Skipping Towards Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Pursuit of Happiness in America (Hardcover)

by Dan Savage (Author) "The truly revolutionary promise of our nation's founding document is the freedom to pursue happiness-with-a-capital-H..." (more)
Key Phrases: legalizing pot, experienced gambler, moral sewer, Las Vegas, United States, Claim Jumper (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Someone has to speak up for the sinners, and syndicated sex columnist Savage thinks he's the man to do it. Irritated by proselytizing from "virtuecrats" conservative pundits like Bill O'Reilly and Dr. Laura, Savage argues that whatever consenting adults want to do in the privacy of their own homes is their own business. Smoke pot? Fine. Host an S&M fetish party? Sure. Savage organizes his book into seven chapters, each devoted to one of the deadly sins: greed, lust, sloth, gluttony, envy, pride and anger. Some of these, of course, are more interesting than others. Who wouldn't rather read about lust than sloth? But Savage dutifully does a nice bit of "undercover reporting" for each sin, checking out a swinger's party for "Lust," visiting Las Vegas for "Greed," attending a fat acceptance convention for "Gluttony." He reports that, unsurprisingly, most Americans who indulge their vices are in fact nice, normal people who believe in God, care for their children and pay their mortgage. Therefore, Savage says, the government and the virtuecrats should leave them alone. So far so good. But Savage tends to underestimate the problems raised by overindulgence in the seven deadly sins. "Yes, fat kills people, but we all gotta go sometime," he writes blissfully from the fat acceptance convention, where 600-pound women complain that dieting suggestions are "sizeist." And he doesn't fully recognize the seriousness of gambling addictions: the intense rush he felt after losing $3,000 at blackjack was "worth it." On the whole, however, Savage hits the mark and gives advocates of personal and sexual liberty the hippest, sassiest voice they've had in a long time.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Probably the most read sex columnist in the United States, Savage (The Kid) is also widely regarded as one of the great humorists of our time. Anyone who reads his nationally syndicated "Savage Love" column weekly well knows his power to burst the bubble of the pompous. Even his title is a pop at Robert Bork's jeremiad, Slouching Towards Gomorrah. Here he takes readers on a tour of the country, focusing on the seven deadly sins and their manifestation in our time. From a weight-loss ashram to his arch critique of pot smokers, he uses humor to make a point. These are not merely Keilloresque essays full of whimsy overload; instead, they pack a political punch that will be repugnant to some. His real strength is in blending pungent social commentary with the personal narrative. At least one of these pieces will undoubtedly land in an anthology for future students of the essay. The explicit nature of this book will make it a difficult purchase for many libraries in the age of Ashcroft, but the justifying argument should be made that any library owning Bork's book needs this one as an antidote.
David Azzolina, Univ. of Pennsylvania Libs., Philadelphia
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Dutton Adult (October 10, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0525946756
• ISBN-13: 978-0525946755
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (61 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #547,804 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Refocusing Our Sights On the Bill of RIghts, November 5, 2002

By	D.J. Maloney "James J. Maloney" (Saint Paul, MN United States) - See all my reviews

In Skipping `Toward Gomorrah, nationally syndicated sex advice columnist, Dan Savage brings us an intelligent and reasoned voice of counterbalance to the many current (and extremely conservative) voices that cry out for Americans to "change their wicked ways and return to 'right living.'"

In Skipping, Savage takes the creative route of investigating the Seven Deadly Sins as a lens through which to examine the U.S. Bill of Rights. His "sinning" is far from the real thing in my estimation and his experiences provide for some of the most entertaining illustrations of his points.

Savage does an outstanding job of serving as a voice of counterbalance to the doomsayers among a rather large current crop of "conservatives" who tell us that society is going to "hell in a handbasket", and who set out to limit the rights of others and to define acceptable behavior for all "good" people. While anyone can invite others to a point of view, these neo-conservatives walk all over the Bill of Rights and insist that "good and right living" is defined on their terms and within their definitions of right and good and acceptable, and should be mandatory for all Americans. Those extremes I can live without!

While often hysterically funny in the reading, the content of Skippingh Toward Gomorrah is, at its very heart, a soberingly serious discussion of the intentions of our founding fathers of our country. Savage brings a refreshingly honest voice to countering fundamentalists who -- n the name of morality, decency and all that is supposedly American, feel free to trample all over the Bill of Rights.

Savage accurately argues the dangers of any kind of extremism. At its worst, it is a cancer fermenting within individuals and groups that seems to allow them to presume the right to act in reckless ways in the effort to "control others" beliefs and behavior for the "good of all American people".

The most frightening realization that Savage very plainly articulates is the fact that Americans too easily allow extreme positions to go unchallenged. In a democratic nation where we have voice and vote, we are far too often docile, polite or silent (or absent from the polls) in facing down messages that challenge the foundations of our democracy. We fail to challenge those who tell us how to live, or to defend the foundational principles of our Constitution.

From Jimmy Swaggert to Dr. Laura Slessinger to William Bennett, to Patrick Buchanan, to Robert Bork, we are inundated with non-negotiable voices for "right moral living". Savage, quite accurately, lets us know that when any individual, or group, tells us that theirs is the "only correct view," they become dangerous.

Skipping Toward Gomorrah is a book to be taken seriously. Dan Savage provides us with a thought provoking and insightful books that ask us to question how easily we allow ourselves to be taken in by those who want to run our lives. He urges our greater personal decision-making and participation in the dialogue of the nation. He smartly cautions us on the importance of being unselective on the voices we are willing to listen to in contemporary politics, religion and in the media.

Highly recommended. Savage is an excellent contemporary voice of reason!


James J. Maloney
Saint Paul, Minnesota USA

33 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Funny 'Gomorrah' States Case for Live and Let Live, October 16, 2002

By A Customer

"Skipping Towards Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Pursuit of Happiness in America" feels like one part travelogue and one part memoir, pieces stitched together with an attack on the "virtuecrats" of the American far right. William Bennett, Robert Bork, Pat Buchanan, Dr. Laura, Jerry Falwell and Bill O'Reilly all take their turn on the chopping block as author Dan Savage traverses the country in search of hot spots where he hopes to commit each of the seven deadly sins.

And he nearly succeeds.

In one of the book's funniest episodes, Savage calls a prayer line that he found advertised on a Christian cable network, only to be informed that as a gay man who cannot marry, he is doomed to a life of fornication and shall never rise to adulterer status (he is reassured that "fire is fire" and he's bound for hell right alongside the adulterers).

"Skipping Towards Gomorrah" is funny. Parts of it are laugh-out-loud funny, but as one would expect from Dan Savage - author of "The Kid," regular contributor to "This American Life," and editor and sex columnist for The Stranger - this book is not for the prudish. It's replete with four-letter words and anatomical descriptions that will make Mom blush, although Savage's forays uncover interesting and entirely unexpected snippets of American culture.

Hoping to indulge himself in a little "Falwell-style" gluttony, Savage attends a conference sponsored by the National Association for the Advancement of Fat Acceptance (NAAFA) in San Francisco. He soon realizes that the meeting is little more than a thinly-veiled meat market. BBWs (big, beautiful women) attend primarily to try and attract an FA (fat admirer).

In Las Vegas, Savage attends the annual Lifestyles Organization (LSO) convention which hosts a weekend of frolicking for more than 3,000, mostly suburban, "playcouples." He calculates that with many such groups across the country, there are more people involved in organized swinging than the entire gay male population, underlining the irony that while swinging is ignored by conservatives as a fossil from the '70s, gay marriage is blasted as an irreproachable threat to the American family.

Savage begins each chapter by detailing the historical legacy of one of the seven deadly sins - greed, lust, sloth, gluttony, envy, pride and anger - pulling references from the likes of Dante and Saint Jerome on gluttony and Peraldus, a 13th-century Dominican friar, on envy. He ends each chapter with ruminations on the appeal of the sin. We gamble not because we are greedy, but because our lives are too safe and predictable. We need sloth because of increasingly hectic schedules.

Savage does pull a few surprises. He points out that Osama bin Laden and Jerry Falwell harbor similar ideologies. They both hate liberated women, sexual freedom, secular culture and fundamental human rights. But then he goes on to unconditionally support the war on Afghanistan. In the chapter on pride, he offers a strong argument against gay pride, claiming that the gay community has moved far enough forward that simply being out is no longer challenging enough to merit full-fledged pride for most. In the chapter on anger, he begins with a long and eloquent gun rant, only to blow a hole the size of Texas in his argument by admitting that he intends to take up shooting, having discovered in the Lone Star State that, lo and behold, he's a natural shot.

"Skipping Towards Gomorrah" conveys the strong impression that it was not written for kindred spirits but for those it attacks. Savage seems to hope that his words will reach - and irritate - his nemeses. He admits to having devoured their books, and his title itself is a play on "Slouching Towards Gomorrah" by Robert Bork.

But ultimately, one has to wonder what all the fuss is about. If Bork, Bennett and Buchanan on one side, and Savage and his friends on the other, agreed to simply ignore each other, this country could be a far more quiet and peaceful place. At heart, "Skipping Towards Gomorrah" asks for just that: the freedom to live life as one see fits without having someone else's concept of morality get in the way.

32 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hilarious, Honest, and Totally Inappropriate, May 25, 2003

By	"govt_atty" (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews

Dan Savage has given the world a delightfully wicked tale of his trip across America, as he takes the reader through his attempt to commit the Seven Deadly Sins: Greed; Lust; Sloth; Gluttony; Envy; Pride; and Anger. For each sin, Dan introduces the reader to people who have embraced the sin wholeheartedly. Or more appropriately, shows the reader people who don't think the sin is really a sin. To the sensitive reader, BEWARE, as some if not all of the tales are quite shocking. To everyone else, be prepared to double up with laughter at Dan's totally inappropriate, insensitive, and awful sense of humor. [Despite being appalled at some of the stories, I often had to bite my tongue and wipe my tears away as I was laughing so hard on the Metro. Doesn't say much for me being the sensitive guy most folks take me for!]

In all honesty, I did not run out to get this book, and probably never would have read it except that my boyfriend recommended it to me. Let's face it . . . a book that flaunts the fact that the author purposefully decided to indulge in sin (whether or not you believe they are sins) just has a bad ring to it. [Although that's also a big draw to those of us who are a little upset with the religious establishment.] Before you judge it, however, you should realize it is much more than that. Mr. Savage provides facts about each sin, how it has been and is treated in society and politics, and the groups who "celebrate" the sin, including gays, gamblers, swingers, rich folks, and the National Association for the Advancement of Fat Acceptance. He provides commentary to dispel or just counter myths and information promulgated by right-wing virtuecrats as well as some liberals. It's truly a wonderful read, whether as pure entertainment or as a commentary on certain aspects of American society that most folks try to ignore.

This is definitely a book I will NOT recommend to my family. Even those that are almost as liberal in their thinking as I am would have a hard time swallowing this much honesty. But to those out there who don't mind being shocked and offended by honest humor about touchy subjects, I would say pick it up and give it a go. It's definitely a wild read!!