For the first time, porn legend Aiden Shaw takes fans behind-the-scenes to the gay adult film world that made him a star. My Undoing ventures from locales such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and London, to the sets of premiere studios like Falcon, Catalina, and Studio 200. Yet, this is not the typical adult film memoir, where stars drop names and titillate readers with explicit moments. Although My Undoing shares in unsparing detail all the hot stories about the sex and drugs that fueled Aiden's life, it more profoundly follows him through a course of rocky and unfulfilling relationships. As Aiden eloquently and often humorously points out, the romantic life of an adult film superstar is sometimes lonely and lacking in love. But not love only in the form of a relationship, rather also love from within himself. The book is equally moving for his revelations about his Irish Catholic family, his Positive HIV status in the sex industry, and his recovery from a near fatal car accident that left him temporarily paralyzed.
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
If Shaw's intention was to dash fans' assumption that porn performers live the erotic, carefree life that they portray on film, he has succeeded with this dull, aimless memoir. In his preface, Shaw is brutally honest about the book's shortcomings, admitting that while he wanted to "dissect my experiences objectively and be philosophical, all I was finally able to do was testify." Unfortunately, there's no immediacy to his writing to make up for the lack of introspection. His detached cataloging of drug use and sex is passionless. The fact that he's HIV-positive and much of this sex is unsafe isn't dealt with at all. Particularly telling is his experience being struck by a car when he's too high to do anything but lie in the road; he's left with a brain lesion, broken bones and paralysis on his left side. Not every life story has to have an epiphany, but readers who suffer through his recovery are bound to feel cheated when he emerges from treatment completely unchanged. When the book ends abruptly-as if he'd run out of space in his journal and couldn't be bothered to buy a new one-he's back with Mr. Wrong.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
About the Author
Aiden Shaw has been a photographer and a director of pop promos, a model and an actor. He has an international reputation as a star of American-made hardcore films and is probably Britain's best known male sex star. His first novel, Brutal, published in 1996 and reprinted several times as well as translated into German and French, received wide attention in British and U.S. gay media. (“In a series of short, well-constructed, and simply written chapters the author displays quite a talent for pointed insight into the ways we communicate with friends, family, and self,” praised Lambda Book Report; Gay Scotland noted: “Aiden Shaw has until now been saluted as Britain’s first hardcore porn film star. With Brutal he demonstrates his ability to write a powerful story. He has not so much stripped bare as stripped to the soul.”) His second novel, Boundaries, appeared in 1999; his third, Wasted, in 2001. He is also the author of a 1997 volume of poetry, If Language At the Same Time Shapes and Distorts Our Ideas and Emotions, How Do We Communicate Love? which Mandate praised as “a gutsy accomplishment” and about which Time Out observed “Aiden Shaw finally proves the pen is mightier than the penis.”
Founder of the alternative rock band Whatever, Shaw is currently producing an album of his songs sung by Nina Silvert, with individual tracks being remixed by such diverse individuals as Todd Oldman, Chrissie Hynde, Joseph Holtzman (publisher/editor-in-chief of Nest), and Boy George.
His Web site is aidenshaw.com.
Founder of the alternative rock band Whatever, Shaw is currently producing an album of his songs sung by Nina Silvert, with individual tracks being remixed by such diverse individuals as Todd Oldman, Chrissie Hynde, Joseph Holtzman (publisher/editor-in-chief of Nest), and Boy George.
His Web site is aidenshaw.com.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not What Was Expected,
By
This review is from: My Undoing: Love in the Thick of Sex, Drugs, Pornography, and Prostitution (Paperback)
Here was an opportunity for a clearly-bright gay porn star to provide some insight into what makes him tick. I was hoping for autobiography but also self-revelation. Why did I go into this line of work? What keeps me doing it? What trade-offs are there? But instead this is a relatively monotonous stream-of-consciousness "diary" with little introspection. It's reporting, not analysis. A few interesting moments but mostly a disappointment. I was hoping to find brains behind the brawn. Not so much.
22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
The banality of pornography,
By Parisonn of Atlantis (Minneapolis, Minnesota) - See all my reviews
This review is from: My Undoing: Love in the Thick of Sex, Drugs, Pornography, and Prostitution (Paperback)
Though labeled by some as an autobiography, "My Undoing" is more a journal of a year or so in Aiden Shaw's life both before and after a roadside accident which left him partially paralyzed. Much of this journal consists of accounts of which drugs Aiden did in which nightclub in the company of which people. It quickly becomes repetitious and a but dull. Perhaps the private life of a porn star is better left to the imagination because in this account, Aiden's life seems shallow and limited.
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Lavern,
By
This review is from: My Undoing: Love in the Thick of Sex, Drugs, Pornography, and Prostitution (Paperback)
Because this book is a personal memoir, I will review it in a "personal" way.
I am "Lavern" in this memoir. Lavern is my middle name. I was a friend of Aiden Shaw's (real name Aiden Brady) for 7 years and experienced most of the events in this book. Aiden is an existential amoral nihilistic hedonist. "do unto others as you would have others do unto you" carries no meaning to him. Self-centered narcissism is the rule of the day. I have never met someone with such incredible amounts of true charisma. It is other-worldly, probably developed in a previous life. His "accident" was not an accident at all but intentional, due to his frustrating struggle with his impossible idealistic fantasy of "love" and his inability to acheive the idealism. His refusal to "learn" anything from his experiences and manifest change is a self-serving exercise for his hedonism. This book is a replay of his first book "Brutal" (fantastic!) and not written nearly as well. There are glimmers of his unique insight from "Brutal". Aiden IS incredibly observant of others and equally judgemental. His roomate in 1994 once told me that Aiden even observed how he turned a doorknob. His phenomenal construction of "Aiden Shaw", having just previously been a "tranny" ( as Aiden confided) is a masterful acheivement. Maybe he has realized a more real idea of what constitutes a love relationship, specifically with David Michael, aka David Logan ( his longtime "baby" as he always called him). I observed and tolerated Aiden's tragic abusive treatment of others for a long time because I was learning so much I could apply to my own life in a positive way. When his abusive behaviour turned on me, I set out to teach him a lessen, instead of crawling away and licking my wounds like hundreds of others, letting him get away with it yet one more time. Plus, I was sure it would give him plenty of juicy matterial for his next book, (prediction fullfilled). In the end, Aiden writes non-fiction far better than the boring "novels" he aspired to pen. Lavern, San Francisco. (ps) I don't look like ANYTHING he described.
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