Customer Reviews

Autopornography: A Memoir of Life in the Lust Lane (Haworth Gay & Lesbian Studies)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Scott's book is remarkably well-written and a pleasure to read.

It's very refreshing to read about someone who survived the eighties without being infected by all the New Age psychobabble and relationship doctoring going on. Scott did not like his family, especially his mother, and he was not worried about trying to fix it. That's just how it was. He had his own philosophy and enjoyed living up to his own standards.

I'm saddened to find that he passed away in February 1998 but I am truly inspired by the life he led. He spent most of his time doing only what he loved most. There are not many people who can honestly say that.

This is really a fun book to read and the cover ain't bad to look at either!

The late Scott OHara has a talent for his craft - not that of porn god - but that of serious writer. His book was insightful, succinct, and well written. OHara pulls no punches in describing the poignant and revealing parts of his past. I did find his opinions on voluntary seroconversion to be quite disturbing, however. He takes the position that people who choose to seroconvert willingly are freeing themselves from the everyday burdens of mundane life and "taking the plunge" into a more exciting, devil may care existance. This opinion is one that I find quite hard to swallow.

I was surprised and delighted!

I did not put much faith that this book would be more than a tell-all of the gay porn industry. I was surprised--quite pleasantly--to find an eloquently written and insightful autobiography of one of adult films' bad boys.

O'Hara does not shy away from recounting his family upbringing, nor does he apologize for any radical views he has of his life growing up. He tells it like it was, from his perspective, growing up in a super-religious yet non-traditional family who instilled in him a sense of integrity he still maintains today.

To be honest, I expected a lot of smutty stories and inside scoop on gay porn stars. There's that, too, to a degree. But it is written clearly, intelligently and with a writers--not a porn star's--artistry.

The book makes Chi Chi Larue's and Joey Stefano's recent biographies look like they were written by reporters from The Enquirer! A must-read for all gay porn lovers.

Initially worth noting is that the "Editorial Review" remarks at the top of this page do not accurately describe this book. My disclosure which follows, however, could well suggest that my own comments are somehow biased. I was acquainted with Scott on an occasional basis for the fifteen years preceeding his death. I knew an intelligent, self-assured man, who seemed at once intimate and familiar, but at the same time, presented himself as essentially shy. He seemed to almost selfishly withhold even trivial information about himself, the sort of things that once might have turned a quickie with a stranger into an enduring friendship. He simply lacked, or carefully guarded, his personal dimension. The appearance of shyness, however, was starkly at odds with his unconcealed flirtatiouness. Possibly he had his reasons, but you won't find them in his autobiography. An autobiography certainly ought to include at least two things: the whole truth (however painful it might be) must be revealed, and the author should permit the reader to know him well enough to sympathize with, or at least identify with, the author's point of view. From what well was drawn the author's own sense of what he is telling us? I bought the book when published, out of a familiar curiousity, certain also that I would find in it names of other people we knew in common. In that respect it was a gratifying read, tripping over a tasty tidbit here, stumbling across a succulent treat there. My own name briefly surfaced on page 109 (of the paperback edition), and I was delighted to read about the afternoon we met, as seen through his eyes. What will you see given the chance to gaze at the reflection of your own memory? While his recollection of the enccounter (as written) is constructively similar to my own, his sense of the time we spent working together sounded quite different to me from my own gauzy recollection. Although standing together at the same crossroad of time and space, our individual perception, or recall, of the experience was substantially dissimilar. Honestly, I was flattered by his version, regardless of its variance from my own, and so I willingly regard both of our retrospections as faithfully honest and true. Well then, a person might be wondering, what's my real problem with this book? Just this: After two hundred pages of good, though not inspired, prose, I felt like I had slogged through a very long synopsis for what might have been, with a wee bit more honesty and openness, a truly satisfying and informing tale of a man who certainly was in the mix of an interesting milieu, during a culturally remarkable period of time. Chapter after chapter hint that more will soon be revealed, baiting and tantalizing the reader along. But when I reached the end of the book, I had only questions, not answers. His words sometimes radiate a vexatious sense of noblesse oblige (well, felt like it to me, anyway), which in the end keeps Scott, as seen by Scott, at an awkward distance from the reader. Thus, it would be hard for anyone who did not know him, to care much about him from reading his book. Possibly the manuscript was hastened by his declining health, and my thoughts here should not at all be read as ad hominem faultfinding. I admired Scott. He had balls. He left many, many devoted friends and admirers. The book, however, is simply unfinished, and it should have had a strong editor. It nevertheless garnered many favorable reviews, leaving me to wonder if some of the reviewers had actually read the same book as I.

Honestly, how else can I summarize Scott's book but that of a hedonist and a narcissist when reading about a guy who lived his life so free and open, had no thought for tomorrow, an "eat, drink and merry for tomorrow we die" attitude? He seemed to have no morals except those he created, he was brought up on religion and rejected it. In fact, one person said "his attitude sacrilegious, his comments blasphemous and his behavior completely immoral", and you get the impression he was complimented by it. Sex seemed to be his life and "he who lives by the sword, dies by the sword".

I was astounded by the book but as I continued to read more of it I really felt how much I was enjoying it and what a good writer he was and towards the last few chapters I decided I would have to keep this book on my shelves instead of give it away to the library because it really was good and worth another read someday. Like the reviewer Dave said--'Scott had balls' and that is the truth. Agreed,he couldn't have been as shy as he makes us to believe if he was having all the sex he was having and there was that period where he said he had approximately 3 dozen partners in 6 weeks I think it was. And then to be unremorseful about having unprotected sex when he knew he was HIV+ is just beyond comprehension for me. I put my sex life to rest when AIDS came around and while everyone else I know is dead I am still alive. Porno does it for me now. Not the same but I HAD to control myself or die I realized and I am grateful for my self discipline.

I liked reading the book very much, but I just don't think I would have been Scott's type of person. I am too rigid, fundamentally Christian, and respectful of others to have the unprotected, anonymous, and fleeting episodes he had. He did not believe in long term relationships either and that is sad. True, it's not the be-all & end-all but it is the ideal in society I believe. Well, he is rather typical of gay males and that is why we are hated and despised because of our uncontrolled and random sexual habits.

He seemed to enjoy his life, as short as it was. I do wonder if he had any regrets---but I bet not. Another one who did it 'his way'. I did like that he really did seem to know and understand himself and his body and that is a really good thing because SO many people are oblivious to themselves and the world and I think end up not getting much out of life or what they were hoping for. I think Scott got everything he wanted, except a long life and there's nothing in the book that says he wanted that.

I think the other reviewers must be groupies or simply amazed that a porn star can write in a half-way literate manner. The early history is interesting, but the rest is repetitive and boring. The personal philosophy seems self-serving and, frankly, superficial. The videography will be helpful to die hard fans and porn collectors. The poetry is, at best, sophomoric.

I met Scott O'Hara, and a friend, now long dead, had a brief affair with him. In the flesh he was much more handsome than in his movies - a real voluptuous Germanic beauty. I asked my friend what he thought of him. What he said summed up my thoughts exactly: "He's a lost boy." What I also sensed was a deep suppressed anger. Which was surprising. Because he was immensely charming and sunny. I didn't know at this time he was HIV positive, and I believe this was the root of it. What he doesn't speak of in his autobiography is the emotional devastation his diagnosis must have caused - his statements about the validity of unprotected sex don't just read as glib or high idiocy: to me they read as dishonest. Especially after he casually relates the months of agony he'd been through with various symptoms. But to admit as much would have been 'Failure' to him. He was not only charming and handsome and well hung, which was more than enough to provide him with a easy ride in life, but he was also rich.Not surprisingly he had immense self-confidence. He had star quality. It was easy to be dazzled. But at the end of the day, , although he would never have wished to admit it, his life, and his book, is a melancholy tale.

There's something obscene -- not to say pornographic -- about the idea that Scott O'Hara, whose stellar contributions to queer life and literature include "Do-It-Yourself Piston Polishing," published by Masquerade Books in 1996, should be getting even another minute's extension on the fifteen minutes of fame he has already been granted by a gay male public that continues to bend over backwards to demonstrate that its bad taste can't be overestimated. O'Hara, erstwhile publisher of _Steam_ and _Wilde_ mags, suddenly declared bankruptcy on those magazines in 1996, leaving writers (among many others) in the lurch -- to the tune of several thousand dollars -- for work those magazines had previously commissioned and accepted. Though he owns several homes, numerous cars, and a collection of erotic art that is worth a small fortune, O'Hara felt no compunction in turning his back on the mags and leaving his lawyers to complete the screwing of his vendors and writers. For several months, in fact, while he waited for the scandal to die down, O'Hara took a powder out of the country. And now we have "Autopornography," a memoir that is supposed to convert O'Hara's singularly unhealthy, usurious, manipulative, and even sociopathic life into some sort of model for a generation. Well, if Richard Nixon could be redeemed, perhaps O'Hara can, too. For my money, however, O'Hara's book is nothing more than Bret Easton Ellis meets *Long Dong Silver* -- another defense of the wastoid eighties, of a life devoted to materialistic pursuits, and of the proposition that sex really IS what gay men do best. The utter lack of introspection in this memoir (I don't even ask for humility, morality, or the examination of conscience) renders it depressing and disingenous in the extreme.