The Autobiography of a Stutterer
In Autobiography of a Stutterer, Joseph S. Cooper has realized
a beautifully timed sequence of works running through the double
gates of lips and teeth, and faith and love. He arrives at the
fabulous tongue, personal runway of language, and from there the
words take off and return in a series of spasmodic flights that
together comprise a breakthrough book. Like a new family member,
please welcome it and enjoy its unpredictably bright and wide-eyed
movements.
-Reed Bye
Joseph S. Cooper’s, Autobiography of a Stutterer positions
the reader (performer) in the liminal spaces between articulation
and interruption, fluency and stuttering, the spaces between monologue
and dialogue, language and body, in order to develop a narrative
wholly engaging, critically poised, and deconstructive. It is
no small accomplishment that this autobiography carries within
it a specific subjectivity (the author’s) at the same time
it stages the desubjectification of its readers/performers. This
text allows you to lose yourself within it, as one ethical body
encountering another. In fact it holds the potential to reveal
how being a more ethically responsible human might be to do just
that.
-Jared Hayes
Joseph S. Cooper writes where the body does not exactly say yes
but where it wants something else. By this I mean the bodies he
is making are profoundly wild: propelled by phonetic imperatives
and breaks in the deep structure that could be described as aberrant,
but which I prefer to think of as delicious. What is a mouth and
where is it going? I read his work as a future for the tongue,
whether that's English, pre-English or the English that's dismayed
and privately ashamed (in a good way) to find itself in such proximity
to the teeth. I suggest wearing a gum-shield. I suggest serving
Jell-O to your guests. Joseph S. Cooper is a genius and, to find
out how the party really got going, I suggest you open this amazing,
completely frightening book.
-Bhanu Kapil
Joseph S. Cooper is originally from Buffalo, NY. He is the recipient
of an M.F.A. from Naropa University. His most recent publications
include The American Drivel Review, Big Game Books, BlazeVox 2k6,
Bombay Gin, Dusie Press, Hot Whiskey Magazine, Small Town, and
String of Small Machines. His chapbook entitled, “Insuring
the Wicker Man Shadow Created Delusion,” co-authored with
Jared Hayes, was published by Hot Whiskey Press 2005.
Book Information:
· Paperback: 101 pages
· Binding: Perfect-Bound
· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books] (Dec 2006)
· ISBN : 1-934289-29-9
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