The Poetic Journey of Mr. Cooper: A Tale of Isolation and Despair

The book “Mr. Cooper and His Follower” by the Lebanese writer and poet Akl Al-Await will be published soon by Hachette Antoine/Noufal.

It was stated in the summary:

This is a book about a poet’s relationship with his pet, with his animal, with his dog named “Mr. Cooper.”

“Mr. Cooper” is a dog of the Japanese “Akita” breed, known for its loyalty, nobility, and sublime sensitive feelings. This type of dog has gained legendary fame based on a true story that was turned into a movie called “Hachiko,” in which this dog shared the starring role with the well-known international actor. Richard Gere.

It is a book about years of shared life between Mr. Cooper and his human follower, the basis of which is the wonderful familiarity, silence, glances, gestures, dialogues, enormous feelings, facts, details, and spiritual, human, and cognitive understandings between these two beings.

It is a book of confessions, like those written by ancient saints.
It is a gospel of isolation, of despair of the human being.

Gospel is a Lebanese poet who resigned from associating with social human beings, and devoted himself to almost complete isolation, to deepening his existential philosophical despair of humans, and to dialogue with life, existence, nothingness, and poetry in the eyes of his silent pet, Mr. Cooper… the dog Cooper.

It is a book about Lebanese death.
In devastation and misery in Lebanon.

In the chivalry of the individual human being, defenseless except from that Donquixote chivalry, like the hermits who are filled with the purgatory of senseless pain and saving doubt.

A book in the open air.
A book about exposing the human self from human despicableness.
A book about silent chivalric love in the eyes of Mr. Cooper and his only follower.
It is a testimony to the splendor of existential isolation and pain.

A testimony to the moments of Lebanon’s life in the pit of dead hope, despair, and impossible salvation, where the revolutionary moment of October 17 comes together, the moment of the deadly Covid-19 epidemic, the moment of the tragic bombing that struck Beirut on August 4, 2020, and the moment of the collapse of all Lebanese life.

…But what about Mr. Cooper?

He is the beautiful, elegant, gentle, noble, sophisticated, gentle and sociable master, the maker of the discourse of isolation and confessions in the novel his follower tells about existence, words, love, colliding with the wall of nothingness, and despair over the decline of the human being.

Cooper is the epitome of poetic existence and human existence in its procession of descent into the bottomless… Lebanon may be its brightest example.