COOPER, Dennis. Closer.

ON HOLD

COOPER, Dennis. Closer.
New York: Grove Press, 1989

8vo (208 x 135 mm). [x], [2], 131, [134] pp. Signed on the title-page, two half-titles. Quarter black cloth over blue boards, spine lettered in red, in the original dustjacket; in mylar sleeve with fold adhered to jacket verso, minor stray smudge to front free-endpaper. Near fine.

FIRST EDITION, association copy, signed by Cooper in presentation to his close friend Ira Silverberg. Closer was Cooper’s first major novel, preceded by the small-press-published novella Safe; he began work on the five volumes that make up the George Miles cycle in the year of Safe’s publication. Silverberg was the Director of Publicity at Grove at the time, and would go on to variously be his editor, publisher, and literary agent for over two decades.

The first book in the George Miles cycle, only one of two featuring Miles under his own name. An object of desire to all his classmates, the main character is a passive figure who permits his lovers to use and pillage him as they wish. As he is passed among men, he inevitably encounters the limits of psycho-sexual pain. Like the protagonist of “My Mark,” the character of George Miles was based on a person from Cooper’s life of the same name: an acquaintance from his youth who later became his lover. Cooper wrote the novel while living in Amsterdam, running primarily on meth.

A legendary novel of the eros of depravity, it has been the subject of critical praise and attention since its publication. A fantastic association and an immaculate copy, marred only by the Brodart sleeve being adhered to the verso of the dustjacket itself.

PROVENANCE: Ira Silverberg

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