Books: Satyricon USA

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This collection of interviews with inhabitants of the sexual fringe reads like an odd combination of a reporter's raw files and an undergraduate's paper. The strength here is that the author does dig up unquestionably fascinating subjects: vampires who drink one another's blood, necrophiliac morticians, people who claim to have been abducted and sexually molested by aliens, a married surgeon who sleeps with 10 women a month. But her writing style can be monotonous and self-conscious, and her need to place these people in cultural context and blame society for their freakish proclivities is trite. Still, the book is worth skimming--you'll feel contentedly average afterward.

--By Joel Stein