Customer Reviews

Generation S.L.U.T.: A Brutal Feel-up Session with Today's Sex-Crazed Adolescent Populace

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

I borrowed Beckerman's book from a friend after seeing him appear on Bill O'Reilly's "The Factor." I almost immediately began to like Beckerman as he drug out two verbal cannon balls that absolutely no one any older than Beckerman would dare drag out. First, was his insinuation that there was a backlash from the feminist revolution affecting Generations X and Y. Secondly, he slipped a comment about parents buying their 13 year-old daughters thong panties in under the wire, and neither Bill nor his other guest either heard it, or knew quite how to respond. The fact that Beckerman is willing to raise these issues in such a point-blank fashion earns him three stars.

Here is where he loses two stars. Firstly, he detests the culture of teen sex without emotional connection, but MTV publishes the book. This is the reason I borrowed the book rather than buying the book. If I am as outraged by the trashy `poptarts' in the malls being `chaperoned' by their `fifty-going-on-fifteen' mothers as Beckerman, I am unlikely to be a big fan of MTV - the largest purveyor of classless and clueless as cool. He should have held out for a more credible publisher. Secondly, Beckerman's `story and stats' technique doesn't work for me. If he wanted to write a story it would have had to have some subtlety (see the short story "Lust" by Susan Minot for example), and if he wanted to write social commentary, he should have simply done it (see "A Return to Modesty," by Wendy Shalit, or "Modern Sex: Liberation and its Discontents," edited by Myron Magnet).

Ultimately, Beckerman's language and stylistic tactics are products of the same generation's relativism he is so critical of. Beckerman is right to indict a shameless generation, and incriminate the parent's for the part they've played in it. He is right not to play the pedantic games sociologists, psychologists, and the various others with an agenda to propagate do; however, what he lacks is maturity, and this should not be confused with pedantry. With maturity will come depth, and with depth durability - Beckerman may yet write what will become this generation's testament, but this book is not it.

I'll admit it - the quoted review by Hunter S. Thompson was a large factor in my decision to buy this book. After having read the book, I can only assume that when he read it, Thompson was, well ... Hunter S. Thompson.

This story may have some relevance to some small segments of today's teens - but it's certainly not representative of the majority of them. The 'bad guy' is an overblown Eddie Haskell (anyone else remember Leave It To Beaver?), held up as an icon of success by parents, fantastically wealthy from his own earnings, amazingly sadistic, and totally without fear of consequences - easy to despise, difficult to believe at all.

Are there parents as absent and ineffectual as this book depicts? Certainly. Are there teens as vicious and depraved as are shown in this story? Oh, probably. Is anyone as shallow and unthinking as the author claims is typical in the generation being "exposed" in this book? If there is, I've never met them.

By the author's own admission, he was unable to lose his virginity until he was 18, yet he describes a high school world of casual sex and weekend orgies with no consequences at all. In essense, he whines about being excluded from this world he invents while he sneers at it.

Some titilating scenes, a fair narrative voice - not a total waste of time, but it certainly does not live up to the hype.

There are two very frightening things about this book: the fact that the author seems to believe what he's saying, and the fact that others who haven't recently been teenagers may believe him also. But there aren't any actual facts in Generation S.L.U.T. Even many of the statistics that Beckerman has compiled are disputable and based on questionable data collection methods. His analysis of why today's adolescents are "sex-crazed" is that the feminist movement is to blame, yet he does no analysis of the male villain of the fictional sections of this book, a young man who turns disturbing power fantasies into reality. In fact, all of his fictional characters lack development-Beckerman created so much external drama that the real internal struggles are never apparent. Which is sad, because there is a lot to be said for the young and depressed who are often feeling too alone to say anything for themselves.

This book purports to be a voice for Generation Y, but Beckerman is too caught up in his own misogynistic universe to really analyze the situation with true depth. If you want to find out what's really going on with today's young people, I suggest you speak to someone a little more balanced . . . unfortunately, the balanced ones don't seem to be published.

Having ploughed through Mr Beckerman's sophomoric ramblings in 'Death to All Cheerleaders', I thought that perhaps, just maybe, given a more focused agenda (as opposed to scattershot bitching at a bunch of easy targets) Marty might produce something of lasting value. Instead we've been given a truly dreadful, sleazy paean to adolescent sexual nihilism. And why not, eh! Bound to sell a few books. Except...well, if badly written nonsense purporting to be the truth, hollow shock journalism, facile theorising and extremely suspect personal anecdotes are your cup of chai, then you might enjoy yourself. For everyone else, I'd leave this well alone. Marty clearly shows his influences, namely Fitzgerald, Thompson and Burroughs with a big healthy injection of Brett Easton Ellis, without ever once displaying any of their wit and style. Ultimatly this is nothing more than a sickly wallow in base human behaviour by a sneering, loutish dunce with a few 10 dollar words, plagiarised attitudes and pretensions to insight. The exploitative manipulation of a few pathetic minors is just the icing on that particular cake

Yes i do realize that this is a work of fiction, but the quotes alone simply play into the stereotypes of an entire generation. I am a part of generation Y. I am an average 21 year old and i have never experienced the type of "real" adventures any of the interviewees claim at such a young age. It appears as if Beckerman just wanted to be shocking. really, marty, we are all terribly impressed to know about your sexual acts and the fact you apparently needed to find the sluttiest and most insecure drunk underage children to interview for the filler pages of quotes in your book. I believe this is a nice book for people of generation Y to read to understand the bias views many have. But i know it comes off as incredibly one sided and misleading to everyone reader without half a brain and insulting to those who do.

If you haven't been to high school in 10 years, you're missing a lot-including the sex, drugs and alcohol abuse. Beckerman interestingly combines a regular story with interesting statistics and real quotes from girls who cannot even count the number of people they had sex with (and they are only 16). Not only does he make up a story, but he includes some of his own stories while he was in high school (somewhat exaggerated though). It is a funny book, and yet it is sad, it really makes one think about society. It isn't all about sex though, that is only 25% of it; it includes violence in school and the influences that teenagers have. It all opens your eyes.

The book was readable, and not as shocking or controversial as I was expecting. I got an amorphus message from it- I wasn't sure what the writer believed motivated his characters, and maybe that was the point- a lack of clarity and direction drives teens to destructive behavior.

Though most of the novel in centered around a story of 6 teenagers, the topics that complicate their lives are far from being issues of Beckerman's imagination. Enlightening and horrorifying, the topics of sexual behavior, violence,suicide, drugs, and alcohol are not unfamiliar to teenagers. Beckerman does justice to the lives of his characters and does paints a realistic picture. His honesty is what makes this novel captivating and worth reading. The statistics alone that Beckerman reports, gives the reader an eye opener to the truth of the character's lives. A great read and a great book to have in a collection.

I've been around quite a while (80 yrs) and I've seen a whole lot of changes in this world, but last night I finished reading "Generation S.L.U.T (Sexually Liberated Urban Teens)" by Marty Beckerman and I'm stunned. Marty is 21 and "Generation S.L.U.T." is his second book. This one is going to cause a ruckus.... I think Marty is a genious, he is certainly a writer of great merit, and I recommend that anyone with teenage kids (or younger) read this book, have your kids read this book, think long and hard about this book. Someone, besides Marty, needs to think about his confused and miserable generation. READ the book ... don't just look at the cover and drop it! Buy the book now. It won't make you happy, but it might make you a whole lot wiser.

Alright, I tend to steer away from MTV products, but this one intrigued me. I barely paid attention to MTV when I was a teenager, and I would say I was the venerable outcast in High School. I think this book is designed to try to get you to identify with at least one of the characters. I was not part of that "party scene" that is talked about, not only here, but in books & movies concerning college. I was the kid that most people only saw at school, because I typically stayed home, played guitar, read books, and played video games. That was my life. I did have a girlfriend and a few friends that would come over, but that's about it. So I'm not some sex crazed whacked out druggy alcoholic that can reminisce about scenes in this book, nor was I tempted to be one of these people as most of the "outcast" kids are portrayed in this book.

While I can't personally relate to the "party scene" in this book, I thought it was an interesting read overall. Is this the reality of the situation this book tries to portray? Well, not every High School will be like this, not every teenager will do these things. On the other side, there ARE some teenagers that do this and there ARE High Schools that have these problems. Not everyone has parents who don't care about them. Not all of these statistics are 100% accurate. I'm a Financial Analyst and math is kind of my thing. And anyone who knows anything about Probability & Statistics knows that you can easily lie or misconstrue the truth with them. So I take stats with a grain of salt, but I did find them interesting. I also found the way they worked into the book a very creative and unique idea (and yes, a good idea as well). I also thought it was a very interesting and good idea for the author to have little personal stories between the chapters.

I think the books message overall is a good one, but I don't think everything is a major problem and it's not just an "America" issue like some people think. Throughout history there have ALWAYS been people that fall into this category and roles (i.e. the sex crazed party maniac). I mean there are ancient rulers that had harems, it's not like this group sex concept is totally new and revolutionary. I think the more disturbing part is that people find this "shocking" as if it's never happened before. I think the books message of being a general wake-up call IS the point. People do need to wake up. I think this points out that the lack of parenting in some cases is becoming a problem. My parents are both High School teachers and I, too often, here stupid stories of uneducated parents trying to point the finger someplace else for their childs misdeeds. The parents are usually the first ones to say it's the schools fault, when if the parent had been around more then maybe something wouldn't have happened. This is also a societal problem, because the parents aren't around just becuase they don't want to be (all the time), in a lot of cases they are at work. Society now demands the work of TWO parents in a household a lot of times. Being a stay at home mom or dad is not that easy anymore. And no, this isn't just an American problem, it's going to be Global as the third world more and more joins the forces of our growing economy.

I think, in the end, maybe the book was a little over the top in it's portrayal of sex scenes, but a lot of times you need to go to extremes to get people to pay attention these days (within logical reason of course). I think he wrote an engrossing story with characters people can get into, even though just about all of them are tragic characters. The book was not very long so character development was sort of minimal, but I think the point there was to get our ADHD plagued society to sit still for an hour to read a book that might mean something to them. I'm sorry but "To Kill a Mocking Bird" didn't really speak to me generationally when I was in High School and I doubt it does now even though some may enjoy the story.