SATYRICON USA : A JOURNEY ACROSS THE NEW SEXUAL FRONTIER

Rating:
Summary: Unique Blend
Review: A series of voyeuristic snapshots of the fringe world of American sexuality at the millenium's end, in all it's kinky, confused and transgressive expressions. Dungeons, blood-letting clubs, cross dressing conferences, strip emporiums, military bases and Catholic monasteries. A unique blend of reportage, memoir, research and incisive analysis.

Rating:
Summary: snarky attitude + armchair psychology = this bad book
Review: This author thinks she's being really cutting edge by writing an expose about the "new sexual frontier" of America. However, she does little but expose her own narrow-minded hatefulness. Let me warn you that she despises the subject matter of her own book.

Her main theses can be summed up: 1)anti-sex feminists have ruined the normal hetero relationship, 2)transsexuals are ugly and wear bad drag and cannot have emotional relationships because they're already a complete male/female unit unto themselves, 3)all people who practice sadomasochism are lame and boring people who are just trying to seem interesting, and 4) lesbians are frigid women who hate themselves. She "proves" these theses by going to fetish balls and bars or finding particularly unbalanced individuals to interview, and then claiming her personal negative reactions to things that don't float her boat are universal truths.

She'll try to tell you that she isn't a judgmental bigot -- in fact she devotes the whole first chapter to proclaiming her objectivity. However, if you are actually interested in the types of people she discusses, you should look to another source. All she provides in this book is groundless psychobabble skewering all and sundry. She tries to present herself as hip and today, so free of hang-ups that she is willing to explore any scene, yet she refuses to ever see her subjects as people and instead defends her own lack of understanding via the most dehumanizing pet theories of 20th C psychologists.

Rating:
Summary: American Eroticism Inside and Out
Review: This book is sexy and brainy at once, which is a rarity. The author takes us to many American towns and communities where we meet soldiers, teachers, bankers, doctors, crossdressers, sex addicts, strippers, knife-loving lesbians, sadomasochists, necrophiliacs, people who sleep with aliens, you name it. The author makes all these people seem normal even as they are so bizarre. She knows sex and human nature and has brilliant comments throughout that make you think. It's exciting, it's informative, it's original. I don't think there's another book on sex so good anywhere around. I heard Eurydice on Bob Berkowitz's Lovebytes on e-yada last week. She writes the Sex Files column for Gear magazine and has an erotic novel out called f/32 I think.

Rating:
Summary: A Classic About Sex in 1999
Review: This is a book chockful of ideas, scenes, suggestions,and a great pleasure to read. I never looked up. The topic is intriguing, the characters real and wild. Sex is everywhere in it and so is America. It's a classic, and there aren't many on this topic. It's not dumbed down, but there's nothing wrong with having moments of brilliance. This will be around a long time, much longer than most books written about sex these days, and books will be written about it. It is a travelogue and a philosophical treatise on modern sexuality. It turned me on And it made me think.