Do what they say you couldn’t. Create your own terminology. My writing is a portrait. A debacle. An admission. Romanticizing bliss, ills. Bizarre friends, torn Ideals.
How would you describe Cambodia?
Les Cook: A puzzle missing a piece. Cambodia can bring a person to madness or settle them. Cambodian people are the most forgiving people I’ve met. Mountains, rivers, plains, islands, lakes, jungle, lowlands, highlands, and sea. They say everything is in Cambodia; you don’t need to go anywhere. A perfect place for an artist to realize their seriousness.
Cambodia is the home of my family. I do not have a country I call ‘My’. Earth is my home for now, not a nation.
How many books have you published?
Les Cook: Four. Two more are coming in 2024.
Cool in no Time. Cool meets Manchu. They are working as designers for a futurist corporation. They have access to a Consciousness Filtering machine. Zen Space. Making a living in a world that your mind grasps while experimenting with a physical reality. They become involved as Characters in the design and out of the design. Divulging. Captivating. Free spirit. People expressing their feelings, not tied to cultural norms.
Tempting Fiction Library Girl. Tantalizing thrills too far. Departure, Flagrant: Alluring Macau. Ecstatic: Inviting Tiger love wealth death. Pretty Vroom: An irresistible woman… erotic so far. 74: Devotion chasing a persuasive mystic fortune.
The Program Illusion. From self-imposed retreat to world venture. Travel with a freethinking man, and a woman free to think. Year 2000. Isolation Spa. Art of Confusion. Damascus – Peshawar – Kashgar. Bratislava – Vancouver – Phnom Penh, and the lot in between.
Lit for Nothin. Lust, Death, Astral Plane, Work, Travel, Humor. A family man returns to British Columbia from Cambodia to solve life traveled. Fights romantic affairs. Venezuela, Peru, revisited.
What do you write about?
Les Cook: What I’m gifted to write. You’d have to ask a reader what I write about – I write about life. What I’ve experienced, seen, thought. Enticing rendezvous with women before after during. Interesting people places scenes. Drifter reflection. Death, Awakening, Travel. That was my first phase.
Phase two I wrote about advanced society. Enticing rendezvous with women before after during. Experimental experience. Eccentric people places scenes. Drifter, outer inner reflection. Death, Awakening, Exploring.
Before I wrote of the past present. Now I write of the present future. Next… let’s wait and see before I speak.
What is your next book about?
Les Cook: My next three books:
1) Cool in No Time. Designing virtual characters for a company as investors. A man and woman become involved in both reality and as the characters they have designed. They have access to a Consciousness Filtering Machine. Zen Space. Free spirit. People expressing their feelings, not tied to cultural norms.
2) Entertain Simpatico. Entertain Simpatico is about adventure as an Observer in a new type of company acting as a nation. Artificial Intelligence is the Leader for the Resident. Study of life. Astronaut chair. Designer Potion Tea. Studio rooms offering experiences. Live die. Live and die at the same time. Nothingness. Spiritual fitness. Simulation rooms. Seduction. Being tasked with having sex with your simulation’s lover in a physical reality.
3) Clean Savage. Non-fiction with enlightened fiction. What’s the book about? Pfft, what’s life about and everything in between. Love death. Failure success. Earth spacesuit. Struggle to wash the brain of installed behavior. Future. I will say this – all three books are about life, the future, and thoughts now. With entertainment to flip the page. Open any page and read is a philosophy I follow.
Günter Gaus, “Conversation with Hannah Arendt,” from the Series Zur Person (1964)
Tell me a book that you have read.
Les Cook: Siddartha: A novel. By Hermann Hesse. Covers what I would expect a novel on life to be.
What are your 5 favorite books?
Les Cook: No such thing – ever changing. Too difficult, too many categories. Childhood, Young Adult, Middle-aged, Recent. Each period of life has a selection of favorites. Literature, Philosophy, Guides, History, Erotic, Travel.
To put five books on the shelf for a visitor to my home? How about Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. Plantes utilisées au Cambodge/Plants Used in Cambodia by Pauline Dy Phon. Tempting Fiction by Les Cook. Two other titles I’d rather keep to myself depending on who is visiting. Perhaps a popular Autobiography. The latest Health & Exercise. A recent Novel. Something to pass the time to create an enjoyable conversation with a guest. Reading is personal.
What is a dismissed title and a distinguished title is negotiable. Life is fluid, a wandering mind should be accepted. Mistakes are the threshold to success. Let people talk argue agree.
As for my five favorite books, I don’t know. Maybe I haven’t read them yet. I like to save good things in my life for when I have nothing else. Sure, I have a list, it is longer than five favorites.
I used to read to develop a style. Now I don’t want to adopt a style. I’ve been neglecting reading books. Once I start reading, I can become immersed all day and night. That’s a good thing when you have the time.
I should be supporting authors. Send me a title to read, please. Will place it in my top 100 after reading… maybe.
Is there a writer you follow or a style you admire?
Les Cook: A style that I admire is a person who would never be hired as a writer. A poet experiencing events to write stories every few weeks is the type of artist I’d like to follow. At this time… I don’t follow any artist.
Interview with Pierre A. Lévy, French philosopher of collective intelligence
Narrate your next book in one sentence.
Les Cook: Can’t. I will give you three sentences for the next three books.
(1) A Man & Woman design characters through a Consciousness Filtering Machine.
(2) Tasked with having sex with your simulation’s lover in a physical reality.
(3) Love death struggle to wash the brain of installed behavior.
Why do you write these books?
Les Cook: My vision needs to be harnessed. I’m not a great writer – my imagination is extraordinarily unyielding. I cannot remain a youth forever. When I read as a child – I thought I could do better.
Writing is a dangerous weapon (I like that).
Writing is a spiritual existence (I need that).
Writing a complete book is maybe no longer a want. Possible move onto writing short stories in series. I never know what I will write until it happens. I cannot beg, cannot conjure, and can only make myself available for the realization of what paragraphs, lines, sayings, and stories, I should proceed with. Have fun.
Writing can be comical, transporting, intriguing, and sexy. Write to destroy demons. A challenge. It is the most complete thing a human can do. Manifest imagination knowledge fear happiness and arousal with words.
How many drafts and how long did your last book take to write?
Les Cook: Last published at the time of this interview. Lit for Nothin was constructed quickly with sections I wrote long ago. Drafts – I repeat until it sounds feels looks flows. There is no time limit for even a paragraph. Takes as long as it takes, sometimes it writes itself, instantly. Lit for Nothin for me, it is not perfect.
Cool in No Time under a year with limited drafts.
Entertain Simpatico began in 2012, with a lot of drafts, deletes, and redo. Restructure and let sit for years.
Clean Savage took six months.
It goes how it goes. Depending on where you are in life.
Last question. I’ll leave it up to you?
Les Cook: I liked sports and reading as a child. I’m a primitive human. What else do you want to know? Laughs. All I want to do seems the most difficult and yet – at the same time – the easiest. Find a place, have an interesting scene, attach vision to reason, and write a story. Drifting and then settling to establish.
We can talk about technology – I’ve been writing about humans utilizing technology – no longer relying on a human body. All we need is our minds. Perhaps consciousness reduced to a body. I do like the human body as it is all I have known. I also find the human body a restricting spacesuit I can’t wait to get out of.
I’ll tell you a recent story: I drank coffee for two weeks, maybe four cups a day. Thinking how well I can manage coffee – whenever I hesitated to perform a task, I’d drink half a cup of coffee. A feeling of sadness seemed to consume me during this time.
I offered my friend a coffee and he kept on refusing. I finally said to my friend ‘You got to try this coffee I’m drinking.’
My friend looked at me annoyingly and said ‘What for, it’s decaffeinated coffee.’
I was struck and also fascinated. The Placebo Effect. I thought I was drinking caffeinated coffee, the only kind of coffee.
Decaffeinated answered the question of why I was feeling sad and unusual, I suppose.
The idea that I didn’t need regular caffeinated coffee was celebratory.
I could defeat coffee addiction easily.
I poured a cup of caffeinated coffee that same day.
In Conversation with Les Cook. February 26, 2024.
- Abdulrazak Gurnah Refuses to Be Boxed In: ‘I Represent Me’
- When asked what I follow/believe, my answer is easy. ‘Les Cook’
- Interview with Simone de Beauvoir: The Second Sex 25 years later
- “Nietzsche’s Burst of Laughter,” Interview with Gilles Deleuze
- Günter Gaus, “Conversation with Hannah Arendt,” from the Series Zur Person (1964)