First, They Came for the Reese’s Pieces …

Posted on | February 3, 2012 | 17 Comments

When I worked at The Washington Times, there was a place in the office called the “discard table” where the book review editors — or anybody else — would leave the books they got for free from publishers but didn’t want to keep. My library has scores of volumes rescued from the discard table, among them a slender paperback novel called Generation S.L.U.T.

The titular acronym stands for Sexually Liberated Urban Teens, and the novel is a dark and twisted reflection on the unspeakable degeneracy of contemporary adolescents — and their parents, and their schools, and in fact, it is a jeremiad against the entire decadent post-Christian society which spawned these worthless spoiled brats.

Generation S.L.U.T. is full of dirty words and dirty actions, and it takes a discriminating mind to see that this novel, beneath its numerous layers of putrid polymorphous filth, is an essentially conservative critique of 21st-century American culture. And as soon as I began reading it, I knew I had to meet the twisted mind that produced this Dante’s Inferno of teen novels, Marty Beckerman.

Were there any justice in the world, young Beckerman would have already seen his perverse novel turned into a major motion picture, or perhaps even an HBO series, but Hollywood evidently lacks the kind of discriminating minds who can see the genius that I saw in Generation S.L.U.T. Or perhaps, they are daunted by fear of what holy unshirted hell would be unleashed on anyone who dared to turn such a wicked story into a movie. Merely to get it down to an R rating would require very careful work by the screenwriter and director. And honestly, what would the critics say about a movie whose climactic scene involves gang-rape, recorded on video for commercial purposes by a suburban teenage drug kingpin?

After reading the book, I quickly got in touch with Marty Beckerman via e-mail and eventually we met in person. It was Beckerman who sat with me, one night at a Reason magazine happy hour gathering, as we plied Christopher Hitchens with Johnny Walker Black, merely for the pleasure of hearing Hitch tell stories. Marty and I have occasionally crossed paths since then, and I have come to admire — and more importantly, to fear — his bizarre sense of humor. If you ever invite Beckerman to a party, rest assured that at least one of your guests will be grossly offended by Beckerman’s outrageous sarcasm, which is all the more dangerous because of his deadpan delivery.

All of which is a necessary disclaimer — you have been warned! — to Marty Beckerman’s latest blog post:

Your Peanut-Allergic Kid is a Little G-ddamn Sissy

Click that link at your peril.

Category: humor

Comments

17 Responses to “First, They Came for the Reese’s Pieces …”

Finrod Felagund
February 3rd, 2012 @ 3:06 pm

Well, they made a movie out of The Rum Diary, which also had a climactic gang-rape scene. Marty Beckerman is a bit less known than HST, however.
Anonymous
February 3rd, 2012 @ 3:23 pm

What Beckerman captures is the weird combination of jaded anomie and raw evil that emerges in kids raised without adequate parental supervision or any sense of moral purpose, in the sort of Nerf-world environment where everybody gets a gold star and nobody ever expects to suffer serious consequences for wrongdoing.

If you think about the environment that produced the Columbine massacre, you realize how much potential menace is out there, hidden away in comfortable homes on suburban cul-de-sacs.
Adjoran
February 3rd, 2012 @ 3:28 pm

Hilarious! Thanks – I see from his tweeter feed he’s already offended a bunch of people. Love it, bookmarked his blog.
Finrod Felagund
February 3rd, 2012 @ 3:35 pm

Hm, sounds to me like it’s a bit like Fritz The Cat, which was pretty unusual for being both a cartoon and being X-rated.
ThePaganTemple
February 3rd, 2012 @ 5:03 pm

Probably the most important reason it was never made into a movie is the simple fact it would probably qualify as child pornography, even if it used actors and actresses that were actually adults. There was a movie just a few years back where a young girl, played I think by Dakota Fanning, was the victim of rape, and just because of that one scene (which didn’t display any actual nudity) court action against the producers was threatened because of the interstate nature of the movie business. Nothing really came of it, but it was some cause for concern. You can imagine what it would be like if a movie was made of this novel, if it was faithful to the book.
Bob Belvedere
February 3rd, 2012 @ 6:02 pm

Me too. Thanks, Stacy.
Bob’s Musings: When I Take My Sugar To TEA… « The Camp Of The Saints
February 3rd, 2012 @ 7:27 pm

[…] -Stacy McCain links to a very good post by novelist Marty Beckerman that is sarcastic, nasty, and spot-on. A highlight: My mother packed each lunch in a brown paper bag, along with apple slices and a Kudos bar—Snickers-flavored, the best Kudos—because she loved me. And because I deserved a chocolaty, peanut-y dessert at noon. […]
Charles
February 3rd, 2012 @ 8:56 pm

Peanut allergies are just one more thing we can blame on that lousy peanut farmer Jimmy Carter. Before Carter, almost no one had allergies to peanuts. After Carter it was an epidemic.
Edward
February 3rd, 2012 @ 10:51 pm

Lord of the Flies. Still a classic. Still relevant.
Anonymous
February 3rd, 2012 @ 11:27 pm

In the 80s, the allergy du jour was strawberries. I wonder if the eeeeevil strawberries have killed off all those strawberry sissies.

Frankly, I blame clean-freak parents. Kids should get dirty. Every day, several times a day. There’s a good reason that dirt is a kid’s natural habitat! Kids NEED to be exposed to all kinds of things right from the beginning, in order to train their immune systems properly.

I let my daughter get as dirty and scruffy as she wanted. We even had special “Sloppy Messy Days” where she and I would do something especially messy, like painting her wooden swingset with water-colors mixed with mud and whatever else she dreamed up. The look of pure pleasure on her face was priceless. IMO, I was spoiling her, compared to clean-freak Puritan parents. She’s now 13 and healthy as a horse, so I think all that dirt was very helpful!
Pathfinder's wife
February 3rd, 2012 @ 11:42 pm

My sil’s kid is like that with her kid — last family gathering we were at she was literally running after him with hand sanitizer.
Meanwhile my youngest (roughly the same age) was sticking dirt in her mouth (which is decidedly nasty, but a 2 yo. has to do what a 2 yo. has to do; yank it out of their mouth and tell them it’s nasty, go on with life).

Stilwell Angel has been to the doctor 3 times with bad bouts of pneumonia; his cousin has had a couple of colds (plus she’s at least 10x tougher than Stilwell and thus never gets bullied by the same kid more than once — first attempt is usually enough to send the message not to take her toys).
Stilwell’s mom doesn’t allow him to play with his cousin anymore, go figure, and I hate to think about what kind of man Stilwell Angel is going to turn into (probably the type that has to be defended by girls like his cousin — how emasculating).
Charles G Hill
February 4th, 2012 @ 12:05 am

When I was six, I fell into an uncovered cesspool.

Probably why I’m still alive 52 years later.
Anonymous
February 4th, 2012 @ 12:30 am

Sounds like your kid is well on her way to being an independent, robust, healthy adult.

Sometimes outside influence is a good thing. My daughter’s best pals were little girly things. Their dad thought girls should be pristine angels, so their mom would clean them up before dad got home. Well, until we moved into the neighborhood. The girls would run home from our house, usually covered in some kind of grime, much to his chagrin. To his credit, though, he eventually changed his tune– he stopped fussing when they got dirty, and he even invited them to try karate. Now both are well-rounded and healthy young ladies who enjoy dirt AND makeup…and they can kick bully butt whenever necessary. 🙂

PS–Love the reference to Stilwell!
Pathfinder's wife
February 4th, 2012 @ 10:20 am

It’s been the opposite experience here; the “in” (as in still have some money they don’t have to use on necessities and still desire keeping up appearances) parents/crowd try to keep their kids pristine and protected…and involved in appropriate activities like soccer.

I think this has much to do with the vicinity of two colleges and in a largely rural with some heavy industry (now gone) general population.
The only people who let their kids get grimy and wrassle are the old farm families, the working class (now poor, and possibly not working anymore), and the homestead faction of the hippies (who at least let their kids play outside and grow food, which starts to change your opinions of them, believe me).
Rich Vail
February 4th, 2012 @ 11:04 am

Stacy, thanks for putting up this post…I added Mr. Beckerman to my blog roll…
Anonymous
February 4th, 2012 @ 11:37 am

There are plenty of snooty clean-freak types here, but as we live at the base of the Rockies, they’re also jocks. So a good majority of the kids spend much time scrambling up the mountainsides in summer, and snowboarding in winter. Lots of farming here, too, so many other kids spend their days with crops and animals. Which is all good, IMO.
Anonymous
February 4th, 2012 @ 11:40 am

LOL! Does that also explain your third arm? :p