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A review by ghostboyreads
I Wished by Dennis Cooper
4.5
"George is, I don't know, sitting, slumped forward. Blood is pouring from his mouth and nose. I was told that. There's a crater in his head. The top back part. It's full of mangled brains and skull and blood. He fired into his mouth, I was told, and so it would have to be there. The crater can't talk or do anything. It needs an artist."
I wished, is, perhaps Dennis Cooper's most personal, and most powerful novel to date. This is, without a doubt, Cooper at his most vulnerable. This is Cooper cutting his heart out, and slathering it across the page until it's one obtrusive, pulpy smear we're forced to contend with. I Wished is deeply sad, and so very painful to experience, and it's what feels like Cooper's most intimate of novels. It's a rare delight in literature, to be spoken to so openly and authentically, to feel as if you're included in something so intensely private. At once both horrible and beautiful, this is a heartbreakingly sincere novel, it's just so completely devastating, it feels like having your innards ripped out and chewed upon by a gaggle of starving hyenas. There's just something about this novel that makes you feel completely fucking violated once it's all over.
Cooper, here, feels tamed in terms of the pure content he's sharing with us, yet, it's actually his most brutal and disturbing book to date, and that's due to how unflinchingly honest this novel is. While I Wished, does feel like a coda to the George Miles Cycle, it's not, not really, at least Cooper himself says that wasn't the intention here. Whatever it may be, it feels like being eviscerated - ever since finishing I Wished, I feel hollowed out, and empty, and what a magical thing it is, for a novel to gift us with such strong feelings. Entirely enrapturing, this novel moves away from the hallucinatory detached feeling that comes with Cooper's other novels, and leaves us with something much more surreal yet, grounded. I Wished is the greatest love story ever told. Like gazing upon my own obsessive, aching soul, it's a haunting thing to experience.
I wished, is, perhaps Dennis Cooper's most personal, and most powerful novel to date. This is, without a doubt, Cooper at his most vulnerable. This is Cooper cutting his heart out, and slathering it across the page until it's one obtrusive, pulpy smear we're forced to contend with. I Wished is deeply sad, and so very painful to experience, and it's what feels like Cooper's most intimate of novels. It's a rare delight in literature, to be spoken to so openly and authentically, to feel as if you're included in something so intensely private. At once both horrible and beautiful, this is a heartbreakingly sincere novel, it's just so completely devastating, it feels like having your innards ripped out and chewed upon by a gaggle of starving hyenas. There's just something about this novel that makes you feel completely fucking violated once it's all over.
Cooper, here, feels tamed in terms of the pure content he's sharing with us, yet, it's actually his most brutal and disturbing book to date, and that's due to how unflinchingly honest this novel is. While I Wished, does feel like a coda to the George Miles Cycle, it's not, not really, at least Cooper himself says that wasn't the intention here. Whatever it may be, it feels like being eviscerated - ever since finishing I Wished, I feel hollowed out, and empty, and what a magical thing it is, for a novel to gift us with such strong feelings. Entirely enrapturing, this novel moves away from the hallucinatory detached feeling that comes with Cooper's other novels, and leaves us with something much more surreal yet, grounded. I Wished is the greatest love story ever told. Like gazing upon my own obsessive, aching soul, it's a haunting thing to experience.
"I wrote the books thinking George would read the Cycle and go, "Wow, you think I have so many possibilities, you find me so inspiring, you wanted me to die young so much more spectacularly than the boring way I wanted to, you must love me, I mean you'd have to, and I must love you too, how could I not after all the work you've done, and I do," but he killed himself before the first of them was even published."
As a reviewer, it's impossible for me to be unbiased about Dennis Cooper. Everything he writes is effective, but, I Wished hits with the power of a speeding freight train. What we have here, in this delightfully grim little novel, is the perfect portrait of grief, something that shows a real, genuine sensitivity. I Wished is an ode to those we hold dear, a sonnet for the ones that could never love us back, a lamenting of the ones we lost. A completely profound novel, something that just simply begs to be read, Cooper's writing here is stripped down entirely, he's never needed fancy tricks but, I Wished is his most sparsely written offering. It's inconceivable, to properly express my adoration of this novel without delving into my own grief - beautiful stuff, this is what literature is about, this is the reason I read.
"This is a novel that only wants to really, really matter to him in the hope that, if it does, that'll mean he loves me too because he'll know I could do anything I want right now, and I wrote this. I worship the flowing lava and whatever else a billion years ago that eventually formed the ground he walks on."