This is the second book in my foray into erotic/pornographic fiction. So far, I’m not sure I’m going to prioritize this endeavor over my regular reading habits. However, there was more going on under the surface of this porn story. Let’s start with the plot, it’s simplistic being this is a pornographic work.
The plot concerns the protagonist, our unnamed narrator, living in New York City with his current girlfriend, Regina, who has just left for California with whom he has a volatile relationship, but the sex is transcendent. He then goes on a sexual rampage with random people & acquaintances with jealousy seemingly fueling his behavior unconsciously even though he attempts self-analysis through the lens of new ageism. He meets another girl, Carol, who is just as “crazy” but younger than his Cali-girl and so he dumps her over the phone in a mutually ineffectual manner and then spends two weeks with his new girl marrying her metaphorically through intense sex then realizes their connection is illusory then dumps her leaving himself to wallow in unanswered questions. The sex scenes are the meat of this work and secondary there is the constant philosophizing and attempted psychological observations of the main character. The plot is very loose, very simple. So, the author fulfills the porn/erotic pledge here. The story revels in graphic sex scenes in excruciating detail. It is some of the earlier scenes that are, in my opinion, erotic.
The themes that I find here as delivered through the spare plot, the behavior, and thoughts of the narrator especially during the act are the yearning for a genuine connection through the act and the dissolution of the self/ego through intense sexual pleasure and orgasm. For the narrator, these themes do conflict with each other as one requires the opening of one’s emotions and becoming vulnerable to and with someone else and being able to reciprocate this while the second theme bypasses emotional vulnerability via the melting away of the individual consciousness into the cosmic. Thus, the narrator suffers his inner conflict which may also be the root of his perceived Jealously concerning his California-bound partner having just as much sex as he does without her without him. This submerged conflict is the only real conflict in the book and more than likely also fuels the anger and arguments between him and his traveled partner. On page 120 is what feels like a thesis statement around which the work is built:
“You know,” she said, “that there are no rules. There’s just us. Ain’t no God to tell us ‘no’ about anything. We do what we want and we pay the dues. That’s all there is. Are you still looking for something? You think there’s something else besides what’s here right now?”
There is what feels like, at least to me, some truth in the book about the relations between men and women especially concerning sex. The protagonist’s bisexuality which allows him to participate in a gay orgy as its bottom appears to be included to contrast the relations between men-and-women to men-and-men. There is lesbian sex in here, but it is only included as part of threesomes (including the narrator) and group sex. A missed opportunity there. Relating to that missed angle, this book is of its time (ca. 1976) but as our protagonist is the narrator, all these questionable elements can be attributed solely to his character and its gaping flaws.
There are plenty of very graphic sex scenes which include one-on-one experiences, group sex, and a homosexual orgy where the protagonist is the willing pincushion, but they get tedious very quickly. In an effort to escalate the author included a scene where the woman inserts her pet snake into her vagina and the protagonist enjoys the feeling of it grappling his wang while having sex with her. It seemed that the author himself was feeling similarly to me at around the snake-insertion point as near the end the sex scenes were pared down to just passing mentions before a quick scene (as compared to the rest of the book) is put in near the end. There were also many more and longer instances of observing the city, its people, and philosophizing. The author seemed to want to go into other themes and issues that have been percolating in the main character from the beginning but in the end, he drowned in his own misogyny and lone wolf complex justified in new-age spiritualism (or in its misuse/misapplication to everyone around him and on every situation especially the act of sex). In the end, he refuses any meaningful connection aside from transcendent orgasm and sinks into a deep self-pitying nihilism.
There were positives here. I did enjoy a sequence where the narrator and his squeeze were caught in their fantasies while having sex although he was imagining himself as Satan (no problems there) while (he imagined) she imagined herself as a Jew in a concentration camp!
The stories of concentration camps she had heard as a child came to life in her mind, the whispered tales of how many Jews masochistically enjoyed the incredible sadism of the Germans. Tales of girls who came to want the men who brutalized them, who became willing slaves. And now she was one of those women, having been called in naked to the suite of the S.S. Colonel, lying amid dope and music and books and metaphysical dreams of world empire. And he was treating her like a rag to wipe himself on, degrading her, and to her amazement and horror, she was loving it, wanting him to be harder, crueler. (pg.34)
Later in the book, he has sex with his new girlfriend imagining her in the same light. However, this time the woman is Jewish and had lost her family to the Nazis! There are a few collar tuggers in here although I found the previous both exasperating and wrong but also shockingly hilarious. However, these shock moments don’t really play well here with what story the author is trying to tell (aside from pure porno).
Overall, I thought this book was just okay. Essentially, I’m not sure erotic fiction is for me at all at this point. As for the Gentle Degenerates, however, the porn got tedious; its undercurrents were much more enjoyable. The erotic elements were tied into these currents, but this connection was never fully realized in the text. I don’t think I’d recommend this book save as a lark. It’s dated, is populated by as much cringe as porn, and its undertones were the most exciting part after a couple of sex scenes.
My favorite quote (pg.120):
“I really want to fuck a snail,” said Lisa. I put my arm around her shoulder. “Call me when you do,” I said. ( )

Is this a novel in the form of a memoir, or a memoir packaged as a novel? The New York City setting, esoteric interests, drug use, and bisexuality of the nameless first-person narrator all tally with Marco Vassi's biography. But the book is as tightly choreographed as any novel, with some shifts of narrative backwards and forewards in time, while each of the fourteen chapters includes one terrifically detailed sexual episode, along with introspective passages that are sometimes positively grueling.

Written in 1970, the text is unselfconsciously composed in the now-extinct dialect of groove. E.g. "I got to rapping her old man and dug they were at a place where they could use a third to catalyze their mix" (60). The language alone makes the book a period piece, although it was clearly written with an acute sense of its contemporaneity.

Vassi's narrator sees some sort of revolution as imminent, and himself in the vanguard as a mystic and sexual explorer, and there is a certain innocence to his sexual promiscuity. But he is also a harsh judge of himself and others. He mocks himself for playing at being Michael Valentine Smith (73), and his vigorous anathema against the Esalen Institute is full of bracing insight (174-6). Ultimately, the book delivers just the tone implied in the title: a mix of humane care and sorrowful condemnation.