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PREVIEWS
By the book
Upcoming Readings | by Tom Hummer
Allan McDonell – Prisoner of X: 20
Years in the Hole at Hustler
Magazine
Powell’s City of Books
August 10, 7:30pm
It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it. Allan
McDonell did, he’s telling all and for this, he’s
gaining thousands of friends (myspace.com/prisonerofx).
“It takes a special person to work at Hustler
magazine for 20 years and not crack up,” writes
McDonell in Prisoner of X, an account of his tenure at
Hustler, rising from assistant copy editor to editorial
director of all Larry Flynt Publications’ unseemly offerings.
It ended in 2003 when the moody Flynt fired
McDonell for setting the flame too high under him
at a celebrity roast. By then an increasingly irritated
McDonell had already begun to sabotage his own
job (a professional career that included evaluating
countless skin photos, taking XXX field trips,
mastering “fully erect” film criticism and enduring
creepy interoffice schemers) but was reluctant to
quit. At the roast, however, he had “unconsciously
tapped into a raging undercurrent of resentment
toward [his] employer...[and] was tendering one
of the most passively aggressive resignations in
history.” Savagely funny and well-written, Prisoner of
X is as much about the inner workings of America’s
most influential porn domain as it is about Larry
Flynt, covering (among other infamous incidents)
the filming of The People vs. Larry Flynt, Flynt’s stint
in a mental institution, and Flynt’s takedown of
House Speaker-elect Bob Livingston during Bill
Clinton’s impeachment. Chuck Palahniuk says to
“indulge before the restraining orders pull this great
book off store shelves.” We’re certain the book will
still be there when McDonell (who says he’s experiencing
no withdrawal symptoms) comes to town.
And, please, come just for the articles.
Debby Applegate – The Most Famous
Man in America: The Biography
of Henry Ward Beecher
Powell’s City of Books
August 2, 7:30pm
“Henry who?” we ask in response to a title that
declares Henry Ward Beecher the most famous man
in America. Clever of author (and sometimes Portlander)
Debby Applegate to make us do a double
take and look between the covers of The Most Famous
Man in America to discover exactly who this man was
(other than Harriet Beecher Stowe’s little brother).
A son of Lyman Beecher, the last great Puritan minister,
the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher came of age
in the early 1830s (the 19th Century social equivalent
of the late ‘60s) and, befitting a spirited soul in
such times, loved nothing more than breaking
taboos and defying expectations. Beecher shocked
and enthralled America by shedding his father’s
fire-and-brimstone theology and replacing it with a
New-Testament-based “Gospel of Love,” becoming
a founding father of modern American Christianity.
He joined religion with politics in pursuit of social
justice, throwing himself into the abolitionist movement
and preaching from the pulpit on behalf of the
Republican Party. By the Civil War’s end, Beecher
was at the pinnacle of fame and influence. And
then, in 1870, scandal broke: Beecher was accused
of seducing a close friend’s wife, which led to a six
month trial for “criminal conversation,” generating
more headlines than the recent war. After a jury
deadlock, Beecher continued to preach to dwindling
audiences, and by the mid-20th Century historians
had dismissed him as a sentimental buffoon and
lecherous hypocrite. The subtexts about the impermanence
of celebrity and about how some things
never change are loud and clear.
Irvine Welsh – The Bedroom
Secrets of the Master Chefs
Powell’s City of Books
August 24, 7:30pm
Irvine Welsh tends to drink green tea these days
instead of doing ten pints and a couple of grams,
and to ride horses every week instead of betting
on them. What? Has the hard-living first-person
chronicler of Britain’s drug-induced excesses (most
notably, Trainspotting [1993]) and the E’d-up voice of
the rave generation (Ecstasy [1996]) gone mainstream
and mellow? Although he retains his humor
and still salts his language with the “F” and the “C”
words, Welsh, at age 47, has indeed softened. Says
Welsh, “I think you get to a point where you have to
make certain decisions for sheer self-preservation.
The direction I was headed in was the crematorium.”
Welsh turned to the Romantics, Byron and
Shelley, and last year admitted a passion for the
romantic prose of Jane Austen. Today, four years
after Porno (Welsh’s sequel to Trainspotting), comes
The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs, a truly literary
novel, with shades of The Picture of Dorian Gray and
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—and even a bit of romance.
Bad boy Danny Skinner is on a quest to unravel classified
information known as “the bedroom secrets
of the master chefs”—information he regards as
key to understanding his genetics and the crippling
compulsions that threaten to wreck his young
life. Welsh certainly breaks fertile ground with The
Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs, but he hasn’t completely
lost his flair for the grotesque—show up to
see if he’ll read aloud the awfully graphic sex scene
near the end of the novel.
Brett Paesel – Mommies Who
Drink: Sex, Drugs, and Other Distant
Memories of an Ordinary Mom
Powell’s City of Books
August 28, 7:30pm
There’s a new style of mommy lit out there, known
among the “Mom Mafia” inner circle as “momoirs.”
These parenting tales aren’t the predictable yawners
about the cute things kids do. Writer, actress, wife
and mommy Brett Paesel had read the “soft-edged,
cloying, pastel pile of goo” on motherhood and
wondered, “Where’s the cocktail and an evening out
with your pals, dancing at the bar down the street?”
Paesel needed to know she wasn’t the only mother
who seriously called her husband during the first
month of her child’s life and demanded they find
a way to give the baby back. So, in Mommies Who
Drink, Paesel collects true stories drawn from her
own not-so-perfect experiences. Join Paesel and
her friends at happy hour every Friday as they try to
reconcile modern motherhood with their carefree
pasts, planning, for instance, to do cocaine again,
only to discover they don’t have a babysitter. With a
voice that’s real and poignant yet wickedly hilarious,
Paesel speaks to all women braving the new world
of motherhood. On the Manolo Blahnik heels of
Sex and the City, Mommies Who Drink has already been
optioned for an HBO television series (with Paesel
writing the script), so get on the bandwagon now.
42 PDXmagazine.com / August 2006