[In the following review, Limsky judges Try as overly self-conscious and redundant.]

It's not easy to care about a cast of characters composed of junkies, pedophiles and necrophiliacs, and who are continually described in terms of their filth, yet readers may develop a grudging affection for Ziggy, the hapless protagonist of Dennis Coopers third novel, Try.

The product of an abusive upbringing, Ziggy is a mess. One of his two gay fathers, Brice, has been molesting the eighteen-year-old since childhood, and Roger, Brice's ex and Ziggy's other father, habitually fantasizes about rimming his son; he writes Ziggy a series of letters delineating his proficiency in this and other anal-related activities. Disturbingly, every male character over thirty in Try is preoccupied by the anuses of adolescent boys; in fact, the novel is so replete with references to that orifice, that to accurately describe the story's action one would quickly deplete his store of synonyms for “asshole” and have to invent new ones.

Ziggy is in love with the straight Calhoun, who has shot up so much heroin that he can no longer locate receptive veins; Ziggy doesn't register the fact that his intermittently catatonic “best friend” is incapable of having a relationship with anything other than a syringe: “‘You mean so much to me,’” Ziggy tells his day-tripping pal. “‘You mean a lot to me too,’” Calhoun responds, “‘but you know, shut up.’” “‘Right.’ Ziggy responds, smacking his lips together.” Rebuffed by Calhoun, Ziggy falls into bed with his classmate Nicole, the transsexual Cricket, and eventually, one of his fathers (voluntarily, this time). It soon becomes clear that the scarred teenager is looking for love wherever he can find it; he's so emotionally available and so sexually accommodating that he's a parody of neediness.

Yet Ziggy—who spends his free time publishing a magazine for victims of childhood abuse, called I Apologize—emerges as a figure of not insubstantial resourcefulness and pathos, particularly when he's holding forth on his feelings. In a moment of uncharacteristic assertiveness, Ziggy exclaims to one of his sex partners, “‘If you loved me … you wouldn't rim me while I'm crying.’” Cooper makes Ziggy funny in spite of himself, though one can't help feeling that neediness is an easy target.

The author of the novels Closer and Frisk continues to push the envelope, not only in subject matter, but also in language. Cooper's voice is edgy and crisp, and his sensibility is unshockable, full of been-there-done-that attitude. His exhausting prose is characterized by etceteras and ellipses and loose-cannon sentences that go on for eight or ten lines, then snap into place, or not. He is often darkly funny, but his writing is too studied, too self-consciously post-post-modern in a Douglas Coupland sort of way, to seem truly free-associative, as is his intention. Too often the jazzy rhythm of his sentences remain in the reader's mind while content evaporates.

And many readers will simply find the book's rewards too scant for all the repellent acts—the necrophilia scenes are as clinical and odious as in American Psycho—one must endure. Cooper conveys an utter disgust with the human body in general, and one might tire of the sameness of the characters, who all seem obsessed with bodily scents, pausing at length to contemplate their own fetid armpits. Cooper wants to let us know that we're all dirty, disgusting, and guilty of abusing each other, and all that may reverberate with some readers; then again, it's conceivable that one could plod his way through Try just waiting for someone to bathe.