Prisoner of X: 20 Years in the Hole at Hustler Magazine

I've known the author for over 30 years, 27 of which I thought he was dead. As college students at the dawning of the punk rock era, we were involved in hijinks ranging from the rerouting of public transportation to social criticism using jumbo markers. We ended up losing touch after someone had told me that Allan was dead. Easy enough to believe after personally witnessing him nearly lose half his body while trying to bulldog a moving cable car and knowing of his great fondness for self-induced catatonic states. Forward 27 years, I'm sick at home listening to Howard Stern and Allan is a guest promoting his book. What a second, Allan is alive and he worked at Hustler for the better portion of his adult life. This is a book I have to buy immediately. The book is darn funny. His nearly two decade journey from being a punk rock proofreader during the early days of the Reagan administration to help saving the 42nd President's rear makes for a great read. Thank God that Allan lived to bring us this special gem through his Canadian/SoCal/Punk Rock eyes. Buy it today, so you can eventually say the book was so much funnier than the movie (wonder if Woody will reprise his role?)

The subtitle of this book, 20 Years in the Hole at Hustler Magazine, is what initially drew me in. I anticipated a book filled with insider information on the porn industry that would reveal Larry Flynt's dark, dirty secrets and the inner politics involved in the business of selling sex. But as I read I found that the book was much more than this. I found myself more interested in MacDonell himself than Larry Flynt, laughing out loud at the dark humored retellings of his trials and tribulations. This book is not just an expose on the porn industry, it is memoir at the top of it's game.

This book will sneak up on you. The topic seems like an easy enough of a sell; how could a memoir about 20 years working up to the top of the editorial ladder at Hustler not be entertaining? But this isn't a I'm-a-good-writer-and-I-worked-in-the-porn-industry-and-so-I-know-there's an-audience-and-so-publish-me memoir; no banal "I'm better than the porn industry," or "I love the porn industry" or "I hate the porn industry" overtones. Any cheap shots are enjoyed, not taken. The writing is excellent, the insights unfliching and fresh. Engaging perspective into situtations that many others probably haven't been (or wouldn't be) in or wouldn't admit to. Can't recommend this book highly enough; if you like John Fante, Mark Twain, Hunter Thompson and that sort of thing, you will most certainly want to read this.

Alan McDonnel rules! I never knew porn could be so interesting. It has dirty parts, but mostly it's about what happened to Alan. That movie about Larry Flynt is just the beginning, cos this is what really happened. I ordered it and read it, from beginning to end in two sittings. I would recommend this to my friends or anybody who likes a good read. (I am 31).

Before I picked up this memoir, I was only passingly familiar with this author's work . Now I am bent on reading anything and everything that Mr. MacDonell has ever concocted. Mostly, I knew MacDonell from his mind-ripping confession/explosion regarding the inner life of an X-rated movie critic in the 1987 landmark underground compendium APOCALYPSE CULTURE. Allan wrote that piece under the pen name "Christian Shapiro," so I always kept my eyes peeled for that byline. Fortunately or unfortunately, most of MacDonell's writing efforts were confined to numerous Larry Flynt Publications over the two decades since AP, where he cultivated an eruptive, hyperkinetic, brawlingly muscular comic voice. And now, very fortunately, he has emerged into the world of books with this exiliarating account of his "20 Years in the Hole." This is the story of a drunken dope fiend who goes from working for the legendary L.A. punk zine SLASH to getting clean and rising up the ranks at HUSTLER and then, horribly amusingly, losing that lofty perch at a moment when, indeed, he has a lot to lose. At various points, MacDonell tells of being unable to get "lucky" in a whorehouse, witnessing a videotape purported to depict a media billionaire and his movie star wife up to some hilarious kinks and ultimately unseating members of Congress in the wake of the Clinton impeachment. Looming ever overhead is the gold-plated wheelchair of his Sta-Puft Pornographer boss, who makes mint after mint by selling himself as a Man of the Yokels while grotesquely underpaying his own employees and actually charging them a monthly fee to park in the Beverly Hills office building that he owns! PRISONER OF X is a one-of-a-kind autobiograpy rife with moments of gut-busting uproariousness and eye-bulging revelations of a world we have all just previously had to wonder about. Wonder no more. Buy this book.