Guide Book

In the full context of the George Miles cycle, this is the fourth, sitting symmetrically across the relative calm of Try from Frisk. Which is the other of these narrated from within by a writer named "Dennis" who is prone to murderous fantasies. But as opposed to the cold amorality of the Dennis in Frisk, this is an apologetic, sometimes antithetically sentimental Dennis. Who actually has a hand in more direct harm than Frisk's Dennis despite this. (Doubtless, though, neither Dennis seems likely to be more "real".)

Also like Frisk, this is a book about sublimation. A layer of artists interpreting the story for others, or working through their shit on various kinds of page. Eddie W spotted a philosopher's stone of sorts in here, even, that ultimate sublimator, and Cooper here aspires to alchemy in several senses. Does it work? The question itself is an oversimplification of the terms.

This is also about death and the sublime, which in this context definitely belong separated by only two short words. Drugs are a proxy oblivion, of course, so they're also close, but there are... problems to that approach, always. But through these and other mediums, Guide is suffused in a non-verbal hum, or exhalation, or static: a brush with the inexpressible, a single continuous murmur of collective unconscious. There's a collective conscious of sorts too, a constant mirroring buzz of pop lyrics, sometimes by literal and actual bands of the mid-90s, sometimes transmogrified into proxy selves to better be sexualized and dissected. Because here to sexualize is to dissect. Or to want to. And love? Cooper -- and "Dennis" -- keep a close eye on the abyssal spaces between love, sex, and desire at all times. But love is granted an unaccustomed level of... possibility this time. Despite all the other events that surround it in a dense and inextricable web of fabrication, obfuscation, and occasionally even truth.