THE DIRT: CONFESSIONS OF THE WORLD'S MOST NOTORIOUS ROCK BAND
by Tommy Lee, Vince Neil, Mick Mars, and Nikki Sixx, with Neil Strauss
(Regan Books) $27.95
The members of Mötley Crüe were not without their musical virtues, but so what? They're not famous for their music. They're famous for their bad behavior. It's an arena in which they excel. Wisely, their new book, The Dirt, co-written with Neil Strauss, focuses on sin, not songs. Over 400 pages, the Crüe ruthlessly purge readers of any illusions that they could, even for a day, be like them, or have the stomach to do half the shit they did.
Taking turns writing chapters, the band members map out a guide to animal behavior peppered with momentary regret. Explore compulsive sexuality with Vince Neil. Understand the violence of hopeless romanticism with Tommy Lee. Wonder at the supernatural ability with which Nikki Sixx survives overdoses and malnutrition. Learn about ankylosing spondylitis, a bone disorder that has caused Mick Mars to shrink three inches, and gives his bandmates cause to refer to him on several occasions as "a fucking troll." And though heads are kicked in, someone throws up every 10 pages, and people turn blue left and right, the band retains its sense of wonder at all times, and never loses touch with the three reasons it got started in the first place: girls, girls, and girls.
Told like this, with only the voices of those involved and no outside perspective whatsoever, The Dirt manages, seemingly by accident, to be the first rock and roll ethnography, with Strauss as the anthropologist and the Crüe as the wild and untamable tribe from the glam-metal rainforest. As an ethnography, there is no subtext of socialization, only a detached interest in understanding the ways of the primitives. If you're into this sort of thing, you won't be able to get enough. Or, as Tommy Lee would undoubtedly say, you won't be able to get enough, bro. MICHAEL SHILLING
NICKEL AND DIMED: ON (NOT) GETTING BY IN AMERICA
by Barbara Ehrenreich
(Metropolitan Books) $23
Spurred by the implementation of welfare reform and the encouragement of Harper's Magazine's Lewis Lapham, middle-class journalist Barbara Ehrenreich spent two years working minimum-wage jobs and trying to provide herself with safe housing, a health-sustaining diet, and some semblance of self-respect. She failed. From her bunion-inducing waitressing stint in Key West, Florida to her futile efforts at conjuring pro-union sentiments among her co-workers at Wal-Mart in Minneapolis, Ehrenreich's journey down our invisible caste system is a disturbing, domino-style toppling of options and resources. A scarcity of startup funds leads her to perpetual residency in expensive short-term housing, a fiscal trap that soon requires two jobs and seven-day work weeks.
Ehrenreich's self-imposed safety nets (access to her ATM card in dire circumstances, forgoing public-transportation systems for rental cars) are understandable from a practical standpoint, but diminish the believability of her struggles at some turns--most significantly in the general lack of anxiety she experiences. Anyone who's tried to live at the poverty level knows that the emotional strain of worrying about where you will live and how you will eat places you in a constant state of uncertainty--a state that often proves more exhausting than the spiritual erosion inherent in low-paying service-industry work. Much of her conclusive analysis is excellent (particularly her examination of the government's grossly flawed methodology for determining poverty levels), but it's all far too brief: Nickel and Dimed is as thin as a 7-Eleven clerk living on a food-bank diet. Still, at a time when every conceivable media form is waxing tragic about the waning fortunes of dot-commers, her exercise in undercover serfdom is a sorely needed illustration of what the growing stratification of wealth in the U.S. really looks and feels like. HANNAH LEVIN
BARROOM TRANSCRIPTS WITH TONY STRAUB, VOL. II
by Rich Stewart and Tony Straub
(Craphouse Press, P.O. Box 2691, Lancaster, PA 17608) $9.95
Those who harbor nostalgia for listening to their fucked-up Midwest relatives trying to remember aloud what alley they puked in the night before will love volume two of Stewart and Straub's zine, Barroom Transcripts. The content is exactly what the title implies: transcripts of conversations had at barrooms, or after visiting a barroom, or on the way to one. Main characters include Tony and Rich, Mona, and such cyphers as the Autistic Man and the Laughing Man. Much of the dialogue begs for an editor, but Straub's politically incorrect stories are generally entertaining. "I met this dude... somewhere. That's good, ain't it? Somewhere," he'll start. Then, encouraged by a companion's desultory, "Yeah?" he'll launch into a story titled "He Knew Every Crackhouse from Philly to Boston," or "Trojan Horse in the Spaghetti."
The depth of philosophy in Barroom Transcripts hovers at the depth of a shot glass, interspersed with fly-by humor. "I fear death, sure," muses the Laughing Man. "I don't wanna die. I think when people say they're not afraid to die, they're lyin' to you, 'cause people do lie. Ya know that? ...I got to hit the john, man."
Oh, yeah: Bukowski's got nothin' on Barroom Transcripts. TRACI VOGEL
