wolves review