al3x, in reviewing Generation S.L.U.T. by Marty Beckerman, covers most of the points I could cover in any review of the book. The only parts I didn't find believable were the TV interview Trevor did while on his book tour, nor did I believe the conversation that happened during his encounter with Paul McCartney—then again, most of the people we think of as friendly because of their image on TV are assholes in real life anyway.

From al3x's review: “It's not a brilliant work of fiction, nor even a brilliant hybrid story-plus-essay collection-plus-collected statistics-plus-plus. It is, however, a brilliant vehicle for a very important idea: that something is seriously wrong with Generation Y, and that there are some readily identifiable causes for this. What S.L.U.T. doesn't offer, somewhat to my chagrin, is solutions. One can infer, of course, that some decency and moderation is well in order. But Beckerman suggests through the story's end that this generation's chance for redemption was (figuratively) yesterday, and we didn't take the opportunity. What's more upsetting than a lack of solutions is that he may well be right.”

What struck me while reading the book is that the characters other than Trevor were very believable. I remember bits and pieces of what it was like to be a teenager, and Max is the character I most identify with, except for the fact that Max got to sleep with the high school slut. Max is a shy kid who likes the Beatles and meets Julia, a girl who shares his prediliction for intellectuality—except for the fact that she's smarter than him—then falls in love with her. (Yep, I fell in love with a girl like Julia too.) I never got to have sex with the high school slut—okay, a high school slut, but she ended up being voted valedictorian—although her friend told me to bring a condom on the date that never happened, because she was "sick" that night. (Best I got from her was a slow-dance on the grad cruise, and then a high-five afterwards from my "Julia".) Then there was also the girl who threw herself at me, but I said something stupid like "I have to do homework tonight" because her hockey-player boyfriend was bigger than me. My best male friend in high school was even a Brett: the guy was friendly around me—we were always the best 2-on-2 team during lunchtime pickup basketball because we always had a sense of what the other was going to do—but away from me he was a king asshole and ended up getting his girlfriend pregnant and never once mentioned it to me. We went our separate ways after a year or so of college, and the decision to do so wasn't explicit, but I'm sure the feeling was mutual. Just like the best books are the ones that tell us what we already know, the best fictional characters are the ones that we already identify with.

I've seen a few documentaries on high school life since leaving high school myself (I turn 26 in the summer), one of which is the excellent Go Tigers! about a high school football team and the pressures placed on teens to succeed. Michael Lewis recently wrote an excellent article on how his high school baseball coach is doing with the current team, and describes how parents are making life for their teenage boys too comfortable for them to grow up into real men. It's a world I no longer know and never really knew for that matter, and besides, Generation S.L.U.T. isn't even a book aimed at me, nor, evidently, is it aimed at parents of teenagers. It's evidently meant to create a dialogue amongst teens—as well as help pay Beckerman's bills—but as al3x mentions, if offers problems but no solutions. The only way I can this as having an effect on teens is that two teens will find out that they've both read the book and say things like "yeah, I did that once"—a teammate from my high school basketball team once said to me that he had slept with the "slut" I had tried to get a date with, and the shocking part was how he said it matter-of-factly— or "wasn't that party last night fucked up?" punctuated, as the book is, with moments of uncomfortable silence. Beckerman is right in saying that teens don't need to be lectured by adults or, even worse, high school counselors about any lack of morality. It's going to be an intra-generational conversation rather than an inter-generational one. A suburban Vancouver high school recently held a forum led by the senior class who were worried about the younger students' sexual behaviours, and privately I complained to a friend that it was probably the uncool kids telling the cool kids to stop not fucking the uncool kids. But it's a step forward when teens not only decide amongst themselves that there are problems that need to be addressed, but decide amongst themselves what the possible solutions are. Written by a college student, Generation S.L.U.T. may not have had the same effect as if it were written by a high school student, but the fact that Beckerman has been writing since his teens is evidence enough for me to suggest that there are bright lights among a generation only marketing executives seem to understand.