Campus Sexpot: A Memoir (Awp Award Series in Creative Nonfiction)

She tipped her head sideways, her lips offering themselves to his. He remembered the fire those lips contained, the promise her kiss held. . . . In 1962 David Carkeet's drowsy hometown of Sonora, California, snapped awake at the news that it had inspired a smutty potboiler titled Campus Sexpot . Before leaving town on short notice, the novel's author had been an English teacher at the local high school, where Carkeet was a hormone-saturated sophomore. Leaving was a good idea, it turned out, for most of the characters in Campus Sexpot had been modeled after Sonora's citizens. Carkeet uproariously recaptures his stunned, youthful reaction to the novel's sleazy take on his hometown. The innocent nowhere burg where he despaired of ever getting any "action" became, in the pages of Campus Sexpot , a sink of iniquity echoing with "animal cries of delight." Blood pounded, dams of passion broke, and marriages and careers—not to mention the basics of good writing—went straight to hell. As Carkeet relates his own romantic fumblings to the novel's clumsy twists and turns, he also evokes the urgently hushed atmosphere in which the book circulated among friends and neighbors. Eventually, Carkeet stumbles into adulthood, where he discovers a truer definition of manhood than the one in the pages of the pulp fiction of his youth. A wry look at middle-class sexual mores and a witty appreciation of the art of the hack novel, Carkeet's memoir is, above all, a poignant and hilarious coming-of-age story sure to revive our own bittersweet teenage memories. Publishers Weekly Novelist Carkeet (Error of Our Ways) revisits the 1962 scandal of his Sonora, Calif., high school in this saucy, fanciful slice of creative nonfiction. Campus Sexpot was a sexy pulp novel that appeared in the author's small middle-class community when he was 15, reportedly written by a former Sonora high school teacher who fled to Mexico. The steamy roman clef barely disguised the identity of the real characters involved in the affair between a newly arrived English teacher, Don Kaufield (aka the book's author, Dale Koby) and his 19-year-old, amply endowed student, Linda Franklin. In a nimble narrative, Carkeet transforms the reading of his first smutty book into a shrimpy boy's sexual initiation during the buttoned-up Kennedy years. Carkeet annotates excerpts from the novel, especially the seduction scenes between nubile, willing Linda and her married teacher ("I'll try not to interrupt anymore," promises Carkeet); he expands on notable characters and fills in prurient information. The first Campus Sexpot ends with a heroic paean to the father-son relationship; Carkeet concludes similarly with a tribute to his upstanding father, who puzzled about people's choice of the dark side: "Why be bad when you can be good?" (Sept. 26) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information. She tipped her head sideways, her lips offering themselves to his. He remembered the fire those lips contained, the promise her kiss held. . . . In 1962 David Carkeet's drowsy hometown of Sonora, California, snapped awake at the news that it had inspired a smutty potboiler titled Campus Sexpot. Before leaving town on short notice, the novel's author had been an English teacher at the local high school, where Carkeet was a hormone-saturated sophomore. Leaving was a good idea, it turned out, for most of the characters in Campus Sexpot had been modeled after Sonora's citizens.

Carkeet uproariously recaptures his stunned, youthful reaction to the novel's sleazy take on his hometown. The innocent nowhere burg where he despaired of ever getting any "action" became, in the pages of Campus Sexpot, a sink of iniquity echoing with "animal cries of delight." Blood pounded, dams of passion broke, and marriages and careers--not to mention the basics of good writing--went straight to hell.

As Carkeet relates his own romantic fumblings to the novel's clumsy twists and turns, he also evokes the urgently hushed atmosphere in which the book circulated among friends and neighbors. Eventually, Carkeet stumbles into adulthood, where he discovers a truer definition of manhood than the one in the pages of the pulp fiction of his youth. A wry look at middle-class sexual mores and a witty appreciation of the art of the hack novel, Carkeet's memoir is, above all, a poignant and hilarious coming-of-age story sure to revive our own bittersweet teenage memories.

She tipped her head sideways, her lips offering themselves to his. He remembered the fire those lips contained, the promise her kiss held . . . In 1962 David Carkeet's drowsy hometown of Sonora, California, snapped awake at the news that it had inspired a smutty potboiler titled 'Campus Sexpot'. Before leaving town on short notice, the novel's author had been an English teacher at the local high school, where Carkeet was a hormone-saturated sophomore. Leaving was a good idea, it turned out, for most of the characters in 'Campus Sexpot' had been modeled after Sonora's citizens.Carkeet uproariously recaptures his stunned, youthful reaction to the novel's sleazy take on his hometown. The innocent nowhere burg where he despaired of ever getting any "action" became, in the pages of 'Campus Sexpot', a sink of iniquity echoing with "animal cries of delight." Blood pounded, dams of passion broke, and marriages and careers - not to mention the basics of good writing--went straight to hell. As Carkeet relates his own romantic fumblings to the novel's clumsy twists and turns, he also evokes the urgently hushed atmosphere in which the book circulated among friends and neighbors. Eventually, Carkeet stumbles into adulthood, where he discovers a truer definition of manhood than the one in the pages of the pulp fiction of his youth. A wry look at middle-class sexual mores and a witty appreciation of the art of the hack novel, Carkeet's memoir is, above all, a poignant and hilarious coming-of-age story sure to revive our own bittersweet teenage memories.