Dennis Cooper on the Fine Art of Rimming

In his very interesting Paris Review interview, writer Dennis Cooper tells us that "one of the highlights of my life is that the great Avital Ronell wrote an essay on the theme of rimming in my work." Cooper continues:


To me, rimming is the most charismatic sex act. Something about combining the face, which is the body�s most telling and detailed part, with the ass, which is a similarly compelling body part but for opposite reasons�given its plainness and inexpressiveness, its lowly status as a seat cushion and waste-disposal machine, contrasted with its high status as a sex object and aesthetic high point on the body�fascinates me. The way the face and ass affect each other physically and technically during the act of rimming has an emotional charge and is choreographically interesting. In the moment of exploring someone�s ass, you know things that the recipient can�t know because, due to the way the body is constructed, the ass and asshole are hardly available to their owner. You can handle and finger them, but even to see them properly requires the use of mirrors and awkward poses. When you rim someone, you�re getting to know him intimately in a way he can�t know himself. You can be entirely alone with him, unwatched, his judgment unknown and abstract. You have power over him and, at the same time, the act has subservient associations��you can kiss my ass,� et cetera�so you�re worshipping him as well.
Also, for all the charisma that rimming has, as an idea and from a third-party perspective, it�s quite a simple act in practice. There�s only so much a face can do to an ass and asshole, so it�s an act that happens largely in both parties� imaginations, and that makes it very interesting and challenging to write about.


Not long ago, I wrote in my notebook that a truly useful vade mecum for success in American corporate life might be titled A Field Guide to North American Analingus.


If Cooper's work is unfamiliar to you, have a taste of his novel Closer, the first volume in a now-completed five-book cycle. He's an unapologetically avant-garde writer and perhaps the most profoundly Francophile American literary figure of our time (not a bad thing at all in our post-post-post-Emersonian age). He also has a remarkable blog on which he seems to spend altogether too much time. (His blog is good enough to trigger a BlogSpot "Content Warning." Just click through it.) It includes a list of his 50 favorite novels, upon which I was pleased to find Max Frisch's Man in the Holocene and Calvino's Invisible Cities.