Customer Reviews

Sex for the Millennium (Black Ice Books)

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Harold Jaffe is the author of nine books of fiction, including STRAIGHT RAZOR, EROS/ANTI-EROS, and BEASTS. In his newest work of fiction, SEX FOR THE MILLENNIUM, Jaffe creates a chilling vision of the deterioriated state of humankind, circa Y2K. In a series of "extreme" tales which chronicle a thematic end of the world, cancer becomes the metaphor for the human condition. In Jaffe's vision, the Y2K issue is not merely a computer scare, but a miasmic finale in which the governmental-industrial combine has leeched humanity, sucked out its soul. The resulting world is an archetype of dissolution--a miasma of chaos, perversion, and antagonism.

The fictions in the collection portray the extremes of human behavior which arise as civilization mutates. Sexual encounters become fetishized exhibitions of brand-name consciousness, or sadomasochistic quests for true sensation in an environment where all is homogenized, sanitized, and prescribed by corporate conglomerates. Pornographers and religious zealots become indistinguishable as they battle for the spotlight in a media-driven reality. Serial killers become the focus of popular attention, as individuated sensuality is unavailable, and all experience is merely vicarious--screen-deep. Lines are blurred and stereotypes transfigured. Jaffe's tales deconstruct and reposition valuational norms.

SEX FOR THE MILLENNIUM comprises a series of sharp, sectioned texts, a pastiche of fictive inventions. The texts are simultaneously narrative and interrogatory, positing ironic image systems and fresh levels of linguistic observation. Jaffe's "extreme tales" are aggressively satirical, yielding deep sociocultural insights. His visions of the millennium are shocking and important. We must take them to heart.

Sex For The Millennium will make you tip your cream (Nestle). Pages turning with ease, it fits well in the hands, has mad flow, is perfect for short shirtless sittings. Thrust forward and commit ethical murder (Cancer Is the Mother), do and kill your mother (Cody in June) and discuss basketball with a serial killer (Circle Jerk). Like the leprous loon (House of Pain) being done in four orifices with electrified dildos, like the viscous onslaught of (mis)information rammed down our rots on and offline daily, these texts will assault you variously, simultaneously and utterly. Sex For The Millennium, like the funhouse mirror, reports a subject beyond distortion, rendered in language sharp enough to leave a "back full of knife cuts." In line with Picasso's declaration, Harold Jaffe creates images so unacceptable their only home could be The Millennium.

Hilarious, daemonic, absolutely on target. The target is the institutional colonization of everyday life, including interior life. Jaffe lets it rip as we careen from one "extreme tale" to the next. As always, the writing is innovatively structured: "unsituated" dialogues, collages, indexes, linear narratives. The net effect is an extraordinarily potent interrogation of the dominant culture, in the name of humanism.

The situations described are shocking as the book promises. One big problem: you have difficulty following the stories. Written in a rather stream of consciousness style, the characters and events become more art than "reality" which I thought was the goal of good fiction, especially anything falling under the term "erotica". Not erotic at all.

If you're normal, neither will you. This book is nothing but filth that doesn't make any sense. My daughter gave it to me to read because the author was one of her college instructors. Don't waste your time or money!