American Savage

Starred review from March 18, 2013
America’s most in-your-face sex columnist and gay-rights activist comes out swinging in these pugnacious, hilarious essays. Savage (Savage Love) proffers more unvarnished and often sacrilegious bedroom and relationship advice, recommending, for example, that spouses try each other’s kinks on for size and, if sexual incompatibility proves insurmountable in an otherwise satisfying marriage, that they consider a little nookie on the side. He reserves his most pointed sex tips for detractors and ideological opponents, suggesting a number of lewd acts they could perform to cope with their upset over his forthright advocacy of marriage and adoption rights for same-sex couples. (He widens his brief to include cogent soap-boxing on behalf of single-payer national health insurance, gun control, and physician-assisted suicide.) Savage is that rarity, a liberal—verging on radical—who defends his positions with steel-trap logic and scornful humor laced with profanity and stripped of politically correct cant. But in his own way he’s a champion of “family values,” which emerge in warm domestic scenes with his husband and son, in moving reflections on his mother’s death, and in his common-sense understanding of sexual fulfillment as an anchor for stable relationships. Underneath Savage’s scabrous, bomb-throwing exterior beats the heart of a softie. Agent: Elizabeth Wales, Wales Literary Agency Inc.