The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "His was first. In my ass..." (more)
Key Phrases: mousy brunette, Young Man, Pink Square

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"I am sitting on the threshold. Perhaps this is the final paradox of God's paradoxical machinations: my ass is my very own back door to heaven. The Pearly Gates are closer than you think." Bentley is writing of her rhapsodic experience with sodomy. So some will call this memoir blasphemous, others spiritual; some pornographic, others erotic. What it is, is wonderfully smart and sexy and witty and moving, a tale of unbounded passion that leads to transcendence. The tale is paradoxical in more ways than one: aside from Bentley's ass leading to heaven, she finds that submission leads to freedom—a freedom she had never known as a dancer with the New York City Ballet (about which she wrote her first book, Winter Season), nor in her failed marriage, nor in any of her other polymorphously perverse sexual experiences. While deeply serious, Bentley is also hilarious as she describes the delights of crotchless panties ("they come in many different styles—each with its own je ne sais quoi") and touching in an imagined obituary for her lover, A-Man ("He was the only one who took time to be friends with my cat.... He was the one with whom I couldn't tell whose pleasure gave me more pleasure"). Bentley's honesty about the most intimate of subjects is daring and delightful for those willing to follow her to, so to speak, the end.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post

If you knew the name Toni Bentley before her self-combustion in The Surrender (ReganBooks, $24.95), it was probably for her extraordinarily agile contributions to the tiny world of ballet writing: Her first book was Winter Season (1982), produced at the tender age of 21 (early for a writer, not for a dancer). Exquisitely written -- as fleet and muscular as a thoroughbred -- the book was a splendid manifestation of grace and grit. She went on to ghostwrite Suzanne Farrell's virtuosic memoir, Hanging on to the Air, in which Bentley (a Balanchine product herself) captured the heady business of falling in love with one's own Pygmalion. Bentley wrote two more books after that, but she seemed to undergo the typical arc of the aging dancer: The books were less ambitious, signaling a diminishing agility -- these were character parts, no bravura performances. There was Costumes by Karinska, about Balanchine's costume designer, and then Sisters of Salome, about the seductions of dancing the part of the legendary femme fatale. But the principal roles seemed to elude her.

Now, in her fifth decade, Bentley has turned the camera on herself in what can only be called a spectacular flameout. The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir is her account of her addiction to anal sex and her burning jones for an inamorato she identifies only as A-Man. The book, none of which can be adequately described in a family newspaper, is mind-boggling in its rawness. It is dirty, foul-mouthed, gawdy as redlight porn -- an apotheosis of female self-loathing. And yet the prose yearns, with the perverse grace of a long-past-it dancer, for readers to see it as art. More than one book critic -- mostly men -- have referred to it as "a masterpiece."

Bentley calls her erotic quest "Finding Paradise," and she even summons God into the equation: "I am an atheist, by inheritance. I came to know God experientially, from being [expletived] in the [expletive]." You get the idea. Aside from the shock factor, which is considerable, there is a creeping ridiculousness here: Throughout the book she alludes to "the backstory" of her love story, the "behind-sight" of her perspective. When she confronts A-Man's Other Woman, she writes, "I guess she didn't know the whole of it. Or the half of it. Or the back half of it." By the time you finish this paean to her stern, you're red-faced as a schoolgirl: Not from the naughtiness, mind you. From the horselaughs. This once elegant writer is hoofing her heart out. And peeking in you are made to feel -- there's no other way to say it -- as silly as an ass.

Submissive Positions
Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Ecco; 3rd Printing edition (October 12, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060732466
• ISBN-13: 978-0060732462
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #516,043 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

106 of 118 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing memoir of thrilling sex, October 18, 2004

By	Eileen Galen (USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I ordered this book with high expectations. Over the years I've sought out a variety of the classic and not-so-classic examples of the genre, both academic and just for fun. The expression of sexuality Bentley promotes is neither shocking nor abhorrent (millions can attest to this) and her story deserves to be told.

Bentley is a former professional ballet dancer and competent writer and reporter. Her memoir about an intense affair that had as its centerpiece frequent, albeit compulsive (she kept count) anal intercourse seemed like something worth reading.

Instead of "showing," though, Bentley tells - and you understand pretty quickly that Bentley has told her story and explained herself many, many times in many, many therapy sessions. She offers some nuggets of self-analysis that sound very much as if a mental health practitioner came up with them. Her father was cold and difficult to please, pain became a friend, she early on became perfectionist, etc. One is led to believe that it is a given that an old psychic wound is necessary in order for one to enjoy anal sexuality.

The Freudian punning is unnerving.

There is little dialogue in this story and precious little deep feeling. The guy to whom she insists she surrendered is called "A-Man," a cutesy moniker and far cry from the grave dignity of the Stephens and Sirs of the genre.

This is less an "erotic memoir" than a series of descriptions - told by the way in the breathy prose of fashion-magazine reportage - of what she wore and how she looked, the state and the size of genitalia, and where to buy the supplies most cheaply (Costco), of an affair that while undoubtedly wonderfully physically intense and affecting, sounds surprisingly lackluster in the retelling. I was disappointed in this story.

49 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Graphic Confessional Memoir by this Dancer/Writer, October 11, 2004

By	C. Hutton "book maven" (East Coast, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This is Toni Bentley's fifth book about either the world of ballet/dance or her own life. Now in her mid-40's, Ms. Bentley's formative experiences were with her distant father and her years with George Balanchine at the New York City Ballet. "Winter Season: A Dancer's Journal" was her painful account of establishing a new identity apart from the all-consuming world of the NYC Ballet. Now she writes of her quest to create a viable sexual identity for herself.

This focus upon issues of sexuality is nothing new for Ms. Bentley. She wrote a cultural history of a striptease known as the Dance of the Seven Veils in her "Sisters of Salome" (2002). She is an accomplished writer though she occassionally goes over the top.

The reader should be warned that this memoir is emotionally and sexually graphic as Ms. Bentley focuses upon her newly discovered obsession with sodomy. If the reader is uncomfortable with being a voyeur inside Ms. Bentley's bedroom, then this book is not for you.

For Ms. Bentley, she has finally found a form of sexual liberation for her masochistic and self-abasement tendencies. With her personal sexual surrender, she attributes a freeing up of a lifetime of inhibitions, releasing anger toward her father, and discovering a spiritual union with "Paradise."

"The Surrender" is a very intimate and searingly honest account of one woman's search for personal peace. It is difficult to be this honest about one's sexual neediness with a lover or with a best friend -- Ms. Bentley just published her sexual neediness for the world to read.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Trip of a Read,..., February 7, 2006

By	Brian - See all my reviews

Sodomy has never had such a voice since perhaps the Marquis de Sade took quill to ink. Ms. Toni Bentley unabashedly gives a detailed and explicit exposition of her submission to her sexual need to yield to the will of men--plural. For her, rapture in submission was achieved in the ultimate subjugation: From giving up her ass for the pure and unadulterated use by a man.

This is a graphic memoir that is bound to disturb some and undoubtedly delight many others. There is a fair amount of tedious moments in the work, where the author gets a bit too philosophical in her rationalizing of her experiences, but still the work nonetheless is an honest exposition and memoir of a woman's journey into submission and sexual fulfillment thtough sodomy.