[In the following review, Laurence offers a positive assessment of Try.]

The writer Robert Hardin has noted “Dennis Cooper will be remembered as the most prophetic writer of his time.” These are strong words, and one can keep them in mind when reading Cooper's latest post-punk novel Try. The main character, Ziggy, is the adopted teenage son of two gay fathers with illusions of becoming respectable. Ziggy spends his time putting together a magazine called I Apologize. His two fathers abuse Ziggy sexually and otherwise. For comfort, he turns to his uncle, an overweight man who makes porn films, and to his best friend, Calhoun, who is a junkie. This deceiving little narrative shifts in point of view as it traces the lives of these strange people. Cooper fuses minimalism with new narrative techniques, references to film and video, and musical familiarity with Hüsker Dü and Slayer helps.

Cooper's fiction has always been a metaphysical struggle to fully possess the body. There is no human soul in Cooper's universe, or better yet, the body and soul are equal. When his characters try to act their wishes on the body, to produce its truth, they are sadists bordering on the impossible. Try is proof that Dennis may be the legitimate heir to William S. Burroughs. Frisk, Wrong,and Closer are an interesting counterpoint to Burroughs's earlier novels. But Cooper still hasn't written his Naked Lunch.