Scary Monsters and Super Freaks: Stories of Sex, Drugs, Rock 'n' Roll and Murder

Based simply on the title of Mike Sager's "Scary Monsters and Super Freaks: Stories of Sex, Drugs, Rock 'N Roll and Murder," I had to buy the book. The title promises a lot, and the book delivers. The compilation of essays from Sager's journalism career at GQ, Esquire and Rolling Stone magazines features stories of real people who find themselves in improbable situations and what becomes of them. Love triangles, religious cults, musicians, surfers, politicians, cokeheads, moms, pornos, law enforcement agents and prisoners: every person and situation that Sager presents, he presents in a way that one might not normally think of. The 19 stories serve our culture up to us in sometimes unappealing but always intriguing ways. And because each chapter is a complete entity unto itself, the book is good for picking up and putting down if you have a hectic schedule. Completely enjoyable (though I confess there was one story that I had to skip over - which one it was, I won't say!). Thoroughly recommended.

each piece in this book is somewhere in the 20 to 50 page range, but despite the brevity, you feel as though you've gotten an in-depth look at some dark, dark american lives. nothing here that you could call feel-good fluff. but it is mostly all very interesting; it kept my fingers flipping the pages faster than 90% of the other books i've been reading of late. highly recommended for those who like good writing on sex & drugs & murder & other sorts of mayhem. and personally i don't think there is a lot of good writing out there on those sorts of things.

I bought this book on a whim because it looked interesting in the store. I'm glad I did as I've enjoyed it very much. The book is a collection of nineteen articles originally published in Esquire, GQ, or Rolling Stone. The subjects are generally sad and sordid but Sager takes the time to understand his subjects and explain not only what happened to them but why. Some of the incidents he describes are familiar but Sager's work has depth and reveals and explains things other more superficial coverage missed. I recommend this book and will be looking for future work by this writer.

You have probably read some of these articles over the years in magazines and weekly newspapers. Here are some great stories of the last twenty years. Stories about John Holmes and Rick James are great. Mike Sager goes into great detail to give a rounded picture of all his subects. The stories about journalists Janet Lewis and Veronica Guernin are pretty intense. Some of this stuff is about obsessions we all had about ten years ago like Easy-E Eric Wright and the Heaven's Gate Crowd. It's funny how time flys. Check it out.

I'll get the disclaimer out of the way first. The smartest thing I've done in my journalistic career was one of the first things I ever did. That was convincing Mike Sager to join me at the Emory University newspaper. It was my introduction to the Sager school of reporting and writing. Live the story or, better yet, live with the story. Mike calls it the anthropological approach to journalism and during the last twenty-five years he has been doing that for a living. We used to talk about the New Journalism, which was all the rage when we started. It was Tom Wolfe this, Richard Ben Cramer that. But Mike has carved out his own genre, word by word, story by story and the results are on stunning display in Scary Monsters.Mike is the classic journalistic success story. He dropped out of law school after just a few days and took a job working as a copy aide at the Washington Post (not before he almost lost the job because he failed the spelling test!). He worked his way up to reporter, starting out on the police beat, and there was no holding him back.But can he write? I've read these stories over the years as Mike has written them and I've read them again recently. Each is captivating, that sort of anthropological expedition into an event, a person, a story, that you will soon recognize as uniquely Sageresque. Taken individually or as a collection, they are a great read. Money well spent. Mike's work is already being taught in journalism schools and for good reason.The best part of this? Mike has so many other stories, from his first foray into magazine writing, which was when he went in search of Marlon Brando, to his more recent work in Esquire, which places him in the pantheon of great writers who have filled the pages of that magazine. Let's hope that with the success of this book, we'll get the next collection soon!