In My Room (High Risk Books)

Rating:
Summary: Moody days
Review: Dustan's dark and sexy fictionalised story is about his days existing for sex, drugs, music, and more sex. It reminded me of Jean Genet and Dennis Cooper, yet with a happier ending, if that's possible. The narrator crawls through his days having sex in almost every form, and eventually he finds it all empty, and escapes, in a way. It's rather fascinating and somewhat sexy, but not easily accessible.

Rating:
Summary: Nothing new, nothing shocking, nothing worth reading
Review: I chose this book after reading a seemingly favorable statement about it by the notable Edmund White. Now, having read the book, I look at Mr. White's statement again and think I should perhaps have read between the lines. This book is a shameless waste of time. I've read others like it -- there seems to be a parade of this sort of fiction lately. Does it all follow in the wake of such successes -- financial not literary, in my opinion -- such as "Trainspotting"? Dustan's book is certainly nothing in comparison to "Savage Nights" by Cyril Collard. If you're looking for a good read, try Collard's book instead of this. If you've already read Collard's book, re-read Collard's book instead of this! Supposedly, this was a "scandalous success" when published in France in 1996. I can't believe that. What about that famous Gallic unflappability? Did this trite bit of fluff really have the French up in arms? I doubt it. I suspect someone at the publishing house needed to exaggerate in order to come up with a back-of-the-jacket blurb. The only thing this book made me think about it this: Why is it that more often than not, these characters who have had drugs too numerous to mention and/or sex partners too numerous to mention always manage to mention every drug, every sex act in these novels -- all while leaving the reader without any sense of fascination? In this instance especially, Dustan's relating of incidents is inexcusably boring. He might as well be writing about someone trying on hats! Quelle merde!!

Rating:
Summary: Enfant-terrible of the literary world
Review: In the strong literary tradition of Paul Verlaine, Andre Gide, Marcel Proust, Jean Genet, Renaud Camus and Herve Guibert, we can now add the name Guillaume Dustan. Dustan's first work to appear in translation in The United States, In My Room, is an interesting mix of literary genres; it is neither an autobiography nor pure fiction, but rather auto-fiction. The plot is fairly simple, Dustan's narrator recounts his many drug induced sexual adventures. While the subject matter is not totally original, it is at least well written and interesting, if not provocatively arousing, to read. However, it is Dustan's writing style that deserves particular attention. His style is more "oral" than "written." It is repeative, contains short sentences as if they were fragments of thought or speech in a conversation, and at times Dustan is seemingly non-linear in his writing. It is a style that recalls Margurite Duras on more than one level. It is perhaps one gay man's answer to "ecriture feminine" and writing the body. If you read French, check out his other titles, Plus fort que moi, Je sors ce soir and Nicolas Pages.