What is Whitney Strub reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Whitney Strub, editor (with Carolyn Bronstein) of Porno Chic and the Sex Wars: American Sexual Representation in the 1970s.

From his entry:

in a desperate attempt to understand what went so wrong, I recently read Wayne Barrett’s Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth, originally published in 1992 but reissued last year. It’s an astonishingly well-researched compendium of the narcissism, greed, racism, corruption, incompetence, and belligerence that define Donald Trump, a man with effectively zero redeeming qualities. Barrett is meticulous when it comes to detailing the repeated failures of Trump’s early career, from New York City development to football schemes to Atlantic City; over and over again, he was bailed out by his wealthy father or saved by his willingness to resort to sociopathic levels of aggression, rather than talent or...[read on]

About Porno Chic and the Sex Wars, from the publisher:

For many Americans, the emergence of a “porno chic” culture provided an opportunity to embrace the sexual revolution by attending a film like Deep Throat (1972) or leafing through an erotic magazine like Penthouse. By the 1980s, this pornographic moment was beaten back by the rise of Reagan-era political conservatism and feminist anti-pornography sentiment.

This volume places pornography at the heart of the 1970s American experience, exploring lesser-known forms of pornography from the decade, such as a new, vibrant gay porn genre; transsexual/female impersonator magazines; and pornography for new users, including women and conservative Christians. The collection also explores the rise of a culture of porn film auteurs and stars as well as the transition from film to video. As the corpus of adult ephemera of the 1970s disintegrates, much of it never to be professionally restored and archived, these essays seek to document what pornography meant to its producers and consumers at a pivotal moment.

In addition to the volume editors, contributors include Peter Alilunas, Gillian Frank, Elizabeth Fraterrigo, Lucas Hilderbrand, Nancy Semin Lingo, Laura Helen Marks, Nicholas Matte, Jennifer Christine Nash, Joe Rubin, Alex Warner, Leigh Ann Wheeler, and Greg Youmans.

Visit Whit Strub’s blog, and read more about Porno Chic and the Sex Wars at the University of Massachusetts Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Porno Chic and the Sex Wars.

Writers Read: Whitney Strub.

--Marshal Zeringue