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Self-Portrait of a Young Man for Rent
by David Henry SterryThe funny, touching story of a sweet, wide-eyed son of Seventies Suburbia who spends a year as a teenage sex worker servicing rich, lonely women in Beverly Hills. A gripping story that explores what it means to suffer through the underbelly of the American Dream. And make it out alive.
The funny, touching story of a sweet, wide-eyed son of Seventies Suburbia who spends a year as a teenage sex worker servicing rich, lonely women in Beverly Hills. After being raped his first night in Hollywood, David meets Sunny, the manager of Hollywood Fried Chicken, who teaches him all about chicken: how to fry one, and how to be one.
But the wild adventures and the mad money are never enough, as he's sucked into the seedy seamy underside of Hollywood: the blank-eyed women, the Fall-of-Rome orgies, and the drugs. With a mix of breathtaking honesty, sly comedy, genuine tenderness, and a wide-eyed fascination for the characters and bizarre world he enters, Sterry creates a narrative that is fresh, smart, and unexpectedly uplifting.
Chicken is a book like no other--a playful, gripping story that explores what it means to suffer through the underbelly of the American Dream. And make it out alive.
Alger Batts, filmmaker
I just wanted to tell you how incredible your book, it's like a Kerouac Chicken. I loved it so much, I HAD to read it in one sitting. I can't wait for the next book. Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight
Alternately sexy and terrifying, hysterical and weird, David Henry Sterry's Chicken is a hot walk on the wild side of Hollywood's fleshy underbelly. With lush prose and a flawless ear for the rhythms of the street, Sterry lays out a life lived on the edge in a coming-of-age classic that's colorful, riveting, and strangely beautiful. David Henry Sterry is the real thing. Larry Mantle, Air Talk, National Public Radio
Insightful and funny… great stories… captures Hollywood beautifully… Phillip Lopate, author of Portrait of My Body
Compulsively readable, visceral, and very funny. The author, a winningly honest companion, has taken us right into his head, moment-by-moment rarely has the mentality of sex been so scrupulously observed and reproduced on paper. Granted, he had some amazingly bizarre experiences to draw upon; but as V. S. Pritchett observed, in memoirs you get no pints for living, the art is all that counts--and David Henry Sterry clearly possesses the storyteller's art.
If you liked Chicken, try these:
Love Sick: One Woman's Journey through Sexual Addiction
by Sue William Silverman
Published 2008
A powerful, deeply personal and often lyrical memoir of a woman learning to value herself as a person rather than a sex object, after years of sexual abuse by her father. Silverman's message is relevant to anyone suffering from addictions.
by Ryan Knighton
Published 2007
This irreverent, tragicomic, politically incorrect, astoundingly articulate memoir about going blind – and growing up.
All the Men I've Loved Again by Christine Pride
Christine Pride's solo debut explores a woman's love triangle in her 20s that unexpectedly resurfaces in her 40s.
