American Gangbang: A Love Story

A former porn film director, Benjamin has written a fascinating memoir of his journey through the surreal subcultures of the adult entertainment industry. After graduating from Brown University in 1999, Benjamin lands in California, where he has an epiphany: he will make pornos, and they will be art. Numerous false starts, including a video of his masturbating into a banana peel, lead to a Malibu mansion and a job shooting violent interracial porn. Surrounded by a preposterous cast of misfits, Benjamin tries to pursue a healthy relationship with a woman while navigating his obsession with the world of gangbangs and glory holes. Whether he’s describing a five-man “blowbang” by the poolside or colonic therapy in Thailand, Benjamin always writes engagingly. The prose shines—characters are sharply described, dialogue is witty, and there are moments of epiphanic intensity, such as when Benjamin wriggles with his camera into the midst of the aforementioned blowbang. The lucidity and balance of the writing at times overwhelms the narrator, whose lack of psychological complexity makes it seem like he is being disingenuous. Nevertheless, his book is a disturbing and remarkable debut, and deserves a more serious audience, larger than its title would suggest. (Nov.)