NewPages Blog

Guest Post by Vikash Goyal.

George Milles is the mind of the 21st century teen. He is beautiful. He is a boy with no ambitions—unless you count wanting to live in Disneyland as one. He doesn’t know the pathways of his life and is consequently lost midway. He is passive and has a dormant attitude. His beauty is unparalleled and draws boys to him like flies to turds. But with so much attention in his life, it is still lifeless.

Cooper’s semi-autobiographical five book series is inspired by the writings of de Sade, which is quite evident while reading. Closer is the first in the series, perfectly introducing the protagonist George. The book, at times, reads like a pirated version of de Sade’s The 120 Days Of Sodom although nowhere near the majesty of it.

The teens who form the center of the book are disturbed, confused, and fake. They move around like a body without a belly button. Their only solace is in drugs and sex. They know no human bonds and let their death bound lives pass them by embroiled in perpetual flimsy relationships.

The writing is in teen lingo, but reads well enough. The book doesn’t hold on to a proper plot and is written in more of a documentary style. There is a dissection of the mind of the coming-of-age youth, spelling out the conditioning of priority-devoid teens. The book is refreshing in its matter of fact portrayal of homosexuality without the unnecessary drawing of the microscope over their sexuality or struggle.

George, the protagonist, is the thread in the book that binds the different unique characters, who at some point, share a liaison with him. Not one character in the book is sure and positive about his life, including a couple of characters in their forties. The book tries to encapsulate the extremes of pleasure and passion through episodes of gross torture and sexual acts, and, in a couple of cases, even death.

The book can seem to move in circles now and then, ending up becoming a few pages too many. For those that like to experiment.

---

Closer by Dennis Cooper. Grove, 1990.

Reviewer bio: Vikash Goyal is a writer of prose and poetry, best known for his blog “Kashivology” on WordPress, that chronicles the defining moments in the life of its protagonist, Kashiv, through a series of surrealistic, existential and philosophical prosaic poetry. He also reviews books on Instagram @Kashivology.

Buy this book from our affiliate Bookshop.org.

Guest Post by Diana De Jesus.

Nietzsche once remarked, “In the end, one experiences only one’s self.”

The novel Hating Olivia: A Love Story by Mark SaFranko truly emphasizes this notion through the eyes of our main protagonist Max Zajack, a struggling artist and wannabe writer who lives in a rundown apartment in New Jersey. To support himself, Zajack takes on a low-paying job loading trucks for a living and playing gigs in nightclubs and bars. During one of his gigs, he meets Olivia Aphrodite, a literature student who changes his life in more ways than one. Continue reading “Experiencing One’s Self”

Guest Post by Ann Graham.

Eleven short stories mostly first published in well-known literary journals delve into the sinewy reality of our being human animals. The first story explores the emotionally precarious time for female teens. In the second story, “Feast,” Rayna’s miscarriage causes her to experience hallucinations. “I saw the first baby part in a bouquet of marigolds. . . .”

In “Tongues” Zeyah thinks for herself and endures the anger of their pastor and her parents. Gloria is dying of cancer in” The Loss of Heaven,” and Fred doesn’t understand her refusal of more treatments: “He wanted to shake her, grip hard into those bird-boned shoulders until [ . . . ] only a monster would treat a dying person like that.”

In “The Hearts of Enemies” complex mother daughter relationships are derailed with each one’s own private emotions.  In “Outside the Raft” the guilt after a near drowning, “I didn’t know how to apologize for wanting to save my own life.” “Exotics” is the shortest story and, for me, absolutely accusatory of our animalistic capacity for cruelty.

Despite some of the subject matter, the stories are uplifting in that we learn about endurance. Moniz exposes truths about our animal-ness that nobody wants to admit or accept as reality and shows us how we might survive anyway. Dantiel W. Moniz is an author unafraid to poke our corporality and the way it blends with our psyches.

---

Milk Blood Heat by Dantiel W. Moniz. Grove, February 2021.

Reviewer bio: While trying to remain hopeful that democracy will survive, Ann Graham reads and writes in Texas. Once in a while, she comments about a short story on her blog: www.ann-graham.com.

Buy this book from our affiliate Bookshop.org.