Campus Sexpot: A Memoir

Remember Portnoy's complaint? This one is better. A memoir of the author's early years in high school as a short, fair, studious sex-obessed innocent. Structured as a re-reading of a real, but obscure, mildly pornographic paperback, the author ranges widely over the youth culture of a small central California gold rush town in the 1960's. The humor and the hysterical situations are timeless. While lol funny, the book is also a revealing and sensitive biography of the author's family, both upstanding, and tragic. This book is way too short. I finished it wanting more stories. It's kind of like an anti "Wayne's World".

Read it. You'll thank me later.

I first became familiar with David Carkeet's work through a humorous essay called "The Unplanned Freefall." I consider "The Unplanned Freefall" to be the funniest piece of writing I have ever had the pleasure to read. I thoroughly enjoyed "Campus Sexpot" and have read it twice. In some ways, it's an unsettling book because of its frankness about sex and growing up. It has wonderful descriptions of small-town characters and occasional critiques of the writing style of an English teacher turned pornographer. Carkeet closes with a heartfelt chapter on alcoholism and his relationship with his father. I highly recommend this book.

This may just be my favorite David Carkeet book. Yes, it's funny and smart and wonderfully written, but I've rarely had such a good time reading a memoir. The pages flew by. The commentary on Dale Koby's novel is hilarious but also very discerning (there are astute lessons here for struggling writers). And when the memoir turns its attention toward Carkeet's father the book achieves real weight and substance. Highly recommended!

It's laugh out loud funny, brilliantly written, universally wonderful. So wonderful, in fact, about a third of the way into it, I felt compelled to write to Mr. Carkeet and compliment him! The deconstruction of the novel w/in the memoir is so right on. I can hardly wait to finish it, so I can start it all over again!