Little House on the Bowery

Dennis Cooper stood me up in Paris, and although it’s not very original of me, I have to confess that I was offended. Then, walking through Les Halles, an area famous for peep shows and potholders, I viewed it from a different angle, one that made me laugh out loud. Cooper’s Little House on the Bowery series, the planned subject of our interview, is meant to offer a venue for off-the-radar writers whose work is neither normal nor commercially viable. According to his introduction, the series was formed as “a reliable source...an oasis for people who have come to see contemporary literature as a spotty, conservative medium.” Considering this commitment to be consistently avant-garde, what could be more fitting than Cooper disappearing?

Incidentally, it was on April Fools Day, 2003, that Brooklyn-based Akashic Books issued a press release about the new series, which would publish two works of fiction each year. The notice stated that Akashic, with Cooper as editor, planned to “reclaim literary fiction’s lost ground and build on its durable and truly progressive line of books that will guide readers rather than merely chase market-tested mainstream tastes.”

Cooper’s not chasing anything, but I’ve been chasing Cooper. I followed up our previous email exchange by asking if he would be willing to answer a few written questions—and never heard from him again. According to his prolific blog (denniscooper-theweaklings.blogspot.com), Cooper has now left France for a show in Glasgow, pictures of which he’s already posted. Every day, he writes one long block of responses to the individuals who have contacted him, prefaced by his recommendations for readings, music, film, books and art.

Other than the Internet, maybe there are only two places, everywhere in the world, you can rely on for conversation with strangers: AA meetings and casinos. Face-to-face meetings offer obvious advantages, like seeing someone’s expressions, say, or doing something together more memorable than clicking away on a computer from opposite sides of the Atlantic. But the disadvantages, as I witnessed at Benjamin Weissman’s reading in April, were no less real.

Weissman, one of the “obscure writers” whose work has been published in the series, is the author of the short story collections Dear Dead Person and Headless. In the latter, according to the back cover, he “turns his daredevil wit and fearless storytelling gifts on subjects ranging from Hitler’s secret life as a skier to the philosophical musings of identical twin porn stars.” Weissman lives in Los Angeles, and when I saw he was coming to New York and would be reading at the New School, I contacted Akashic about possibly interviewing him. Alas, I was told that, “Benjamin really prefers email interviews.” I showed up to the reading anyway, and I wasn’t disappointed.

First, he passed out a pummet of strawberries to the audience, and then he started to sweat. He sweat right through his Veruca Salt T-shirt, before jumping up and down, spinning in a circle and then leaning over the podium to say, “I’ve eaten a lot of protein today, so I should be fine.” He read a piece of his art criticism, and started on a story about a family in which the sons literally stab their father in the back—but stopped midway to explain a monologue. “That would be the knife talking.” When Weissman reads, his voice is so stilted it sounds like he’s looking at someone else’s writing for the first time. Ten minutes in, my friend Phoebe passed me a note: “You owe me a blowjob for this.” Then Weissman read a line so strange and beautiful it made me close my eyes and listen. “There were snowflakes with voices deeper than Barry White.”

The man is some kind of genius, but not everyone’s—which underscores the purpose of the series. Here’s the lesson, learned by anyone who’s tried online dating: Some people, whether you like them or not, really aren’t better in person. I had intended to ask Cooper whether or not he thinks the Internet has dismantled the necessity of a real, geographical art and literary scene. Userlands, the latest book in the series, was edited by Cooper and is compiled entirely of Internet fiction. Reading it, I kept coming back to the same questions. If Cooper is in France, and the writers scattered across the globe, then there’s no one place for writers to commune—other than online.

People don’t need to be in the city anymore, other than to show up for occasional readings. But isn’t something ultimately lost? Is anyone who actually lives on the Bowery creating anything avant-garde anymore, or doing something other than buying raspberries and granola at Whole Foods? Is the Internet the new (and only affordable) writer’s colony? A substitute for Gertrude Stein’s salons? If so, is it restrictive or freeing? What’s to keep writers from holing up with tinned tuna fish, in their pajamas, typing away at an opus for their eyes only—and reading Dennis Cooper’s blog updates as a substitute for friendship?