BOOKS

Like Petronius, the ancient Roman writer she takes as her model, Eurydice presents a firsthand account of the chaos of human sexuality in all its kinky, confused, and transgressive expressions. With a style that combines erudition, wit, and hipness, and audaciously draws on both the factual authority of journalism and the atmospheric license of fiction, Eurydice transports us inside the nightmarish, breathtaking realms of dungeons and bloodletting clubs, cross-dressing conferences, supersized strip emporiums, as well as military bases and Catholic monasteries. Her aim is to understand these people who are drawn to the farthest sexual "fringe." On her journeys, Eurydice learns that, in fact, they are well-educated middle- to upper-class professional Americans. They are housewives and stockbrokers, college students and grandparents, doctors and priests. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, Eurydice probes people's dual lives to answer some fundamental questions: Why is our society simultaneously obsessed with and afraid of sex? How does this widespread sexual eccentricity coexist with our puritanical hysteria about sexual harassment and "moral turpitude"? Are we today more liberated or actually more confined than in the past?

Reviews

“Satyricon USA is a fascinating glimpse into extremely creative sexplay. It can leave you outraged or shaking your head in wonder. And maybe, for some, it will be inspirational.”

—Kevin Dicus, New Frontiers

Satyricon USA: A Journey Across the New Sexual Frontier, published by Scribner in NY, London, Sydney, Singapore, follows Eurydice’s journey into the world of America’s modern sexual paraphilias and their seductive but alienating tropes. It is an investigation of the millennial sexual identities and alternative lifestyles and their politically correct tropes which codify and even police what ought to be fluid and anarchic sexual emancipation. It was based on original investigative articles that Eurydice published in Spin, which got her invited to appear on Geraldo and Oprah. With a unique talent for evoking a shocking scene and an empathy for the marginalized, Eurydice plumbs the  worlds of cross-dressing conferences, supersized strip emporiums, and sadomasochist gathering spots. She records the surprising sexual adventures of ordinary Americans and introduces such unlikely characters as a former IBM executive who has been cross-dressing since age twelve and a dental assistant who has won fame as a porn star on the Web. Part reportage, part analysis, and part memoir, Satyricon USA is an unforgettable reading experience, catching a society in the throes of redefining its sexual mores. In this "rich and fascinating portrait of sex in America," Eurydice gives us a frontline report on the reality of sex life in the United States -- from "fringe" sexual behavior and sex-on-the-Net to how and why sex has changed from a private activity to a public display.

“Hip without being glib, smart without being smug, Eurydice takes readers on an eye-opening tour of the American sexual underworld and emerges with the news that sexual deviance isn’t deviant at all: it’s deeply embedded in mainstream, middle-class America. In Greek mythology, Eurydice was the unfortunate bride of Orpheus, who tried to lead her out of Hades and failed. As a writer for Spin, this modern-day Eurydice reverses the journey, willingly descending into dank bars and addict meetings. Setting out to discover perversion behind the accepted norm, she finds instead that normalcy abides within such practices as necrophilia, sadomasochism, cybersex and erotic bloodletting. The book also draws strength from Eurydice’s honest confessions about how she feels about what she observes, sustaining a wonderful balance of intellect and emotion throughout her illuminating trek through contemporary sexuality.”

— Publishers Weekly

“An erudite and astute road tour of the far frontier of state-of-the-art American sexuality.”

—Francine Prose

“Drawing on hundreds of interviews, Eurydice attempts to answer questions like: Why is our society simultaneously obsessed with and afraid of sex? How can this widespread sexual eccentricity coexist with the recent puritanical hysteria about sexual harassment and sex in the military? Are we today more liberated or more confined than in the past? While shedding light on the varied answers to these questions, Eurydice learns that her subjects are not on the fringe of society; they are well educated, middle to upper class professional Americans, whose ‘perversions’ represent a quest for continuity, safety, and uniformity. Rather than acting as a travel guide to the sexual underground, Satyricon USA reveals the normalcy lurking in the dark spaces Eurydice visits. A unique blend of reportage, memoir, extensive research, and incisive analysis, it is a compelling portrait of a nation in the midst of redefining its sexual life.”

— Lambda Publications

More outrageous than Erica Jong, more sensational than Nicholson Baker's Vox, more explosive than the subsequent Vagina Monologues, f/32 is Eurydice's astonishing award-winning debut. If Gogol had an irrepressible nose, then Ela (a name meaning orgasm) has a less metaphorical organ which is relentless and defining. It whines, it shrieks, it drives Ela mad. Thanks to "it," Ela is an urban siren. Ela (a pseudonym meaning orgasm) stops all hearts. No matter how many people love her, she daily inspires more. She spends half her life avoiding the people who love her, and the other half making them love her. Whoever meets her, desires her at their own risk. Then, one day, she loses the instrument of her pleasure, and sets out after it on a quest for it. f/32 is a wild Rabelaisian romp through most forms of amorous excess, but it is also a brilliant and apocalyptic tale orbiting around a macabre assault on the streets of Manhattan. Ela’s mock-quest for self-understanding and unification, f/32 lures the reader into a landscape of sexual alienation, continually interrupted by gags, dreams, mirror reflections, flashbacks, and street scenes from Manhattan. Between the poles of desire and butchery the novel and Ela sail, the awed reader going along for one of the most dazzling rides in recent American fiction. Fasten your safety belts, for the most unforgettable narrative ever written by a woman.

Reviews

"In true Bildungsroman fashion, Ela's experience of herself develops in the novel from one of unconscious fragmentation to completeness in fragmentation. The literary parodies of the Bildungsroman and of notions of essence and absence are necessary components of this novel. For the re-affiliation of the self with the self (as in Virginia Woolf's Orlando), it is necessary to go over and through history, and to appropriate the self through history's remarks in literature."

— Patricia Coleman

“Fiction’s future began with Eurydice’s f/32. Consider its exemplary genesis: Eurydice’s f/32 began when Francois Rabelais, in a moment that Hegel would one day call World Historical, wrote Gogol’s “The Nose.” Kathy Acker plagiarized “The Nose” by Rabelais but called it “The History of the Eye.” The post-punk rock group The Pixies wrote a song called “Debaser” based upon the assumption that “The History of the Eye” by Kathy Acker was plagiarized from Luis Bunuel’s Chien Andalou. (Like the Mekongs—who wrote “Empire of the Senseless” but claimed never to have read Acker—the Pixies claimed never to have read Acker.) Acker was the opposite of nonplussed. She was plussed. It was thus left to Jacques Lacan to fall asleep while watching Bunuel’s Chien Andalou and listening to the Pixies on AKG holographic headphones, fall asleep in his sleep, double sommeil, and dream of a beautiful Greek woman, Eurydice, born mise en abime on the isle of Lesbos. He dreamt that by the age of eight she had rewritten all the books in her father’s library, incl. Homer, Shakespeare, and Beckett. He dreamt that she ran off to Hollywood at fourteen, planning to live as a guest with other exotic women of distant lands, like Madame Nhu, who find Hollywood congenial. Finally, with Lacan in REM nirvana, all sorrow annihilated, Eurydice wrote f/32.”

—Curtis White

“Just the most authoritative and compelling writer of sex in the English language.”

—Craig Mark

"Beauty invited the Beast for a stroll on a srystal path strewn with hollow silver hearts that were being stirred up by stiff gusts of wind like clouds of dust: and so everything began." And so begins F/32, Eurudice's award winning first novel about Ela (a pseudonym meaning orgasm). The sight of Ela stops all hearts. Ela is an expert on love. No matter how many people love her, she daily inspires more. She spends half her life avoiding the people who love her, and the other half making them love her. She is mind-blowing. A mock-quest for self-understanding and unification, F/32 lures the reader into a landscape of sexual alienation, continually interrupted by gags, dreams, mirror reflections, flashbacks, and scenes from Manhattan. Between the poles of desire and butchery the novel and Ela sail, the awed reader going along for one of the most dazzling rides in recent American fiction.

Reviews

“Fiction’s future began with Eurydice’s f/32. Consider its exemplary genesis: Eurydice’s f/32 began when Francois Rabelais, in a moment that Hegel would one day call World Historical, wrote Gogol’s “The Nose.” Kathy Acker plagiarized “The Nose” by Rabelais but called it “The History of the Eye.” The post-punk rock group The Pixies wrote a song called “Debaser” based upon the assumption that “The History of the Eye” by Kathy Acker was plagiarized from Luis Bunuel’s Chien Andalou. (Like the Mekongs—who wrote “Empire of the Senseless” but claimed never to have read Acker—the Pixies claimed never to have read Acker.) Acker was the opposite of nonplussed. She was plussed. It was thus left to Jacques Lacan to fall asleep while watching Bunuel’s Chien Andalou and listening to the Pixies on AKG holographic headphones, fall asleep in his sleep, double sommeil, and dream of a beautiful Greek woman, Eurydice, born mise en abime on the isle of Lesbos. He dreamt that by the age of eight she had rewritten all the books in her father’s library, incl. Homer, Shakespeare, and Beckett. He dreamt that she ran off to Hollywood at fourteen, planning to live as a guest with other exotic women of distant lands, like Madame Nhu, who find Hollywood congenial. Finally, with Lacan in REM nirvana, all sorrow annihilated, Eurydice wrote f/32.”

—Curtis White

"In true Bildungsroman fashion, Ela's experience of herself develops in the novel from one of unconscious fragmentation to completeness in fragmentation. The literary parodies of the Bildungsroman and of notions of essence and absence are necessary components of this novel. For the re-affiliation of the self with the self (as in Virginia Woolf's Orlando), it is necessary to go over and through history, and to appropriate the self through history's remarks in literature."

— Patricia Coleman

“This is a highly original narrative, a parable of sorts, disturbing and funny at the same time.”

—Robert Coover

“One of the most daring American novels, f/32 is comical, ribald, passionate, visceral, maniac, and wise. Almost any page of f/32 redeems us from the anemic writing and banalities we have endured in the past decade of bloodless fiction. It sets the creative tone for the nineties.”

—Frederic Tuten