Very Online, With an Abundance of Menace: On Meghan Lamb’s “Coward”

"Coward" cover

Given the amount of time that we spend in online spaces, it’s not surprising that many writers have sought to replicate the experience of social networks, text messaging, and shitposting in their prose. Finding a way to do it without stumbling along the way is a little more of a challenge. (There’s an early-2000s novel by one of my favorite writers where the evocation of texting felt so dissonant it took me out of the narrative.) And while many of us have been online for years or decades, it feels like it’s taken literature a little bit of time to catch up.

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Currents, an Interview Series with Brian Alan Ellis (Episode 61: Dennis Cooper)

Dennis Cooper

DENNIS COOPER is an American novelist, poet, critic, editor, filmmaker and performance artist who currently spends his time between Los Angeles and Paris. He is known for the George Miles Cycle, a series of five semi-autobiographical novels (Closer, Frisk, Try, Guide, and Period) published between 1989 and 2000, and is the director (with Zac Farley) of Permanent Green Light and Like Cattle Towards Glow. I Wished (Soho Press, 2021) is his first novel in ten years.

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