Accidental Playboy: Caught in the Ultimate Male Fantasy Book

Thirty years after Erica Jong's Fear of Flying and Phillip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint, a journalist dons the gonzo-mantle of Hunter Thompson as he tries to understand the unsteady, often baffling, concept of male heterosexuality.

Publishers Weekly

"I scan through the familiar terrain married, mother, 35C... until I come to the final section... She's written: `I volunteer as a pediatric AIDS worker, which I consider a great honor,' " details Ueland, as he notes yet another ironic, cultural incongruity in his job as the house reporter for Playboy's six-month national search for Playmate of the Millennium. If "35C" and "pediatric AIDS worker" seems to be a contradiction, so is Ueland and his job. He says he's "never been the Playboy guy," and he appears to have gotten this gig because, while working on his novel, he wrote a humorous article about his sexual insecurities entitled "Trials of a Gay-Seeming Straight Male." Indeed, Ueland writes at length here about his therapy sessions dealing with his identity crisis as a heterosexual male who desires women outside of the Playboy paradigm. When Ueland is at his best, this sometimes shapeless, on-the-road memoir crackles with fine, mordant observations, and he can astutely communicate his emotional disjuncture with this project: "I really am invisible, standing in the middle of the crowd. I watch mutely." But too often Ueland's epiphanies feel slightly shop-worn: "These girls, the Myras, Mollys, and Hesters you know what? I'm like them. They're just likable." Frequent name-dropping (Graham Greene, John Updike, Norman Mailer, Ernest Hemingway), while ironic, looks silly. In the end, Ueland learns that being a heterosexual male doesn't mean being a womanizer, but while his journey is often entertaining, it doesn't yield surprising insights. Agent, Laura Dail. (Nov.) Forecast: Ads in Sports Illustrated and blurbs from John Leguizamo and Nerve.com founder Rufus Griscom will target this memoir's audience, and one can only imagine what a book release party for the media might be like (Warner hasn't said anything yet). But will guys respond? The cover art which is suggestive but not quite titillating might help. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.