Hi y'all,
Nash recommended The Sluts by Dennis Cooper to Julie, who in turn recommended it to me as the best internet novel either of them has ever read. Julie warned me though, “It gave me nightmares, which I respect.” When Jesse saw I bought it, he messaged me, "This book is vile. Deeply unpleasant."
And none of them were wrong! I maybe regret reading it and definitely will not be shocked if I have nightmares! At the same time: the form and pace and churning twists of this book were incredibly well done, and I agree that it captures the voice and “community” (oh god) and elaborate mix of truth & fiction of the internet better than any other novel I have read. And it was published in 2003! It’s very premonitory of the internet as it is now. The internet shapes and even becomes "real life," even when everything on it begins as a lie.
The plot: There's a mystery on the gay escort review message board. A boy named Brad—eighteen (or so he claims), beautiful (but sicky), and down for anything (even the ultimate, maybe)—is a popular escort, whose pimp (or sugar daddy) (or maybe boyfriend) hopes to kill him for a snuff film. Brad has seizures from terminal brain cancer, or maybe he was dropped on his head as a child. Maybe he's a former pornstar named Stevie. Maybe he's in desperate need of help, or maybe he's manipulative and unhinged and dangerous. Maybe he is living in Portland with his wife Elaine, maybe he's in prison for burning down his former boss's garage. Maybe he wants to die, or maybe you could save him. Or maybe you could kill him yourself. Maybe he’s already dead, or maybe that was a different escort whose body the police found, who was tortured to death on video tape.
The denizens of the message board are all obsessed with the mystery, obsessed with Brad, and are obsessed with what it would feel like to kill him. The story is exclusively told online: through the reviews of different johns who meet with Brad, and comments that readers of the forum leave on the reviews.
Like I said earlier, this book is not for the faint of heart. It's incredibly violent, graphic and disturbing, and honestly part of me feels kinda sick even just writing this review. I had two skip three pages because I knew that I didn't want those images or words in my mind. I hid the book in the back of my bookshelf because I can't look at the cover.1
Violence in literature is so much more visceral than violence in films. I think I'm sort of numb to violence in film at this point because I know it's all fake blood, fake guts, fake gore and fake pain. Books force us to be complicit in their violence—we're active participants in imagining it all. And it makes them all the more disturbing and psychologically scarring—it really all did happen in my head. I know I’ve written at length about other violent, disturbing books (Blood and Guts in High School by Kathy Acker and SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas) but neither of these books were as explicit and graphic and detailed as The Sluts.
I can’t say that I regret reading it, because it really is masterfully written, and it pulled off a magic trick the likes of which I think I had only read before in Pale Fire by Nabokov. The internet becomes a place where people can indulge in their fantasies as if they were truth—but by putting these fantasies on the internet, they become the truth in unexpected ways. The stakes are high, and we’re unsure who the victim will be until someone is pronounced dead. You could probably draw connections to Q-Anon or Elliot Rodger or some other horrific cases of internet-lies-gone-wrong.
Listen, I could write a whole long review about obsession and "collaborative storytelling" on the internet that's a mix of truth, myth, and lies, but like, I don't want to quote this book, I don't want to think about the plot, and I don't want my parents (or friends) to think I'm deeply sick-in-the-head for spending too much time dwelling on it.
Read it, don't read it, whatever. You’re warned. Here’s my link to buy it, if somehow this review didn’t scare you off.
Yours, potentially scarred for life,
book notes
I will say, I think I was more shocked when I read Brett Easton Ellis' Less Than Zero. (BEE provided a blurb for The Sluts, not shocking.) Less Than Zero also contains a really horrific snuff film scene, which was absolutely psychologically scarring for me to read (and really changed the way I thought about the guy who had recommended it to me as his favorite book) because it was my first. And I never really thought there was going to be a second, but I'm dumb and underestimated both the depravity of this book and the intense response I would have to it.