Customer Reviews

Looking for Mr. Preston

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A great look at how this extraordinary porn writer influenced his peers, through their own words. The book includes fiction, essays, and true stories that brought me to tears, laughter, and a warm feeling between my legs. A good book for the person who understands that erotica is a literary form

A recent article online by Philip Clark led me to recall distant memories of the late John Preston, once a best-selling writer of gay porn and later an anthologist whose appeal crossed all borders. He was indefatigable till AIDS struck him down at the height of his powers.

I ordered a copy of this book thinking that it would bring me into his world, and I'm glad I did. I met him a few times in life and, like many, I was attracted by his gaze, the gray eyes with black irises that are described so often in this festschrift. A writer myself, I envied Preston his work habits, his popularity, his ease with images, his connection with a wide variety of readers. I don't suppose he knew anything of my own work, and now that I have been reading Laura Antoniou's collection of memoirs of the man, it doesn't seem really as if anyone knew him very well. I keep turning the pages, looking for the ultimate insight. And though many of the essays and memoirs are wellcrafted, I got the feeling that Preston himself must have been elusive. Many of the memoirs are about regret. Scott O'Hara wishes that he had let Preston spank him, and William Mann similarly looks back to a half-[...] response to Preston's overtures, with a feeling of having missed out on something extraordinary. In fact I don't think any of the people who wrote for the book actually had sex with him, and since his sexual power was part of Preston's charisma, it sort of leaves a hole in the book. Maybe the guys who subbed for Preston, maybe none of them were writers? It's strange! I'm still reeling thinking that none of Preston's famous "three proteges" ever had sex with him?

Strange also is the decision of editor Antoniou, a wellknown writer of "erotica" herself, to let the book trail off into a welter of confusing fictional or semi-fictional pieces "inspired" by one or another aspect of Preston's life, work, and thought. None of the latter are any good and yet, trying to put my mind back to the mid 1990s, maybe it might have seemed a good idea at the time, I'll give her that.

Will we get a biography of John Preston similar to the rescue job biographer Justin Spring performed on the late Samuel Steward (who knew Preston)? Anything could happen I suppose, but what are the odds?