Monger Literature
Book Guy
I write it like I mean it, but mostly they just want my money.
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita.
Mostly a send-up of a pathetic ageing academic, but not without its horny charms. Has to be first on any Hobby Lit syllabus!
Carl Hiaasen, Striptease.
Not too different from the movie. I think Hiaasen just channels Burt Reynolds every time he writes about an ol' cracker pol'. I thought it was too crazy in the wrap-up, too determined to be off-kilter.
Stephen Vizinczey, In Praise of Older Women.
An awesome read, and very different from the softcore-porn movie made out of it. Much more a classic Bildungsroman than a story of sexual escapades, the books provides a social critique of various "sexual climates" across the West, from former Iron Curtain East Europe to Canada.
Milan Kundera, Laughable Loves.
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
The first is a wonderful set of interconnected short stories and plotless musings about young adults (or old adults who are young at heart) "hooking up" in a variety of ways, from sweet romance to total kink. The latter (not very much like the movie, but Juliette Binoche is always worth looking at!) tells of ... well ... what the title says, and more.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Memories of My Melancholy Whores (Spanish title, Memoria de Mis Putas Tristes, is probably more accurately rendered as, In Memory of My Sad Fucks).
A magical-realist fantasy about an old man and a young (too young!) prostitute. He only ever meets her when she's exhausted from her sweat-shop duties and napping, but he fears to wake her so he extends his regular weekly meetings, furnishes her flat and has imaginary interactions with her, all of which have strange magical bearing on his real life.
Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders.
The fortunes and misfortunes of a decidedly liberated Enlightenment-era whore, and how she made, lost, regained, lost again, made again her fortune, and eventually ended up in America (where she belongs!).
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Okay, recent books about stripper stuff we would recognize? There's 'Stripper Lessons' by John O'Brien, who also wrote 'Leaving Las Vegas'. It's about an RIL who fixates on going OTC with his ATF. Not a very lively tale. I suppose it had some metaphorical message about knowing God or something, but I wasn't intrigued enough to care. Oh, and he committed suicide after writing it.
What there seems to be a lot more of is "stripper confessions". Just type "stripper" into an Amazon book search and see them all. About 10 years ago, I read 'Ivy League Stripper' which was a total snooze by a girl who worked her way through college (of course) and never touched a customer or did anything bad. Has anybody read any good "stripper lit"?
I seem to recall one novel about 10 or so years ago which took place partly in a strip club that felt real, but I'm not sure who the author was, maybe David Walker or David Housewright? Anyway it was nominated as best first mystery of the year but didn't win.
I don't agree with your comment that the movie of "Strip Tease" was much like the book, I found it to be very different. The book was pure comedy, an entertaining tale with no attempt at redeeming social value or social message. The movie injected a large dose of PC, depicting the stripper in a very different and unrealistic way in a clumsy attempt to make a social statement, which totally ruined it. I thought the book was great; I thought the movie was terrible. But I had read the book long before it became a movie, which makes a big difference. I rarely see a movie of a book I've enjoyed, they're almost always disappointing.