This week, Zak Smith’s novel, We Did Porn, received another glowing review by John Lingan of The Point titled “Salvation for Civilians: Porn as a Way of Life.”
Lingan observes, “Given the tenor of contemporary conversation about pornography, the book is refreshingly unrepentant; never for a second does Smith even entertain the notion that having sex on camera constitutes a degrading step down for an ostensibly healthy citizen like him. This is not a memoir of frightened conversions or brushes with rock bottom. Smith regrets nothing, and takes to the new work with clearheaded and self-aware anxiousness.”
In his book, We Did Porn, Smith chronicles his life transition from the New York art scene to the Los Angeles adult film industry—from a world of grandstanding and pretention to a world with more straightforward and genuine human interactions. “…In the art field, you talk about, like, a Werner Herzog movie, and people pretend they’re interested in it to seem smart. But if you’re with some porn chick talking about a Werner Herzog movie, it’s because she got really excited about a Werner Herzog movie. Otherwise, she doesn’t have to … there’s no reason to do that in porn. It won’t help.”
We Did Porn is a great go-to book on alt culture, and in Lingan’s article, he writes, “Smith’s publishers explicitly compare We Did Porn to Hell’s Angels and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, and in conversation Smith refers to himself as “an interpreter,” someone who describes a subculture for the benefit of outsiders who almost surely won’t see it for themselves.
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