Author: Marty Beckerman Publisher: MTV Books/Pocket Two things immediately shocked me upon receipt of Beckerman's second tome. One, judging by the back cover, he wears boxers not briefs. Two, he has filthy toe nails. Now how am I to take seriously, on the topic of the sexual habits of America's virile and virulent youth, someone who lets his balls hang freely and who can't clean his second toenail before it gets photographed for worldwide distribution? It's a good thing Marty hasn't taken my advice, had a sex change and converted to lesbianism - filthy toenails are a definite no-no.
To the meat of the matter, to open the legs of America's finest, let's open up this literary foreplay and fuckfest with the flirting. Beckerman, in his early twenties, is a bitching writer, angry, never subtle, almost without fear. This can get him in trouble - google his name and Salon.com for further insight. Certain feminists do not get Marty, and considering he recently lambasted them for most of the ills of the late twentieth century the feeling is probably mutual. I'm not here to defend his gender politics - Johnny Cochran couldn't get Marty out of some of the shit he's in - but I will defend his thesis, as outlined in Generation S.L.U.T (Sexually Liberated Urban Teens). It goes something like this. Young people are fucking each other. Younger and younger, as the stats he provides would suggest. Sex does not mean anything near as much as it meant to previous generations; in fact, it is more often than not seen as a commodity, something less than a retail exchange. There are key reasons for this - a social lack of responsibility on the part of those on whom children and teens depend, the absolute lack of credibility and authority of institutions such as the government, the churches, marriage etc. Due to social change, hyper-consumerism and its resulting invasions of every facet of the adolescent's life, keeping up, staying in and getting out of it are all that matters. And when things go wrong, when kids kill each other or themselves, when gang rapes of classmates occur, people look every which way except at themselves when they ask, why? To get this point across, Beckerman gives a Easton Ellis-like narrative that has garnered accusations of nihilism and misogyny. Littered throughout are quotations and stats that back these points up. By the end, the stats have given you fatigue, and Beckerman, the savvy media-astute man he is, rams the book home with a narrative about his own literal impotence. Welcome to the jungle. Labelling Beckerman as gloriously perverted probably just gets him hard again, but slinging shit his way denies the potency of his message, the brutality of what he has captured. The pages of tortuous abuse in the name of pleasure read like another bool incorrectly-accused of nihilism, Fight Club, where again characters invent themselves a destructive fantasy land because at least, for a moment, it takes away the destructive falsity of reality. Near the conclusion of Generation SLUT, Beckerman, king of the savages and gonzo sluts, utters what may be his wisest words, "Our culture worships Youth, and punishes the Young as Savages. (No wonder the youth are savages.)"
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Title: Generation S.L.U.T: A Brutal Feel-Up Sessions with
Today's Sex-Crazed Adolescent Populace
Before entering into the dark, dank, slightly funky recesses
of the tome at hand, I should mention that Master B and I
have had an occasionally correspondence since he and I
had articles published at Disinfo.com. Despite my
pleadings, our knowledge of each other's loins has never
been biblical. And he won't send me his underwear.
College boys are so uptight these days.
