America’s Most Wanted: An interview with Dennis Cooper

“I’ve long realized that a general puritanism in the US and a fear of difficult subject matter and a deep disrespect for the minds and ideas and emotions of teenagers and so on were going to be a problem my work would always face. It interests me to try to sneak through and around that prejudice.”

Dogs

Tonight I leave New York forever. I’m on Christopher street, the half litre of vodka decanted into my old jogging bottle and the plan is this – History day – I am history – I will stand beneath the triumphal Arch on which Duchamp in 1913 declared the Free Republic of Greenwich Village. I’ll have a double in the bar on 11th where Dylan Thomas had his last. Another double in Café Wa on McDougal where Hendrix played and Ginsberg ranted. Then walk reverently past the Stonewall memorial to 6th and Bleeker where the Weather Underground blew themselves to bits. Up to the 23rd and the Chelsea Hotel and Warhol and the Velvet Underground and Leonard Cohen’s love song for Janis Joplin and have another double.

In situ

My music begins with me alone in my bedroom. It’s a square room in a high-ceilinged Victorian house. I work on a computer at a pine desk, programming and arranging until my fingers freeze (there’s no heating). When I’m not at the desk I lie on the floor, or I perch in an old cradle full of stuffed animals. I’ve spent a long time trying to find a way to neatly compact all the books and records I keep for inspiration and, occasionally, distraction. I’ve had to make peace with the fact that I will never attain perfect alphabetical order.