Customer Reviews

Satyricon USA: A Journey Across the New Sexual Frontier

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

 

 

This is a smart book, thoughtful and perceptive. It's obviously not meant to provide juicy tidbits -- the reader from Austin, Texas is right, there's nothing new and shocking, but then he obviously missed the point entirely and picked up the book for the wrong reason (recommendation to him/her: try the animal section at your local porn store). I think the author of the book captures well the hypocracy (sp?) of sexuality in America at the end of the century, where "abnormal" sex is so common as to not be aberrant anymore, yet where puritanism still permeates the culture. No jollies here, just good analyis and some very interesting characters opening themselves up. I recommend it.

Eurydice's book is a sometimes fascinating, sometimes painful read- not because of the subject matter (please- anyone the least bit seasoned or knowledgeable in the so-called `fringe' or `extreme' sexualities knows everything in this book), but to watch the authoress herself as she struggles to make sense of what she witnesses. As another reviewer says, it truly does seem like she brings a lot of baggage to the book.

The author, as far as I know, doesn't occupy any public space that makes her worthy to comment on the things she's seen. She psychobabbles on and on, but has no professional, or even academic, experience on psychology/psychiatry. She has had no long-term exposure to any of the communities she enters and willingly pulls all her generalizing comments from oftentimes one single event or only a handful of interviews. I found myself reading and asking why I should listen to what Eurydice has to say: not only does she seem blase towards the subject matter, but her commentary is about on line with being grabbed by an uncle at a family reunion and having all his opinions heaped on you, under the guise of sage and wise advice. It simply doesn't fly.

I'd have rather read a fiery rhetoric about the evils of these various sexual communities- at least that would have some passion. I don't know if Eurydice simply has no real feelings about them (except for her own conflictions, which are ever-present), or if she feels that objective writing must be dry as tinder, but either way, it falls flat. If not for the very exuberance of the subjects themselves (through interviews), it wouldn't be worth reading at all. The book simply tries too hard where it cannot quite deliver. Eurydice's prose is fantastically complex (she even made this grad student pull out her dictionary once or twice) and elegant, which makes me wish that she had either a better medium or a better subject matter, because it often gets in the way. This is by no means a clear perspective on the sexual frontier. There may be occasional moments of brilliance (as well as repeated, disheartening occasions of bigotry hiding under the mask of `objective psychoanalysis'), but it's simply too muddled to be of any real value.

If anyone is reading this review wondering what I mean . . . it's hard to say. I supposed you simply have to sample Eurydice's style for yourself to understand her writing style. Suffice to say, it wasn't cutting it for me- it felt pretentious and tired, she sounded at best bored and at worst terribly jaded, and in the end, the crowning thesis of the book- that there isn't a wild and rampant sexuality underneath our smooth exteriors, but rather a bane normality underneath the crazy acts that [according to Eurydice] we do to feel rebellious and different- well, this isn't big news. Hell, I could have told you that.

The only saving grace of the book is its sheer diversity- Eurydice hits not only the sexual minority "givens" (cross-dressing, BDSM and bloodplay, strip clubs, cybersex), but also talks about a few topics I had not seen elsewhere, including necrophilia, sex in the military, and alien sex. Fresh topics that you simply don't see anywhere else, and it was these chapters that kept me going when I felt like putting down the book.

All in all, "Satyricon" is a book that makes me sad. When I finished reading it, I did not feel like I better understood the sexual minority's participants, and I didn't feel like I'd been shown some great realization about our sexual culture. It simply seemed like the author had grimly set herself out to write a book about sex, and found the whole process disdainful. It comes across on every page, and what stands for objectivity ends up feeling cold, clinical, and even a little mean (you can't help but wonder, oh yeah, Eurydice? Well, what turns you on?). And it's sad that it gets in the way of the material, because she often asks good, thought-provoking questions. If only her attitude were a little different.

If you'd like to read an insightful, psychoanalytic analysis of various fetish communities and sexual subcultures, this is not the book you're looking for. Eurydice seems to be bringing a lot of baggage with her on this trip, not the least of which seems to be an unspoken desire to go back to the fifties, at least in terms of outward gender roles and (according to an interview) in terms of our knowledge of sexuality and the various ways in which it plays itself out.

If you don't know anything about sexual subcultures, please don't get this book. It provides a skewed vision that can lead one to beleive that all sexual subgroups are made up of nuts. May I suggest Violet Blue's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1573441902/ref=ase_tinynibbles-20/103-5793046-4388651?s=books&v=glance&n=283155&tagActionCode=tinynibbles-20">The Ultimate Guide to Sexual Fantasy</a> instead? She also has a new book that interviews people within fetish communities coming out soon.

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.

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.

This is for the reader who is naieve enough to belive that everyone in the world isn't bent sexually in some way or another. I would be surprised if most people who grew up in the 80's didn't already have much more firsthand experience, hae read about, or seen pictures of on the net, the experiences in the book. There is nothing new, or even interesting here although the quotes from some of the protaganists were inadvertently funny such as the one form the necrophiliac - "we don't have sex with the old, or the ugly corpses, we're normal people" (paraphrase) If you're looking for shock value, go to laredo and see a donkey or chimp show, it will be much better value for your dollar. Or maybe you could go to the strip bar on dallas, which is just like any strip bar anywhere. Or maybe to talk to soldiers on a military base, which are the same as GI's everywhere, or - blah, blah. Can't belive I wasted money on this.