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Cooper has recently become prominent as an essayist dealing with issues of animal euthanasia and shelter killing. He has written a series of articles for the [[Huffington Post]], highly critical of [[PETA]] (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), and in support of the [[No-kill shelter|No Kill movement]]. This work, "PETA's Death Cult,"<ref>{{citenews|author=DOUGLAS ANTHONY COOPER|title=PETA's Death Cult, Part One. (PETA's Celebs: Naked in the Name of Mass Pet Slaughter)|date=2012-03-22|work=[[Huffington Post]]|url=http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/douglas-anthony-cooper/peta-kill_b_1352462.html|accessdate=2012-10-25}}</ref> was announced on September 20 2012 as a finalist for the Canadian Online Publishing Awards, in the category of "Best Online-Only Article or Series of Articles."<ref>[http://www.canadianonlinepublishingawards.com/2012/winners.php Canadian Online Publishing Awards].</ref>
Cooper has recently become prominent as an essayist dealing with issues of animal euthanasia and shelter killing. He has written a series of articles for the [[Huffington Post]], highly critical of [[PETA]] (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), and in support of the [[No-kill shelter|No Kill movement]]. This work, "PETA's Death Cult,"<ref>{{citenews|author=DOUGLAS ANTHONY COOPER|title=PETA's Death Cult, Part One. (PETA's Celebs: Naked in the Name of Mass Pet Slaughter)|date=2012-03-22|work=[[Huffington Post]]|url=http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/douglas-anthony-cooper/peta-kill_b_1352462.html|accessdate=2012-10-25}}</ref> was announced on September 20 2012 as a finalist for the Canadian Online Publishing Awards, in the category of "Best Online-Only Article or Series of Articles."<ref>[http://www.canadianonlinepublishingawards.com/2012/winners.php Canadian Online Publishing Awards].</ref>




==Background==
==Background==

Revision as of 07:16, 28 September 2012

This article is about the writer. For the American Civil War general, see Douglas H. Cooper.

Douglas Anthony Cooper is a writer who was the first to serialize a novel on the World Wide Web: Delirium, published in 1994 by Time Warner Electronic Publishing (TWEP).[1]

He continues to be at the forefront of electronic publishing, and his Young Adult novel, Milrose Munce and the Den of Professional Help, became a surprise bestseller when it was accidentally published in Amazon Kindle format by Doubleday.[2] It was deemed a "2008 Book of the Year" by the United Kingdom's foremost children's review site: Lovereading 4 Kids.[3]

Cooper has recently become prominent as an essayist dealing with issues of animal euthanasia and shelter killing. He has written a series of articles for the Huffington Post, highly critical of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), and in support of the No Kill movement. This work, "PETA's Death Cult,"[4] was announced on September 20 2012 as a finalist for the Canadian Online Publishing Awards, in the category of "Best Online-Only Article or Series of Articles."[5]

Background

Douglas Anthony Cooper was born in Toronto, Canada. Much of his fiction was written in New York City, where he was a Contributing Editor at New York Magazine. He currently resides in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Cooper has an M.A. in philosophy. He studied architecture, but did not complete a degree. These are the disciplines that inform his first two novels, which have been described as "architectural fiction." Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times wrote that his "elliptical narrative style recalls works by D. M. Thomas, Paul Auster, Sam Shepard and Vladimir Nabokov."[6]

Architectural collaboration

His works with Diller Scofidio + Renfro include a landscape piece at the 2002 World's Fair in Switzerland, and "Chain City," a video installation at the 2008 Venice Biennale of Architecture. He also partnered with Peter Eisenman on a major piece for the Architecture Triennial in Milan: an installation based on Cooper's second novel, Delirium.[7]

Novels

  • Amnesia (1992), Cooper's first novel, was nominated for the Books in Canada First Novel Award, and longlisted for the Commonwealth Prize. It chronicles the unraveling of a Toronto family, and the amnesiac girl who ruins one of its children, Izzy Darlow. The book is structured as an urban labyrinth, in which the obsessive power of Eros does battle with the compulsive need to forget. Cooper deals with memory theory throughout the novel, and emphasizes its relationship to classical rhetoric.[8] He studied Latin rhetoric, and was a serious competitive debater in college - he was Canadian National Champion in 1985, and Runner-Up Best Speaker at the 1985 World Championships. Amnesia gained a following among architecture students and academic theorists, and Cooper has been deeply involved in the architectural community as an artistic collaborator.[9]
  • Delirium (1998) was the first novel to be serialized on the World Wide Web. It was initially published digitally in 1994, by Time Warner Electronic Publishing (TWEP), a pioneering effort to create online content. Delirium is the second Izzy Darlow novel, and follows the character to Manhattan. Darlow finds himself caught up in the tale of Ariel Price, a legendary architect who has vowed to murder his own biographer. The experiment in architectural structure initiated by Amnesia becomes increasingly complex and monstrous, in line with the projects designed by Price. The New York Times observed that Cooper "invents an underground city of the dead and the disenfranchised that suggests the night visions in The Crying of Lot 49 (by Thomas Pynchon)."[10] The novel deals with problems of narrative itself, and in particular a person's will to control his or her story, even after death. As with Amnesia, Delirium addresses the nature of horror, and the impossible drive to redeem the broken ego.
  • Milrose Munce and the Den of Professional Help (2007) is a gothic novel for young adults about a pair of flamboyant teenagers who can see and converse with dead students, and their war with the school psychologist who is set on convincing them that they cannot. It is a black comic look at the tactics of guidance counselors and juvenile psychiatrists. It was on the Financial Times Bestseller List in London, England, after the paper observed: "Appealing to the misfit in all of us, Milrose Munce is a grand, gigglesome read."[11]

References

  1. ^ NANCY COSTIGAN (2002-08-01). "Write: The Digital Book as Literary Form". HorizonZero. Retrieved 2012-10-20.
  2. ^ JOHN BARBER (2010-05-19). "Publishing: From failed novel to chart-topper". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved 2012-10-20.
  3. ^ "Book of the Year: Ages 9-11". Lovereading 4 Kids. Retrieved 2012-10-20.
  4. ^ DOUGLAS ANTHONY COOPER (2012-03-22). "PETA's Death Cult, Part One. (PETA's Celebs: Naked in the Name of Mass Pet Slaughter)". Huffington Post. Retrieved 2012-10-25.
  5. ^ Canadian Online Publishing Awards.
  6. ^ MICHIKO KAKUTANI (1994-02-25). "Books of The Times: An Ancient Mariner Tells a Haunting Modern Tale". New York Times. Retrieved 2008-08-05.
  7. ^ CLAIRE E. WHITE (1998-04-01). "Interview with Douglas Cooper". Writers Write. Retrieved 2008-08-05.
  8. ^ JAMES POLK (1994-03-06). "Izzy's Own Story". New York Times. Retrieved 2012-10-24.
  9. ^ NED CRAMER (1998-07-01). "The Plot Thickens: An Interview with Novelist Douglas Anthony Cooper". Architecture Magazine. Retrieved 2012-10-20.
  10. ^ CRAIG SELIGMAN (1998-03-15). "Towering Ambition". New York Times. Retrieved 2012-10-24.
  11. ^ JAMES LOVEGROVE (2008-05-24). "Milrose Munce and the Den of Professional Help". Financial Times. Retrieved 2012-10-24.

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