The Truth

September 1, 2015
Rolling Stone scribe and infamous Lothario Strauss (Everyone Loves You When You're Dead: Journeys into Fame and Madness, 2011, etc.) chronicles a lascivious seesaw battle between monogamy and debauchery. For years, sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll seemed to be the author's mantra, even his very reason for being. The Game, Strauss' notorious 2005 book about the art of seducing beautiful women, helped to catapult the journalist to the heights of literary fortune and fame. But after traveling the globe partying with rock stars and fashionistas in a nonstop thrill ride of overindulgence, Strauss met Ingrid, a woman so wonderful in his eyes that he determined to bury his libertine ways forever and dedicate himself to her exclusively. Of course, he immediately screwed up, reverted to his hound-dog ways and discovered that the only possible way of salvaging Ingrid's affections was to check into a high-priced rehab clinic for sex addicts. Strauss' dark humor and intelligence illuminate his (seemingly useless) initial efforts to get with the program, and the encounters with tightly wound psychologists and hapless addicts like himself are both entertaining and thought-provoking. Unable, or unwilling, to accept monogamy, Strauss again reversed course, ditched therapy, and rededicated himself to the pursuit of a polyamorous lifestyle. What follows is an oddly tedious odyssey of orgiastic excess that appears doomed to everyone except Strauss himself. Still, the edgy author's relentless introspection and willingness to openly navigate the landscape of his sex-soaked psyche are compelling, if often frustrating for readers. "It's a lot to take in and I struggle to understand it all. Then I decide I don't need to understand it," he writes. "I just need to do it." Music impresario Rick Rubin serves as Strauss' guiding light, intermittently popping in and out with sage advice. Some readers may have no sympathy for the author, but he delivers an emotionally charged, provocative memoir of a man learning to confront his sexual demons.

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October 1, 2015
The author of the notorious tell-all The Game (2005) checking into sex-addiction rehab? Strauss, a writer for Rolling Stone who not only wrote about, as the subtitle of The Game puts it, penetrating the secret society of pickup artists, but who also became a pickup artist himself, turns out to be unhappy that he cheated on his girlfriend and is seeking to find a way to be true to himself. The result is The Truth, a brutally honest and emotionally exhaustive account of his search for sexual freedom. Strauss skewers many of those he meets on his journey, from his hapless fellow sex addicts and their domineering group leader to the New Age polyamorists who have a marked preoccupation with extraterrestrials. But he reserves his most searing insights for himself. Yes, there are orgies and swinger parties, but there are also far more intense discussions about the meaning of intimacy and the underlying causes of sexual behavior. Strauss struggles to learn a hard lessonthat there are rules in any relationship, and to play the only game that matters, you need to find rules that both partners can follow.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)