not to make a book review all about other books, but the window for writing a good internet novel may be gone. my generation and younger probably can't write good internet novels because fish don't write good water novels. patricia lockwood couldn't do it (and lauren oyler certainly hasn't). rejection almost got there, but tony is too masochistic to really make it stick. the zoomer cohort is hopeless so far and i don't see that changing

the sluts is over twenty years old--i don't understand why we're still talking about when the real "internet novel" will happen. it clearly has, and nobody has done better, and maybe no one ever will. it has everything that makes an internet novel feel internetty: a "rabbit hole" of fake identities, unreliable accounts, violence and power, paranoia, borderline impossible sexual fantasies, and bizarre resolutions. this is all presented in the same breakneck pace as scrolling a feed, with the unreal parallel-world quality endemic to internet content. the book is stored in the same mind-cabinet as the posts that would be linked in a hundred-page google doc exposing a popular video game streamer as a serial child rapist

so what is this book's secret? i think it's just baby boomer dennis cooper's unashamed relationship with his antisocial id. he knows he's a pervert and doesn't care, which differentiates him sharply from modern degenerates, who care a lot what you think of them, despite appearances. cooper's refreshing lack of give-a-shit (even if it's just an illusion--what artist doesn't want their art to be seen?) keeps his novel from feeling self-conscious or irony-poisoned. this holds true before, during, and after a client makes a guy swallow his own balls