Everyone's
Pretty
Lydia Millet is publishing this novel February 9, 2005 from Soft Skull
Press:
Everyone's Pretty is a savagely funny novel about the search for
God, sex, and significance. When he's not drinking himself into a
stupor, stealing credit cards to pay for sex, or plotting his fame
with a horny midget, Los Angeles pornographer Dean Decetes entertains
messianic delusions and freeloads wantonly from his spinster sister.
Distancing herself from her deadbeat sibling, Bucella obsesses over
the quasi-religious love notes she writes to her boss and reassures
a coterie of codependent coworkers, including a hygiene-phobic Christian
Scientist and a depressive blonde bombshell named Alice. Next door,
a teenage math genius has endured humiliation at the hands of her
mother and is running away from home. She hightails it to a local
dive and hooks up with Dean's editor from the porno magazine. Told
from five hilariously bizarre points of view, this novel serves up
a fabulously florid cast of characters, many inspired by author Lydia
Millet's two-year stint working at Larry Flynt Publications.
A friend writes Luke: "Just read the excerpt from her new book
about the pornographer with messianic delusions. The character Decetes
sounds like you. His father is a missionary. He talks about religion
constantly. He provokes people constantly. He admits it. He has a weak
constitution. He has one beer and he's pulled over nad he's technically
drunk. The cop puts him in the back of the car and Decetes starts babbling
about religion and insulting the cop at the same time. So the cop drops
him off in the middle of South Central, which
is what Mike Albo [former editor of Hustler Erotic Video Guide] did
to you [8/9/99]."
Lydia Millet Interview
Lydia has two novels coming out next year, including one about the
porn industry -- Everyone's
Pretty.
* How would you describe your tenure at LFP?
I was the Hustler copy editor mostly, though I also worked on other
porn magazines -- Busty Beauties, Barely Legal. Busty Beauties was
my favorite; it had a heartfelt evangelical feel. It was trying to
bring the cult of the giant breast to the masses.
You know, we were overeducated, underpaid, and underworked. I tried
to act jaded and cynical, and when that got old I went to sleep under
my desk. This was before the days of the Internet in the workplace
so there were limited options for time-wasting. Now and then some
male staffer would make a lame attempt at some form of sexual harassment,
and that would spice things up for a few seconds.
* What caused you to combine the themes of religion and porn in your
novel?
Everyone's Pretty is about obsessive searches for meaning. Religion
is an obvious place to look; porn isn't as obvious, but I encountered
a number of people in the industry I thought were true believers.
Funny thing about people: you don't have to be the Pope to take your
work seriously.
* What inspired you to write this novel?
I wanted to make myself laugh.