Scary Monsters and Super Freaks: Stories of Sex, Drugs, Rock 'N' Roll and Murder (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Deep in Laurel Canyon, the Wonderland Gang was planning its last heist..." (more)
Key Phrases: magical passes, cat group, assemblage point, Don Juan, New York, Los Angeles (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This strong collection of Sager's articles over the past 20 years for Rolling Stone and GQ demonstrates his skill as a reporter whose main interest is investigating America's dark and lurid corners. Most of the articles divide roughly into two groups. The first focuses on well-known subjects such as porn star John Holmes's drug-induced decline ("The Devil and John Holmes"), actor Rob Lowe's infamous sex tape ("Rob Lowe's Girl Trouble") and funk-rocker Rick James's obsession with freebase cocaine and violence ("The Rise and Fall of a Super Freak"). The second explores lesser known but often more horrible incidents, such as "The Death of a High School Narc" in Midlothian, Tex. Sager incorporates in all the articles such journalistic devices as scene-by-scene construction, realistic dialogue and third-person point of view, completely capturing everyday details of a subject's life. But two articles are especially compelling. One is an intimate portrait of Janet Cooke (with whom Sager was once involved), the journalist whose Pulitzer Prize-winning, and fake, story about an eight-year-old heroin addict got her fired from the Washington Post; the other is a lengthy, detailed look at the life and death of author Carlos Castaneda.
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From Booklist

Sager's delightfully seamy glimpses of the underside of pop culture begin with the facts behind the film Wonderland. John Holmes, whose prodigious penis once made him the king of smut, lost the ability to, uh, perform because of his coke habit and, before dying of AIDS, got involved in a series of sleazy deals culminating in a bloody revenge killing. Next up is innocent-looking porn queen Savannah, who apparently lacked enthusiasm for sex. Reportedly, a director once suggested she "say 'fuck me' or something," whereupon "Savannah looked over her shoulder at the actor inside her" and said, "Fuck me or something"; shortly after, the occasional junkie shot herself in the head. Then there's the original Super Freak, Rick James, who went from recording success to serving time for false imprisonment and assault; Rob Lowe, who videotaped himself having sex with an underage girl; ex-congressman Gary Condit; and 14 other celebrities who had similar misadventures. Pretty it ain't, but throbbingly real it is--dynamic episodic reading, too. Mike Tribby
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 364 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (December 23, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560255633
• ISBN-13: 978-1560255635
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #620,325 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars True Crime, April 20, 2004

By	alexander laurence (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

You have probably read some of these articles over the years in magazines and weekly newspapers. Here are some great stories of the last twenty years. Stories about John Holmes and Rick James are great. Mike Sager goes into great detail to give a rounded picture of all his subects. The stories about journalists Janet Lewis and Veronica Guernin are pretty intense. Some of this stuff is about obsessions we all had about ten years ago like Easy-E Eric Wright and the Heaven's Gate Crowd. It's funny how time flys. Check it out.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars World Class Reporting and Writing, January 6, 2004

By	Henry Schuster (Marietta, GA USA) - See all my reviews

I'll get the disclaimer out of the way first. The smartest thing I've done in my journalistic career was one of the first things I ever did. That was convincing Mike Sager to join me at the Emory University newspaper. It was my introduction to the Sager school of reporting and writing. Live the story or, better yet, live with the story. Mike calls it the anthropological approach to journalism and during the last twenty-five years he has been doing that for a living.
We used to talk about the New Journalism, which was all the rage when we started. It was Tom Wolfe this, Richard Ben Cramer that. But Mike has carved out his own genre, word by word, story by story and the results are on stunning display in Scary Monsters.
Mike is the classic journalistic success story. He dropped out of law school after just a few days and took a job working as a copy aide at the Washington Post (not before he almost lost the job because he failed the spelling test!). He worked his way up to reporter, starting out on the police beat, and there was no holding him back.
But can he write? I've read these stories over the years as Mike has written them and I've read them again recently. Each is captivating, that sort of anthropological expedition into an event, a person, a story, that you will soon recognize as uniquely Sageresque. Taken individually or as a collection, they are a great read. Money well spent. Mike's work is already being taught in journalism schools and for good reason.
The best part of this? Mike has so many other stories, from his first foray into magazine writing, which was when he went in search of Marlon Brando, to his more recent work in Esquire, which places him in the pantheon of great writers who have filled the pages of that magazine. Let's hope that with the success of this book, we'll get the next collection soon!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars dark page-turners in miniature., December 6, 2006

By	fluffy, the human being. (forest lake, mn) - See all my reviews

each piece in this book is somewhere in the 20 to 50 page range, but despite the brevity, you feel as though you've gotten an in-depth look at some dark, dark american lives. nothing here that you could call feel-good fluff. but it is mostly all very interesting; it kept my fingers flipping the pages faster than 90% of the other books i've been reading of late. highly recommended for those who like good writing on sex & drugs & murder & other sorts of mayhem. and personally i don't think there is a lot of good writing out there on those sorts of things.