Q&A With Peter Sagal

Q: Why a "Book of Vice?"

A: Why not?

Q: [Patient, inquiring stare, in the manner of a Freudian therapist]

A: Um. About three years ago, I decided it would be fun, and different, to write a book. I had written plays, screenplays, magazine articles, essays, and of course, endless series of quizzes and japes about the week's news, for Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me, but never a book... at least, a book that had been published. (See below.) The question was: what kind of book? Given my job, it'd be natural for me to have written a "Amusing Guide to the News" or "Peter Sagal's Wacky World of Crazy Current Events," but first, that seemed a bit predictable; second, it's been done (and done well); and third, the whole point of the exercise was to do something different than what I was doing every day at the radio show... if I was going to take time away from family and friends and my job, it wouldn't be to write even more jokes about President Bush.

Okay, well: what then? There's an old canard that you should write what you know, but a better rule, for me, anyway, has been: write what you don't know, but want to find out. And I – like a lot of people – had been curious about the kind of behavior, or misbehavior, that ended up being the subject of my book. Add to that the fact that I had already done some fieldwork, including ghost-writing the memoirs of a former porn film director (an unpublished work, discussed, at length, in this book) and spent a fair amount of time in casinos, etc, and it seemed like a natural choice. That said, at the end of the process, as satisfied as I am with it, I do think the next book, if there is one, will be about something more wholesome.

Q: And....?

A: Yes, well: the sex. There is a fair amount of sex in the book.

Q: And....?

A: Everybody's interested in sex, and I'm included in everybody. This doesn't seem like something one should be ashamed to admit. In fact, most people's fantasies of indulgence include sexual excess, whether it's a high school kid looking at his dad's Playboy (or, to be more contemporary, at Playboy.com) or a Muslim jihadist dreaming of his virgins in paradise. We are constantly told that pornography is a billion dollar industry – add the other types of what is called "adult entertainment" – strip clubs, swingers clubs, lad mags – and the figure must go into the tens of billions. Usually, these numbers are bandied about to indicate the moral turpitude of our society, but I'm a full-fledged capitalist: this is a reflection of the market, and what the market wants – all segments of it, old and young, male and female, rich and poor – is, it seems, sex. Who am I to argue?

Q: You seem a little defensive about it.

A: You're projecting.

Q: What was the research like?

A: Remarkably easy, and not just because of the subject matter. Just about everybody I talked to was remarkably kind and willing to talk.. A lot of them, of course, had something to sell – Nina Hartley, for example, makes her living from her websites and related businesses, and Mike Powers, the owner of the Power Exchange, has dreams of becoming a cable TV celebrity, like the guys at Orange County Choppers. But I was constantly surprised by, first, how willing people were to speak to an obscure public radio host, and secondly, how willing they were to talk about their enthusiasms. But then, maybe I shouldn't have been surprised... these are, after all, their enthusiasms. These are people who have devoted their lives to their pursuits, so it would be far stranger for them not to want to talk to me.

I quickly realized, though, that each of these areas posed questions of anthropology and social science that I could never hope to definitively answer. There was no way, given my time, expertise, and (most importantly) lack of appetite for hard work, I could ever write the "definitive" treatise on anything. The best I could do, I realized, would be to go to unusual, interesting places and report back on what I found there. If these anecdotes contribute to the march forward of human knowledge, so be it. In the meantime, I hope they're funny and entertaining.

Q: What was your favorite part of the research?

My dinner with the porn stars Stormy Daniels, Nina Hartley, and Shane. They were far more kind and interesting, funny and sharp and perceptive, than I had any reason to expect. I left that evening thinking I had made some new friends, and I flattered myself that they thought the same thing. Throughout the writing of the book, I had shied away from the seamier side of what I was writing about, and kept looking for some kind of uplift. Here's where I found it: any industry in which three such remarkable, lovely women can thrive can't be all that bad.

Q. What was your least favorite?

The Power Exchange turned out not to be my scene, but it certainly was for others. I never was in a situation that I found distasteful, or gross, let along dangerous. I'm sure such places exist, but they were outside of my purview. All in all, I had a great time working on the book – how could I not? – and only regret not being to research and write even more. Maybe for the sequel?

Q. Throughout the book, you're rather vague about your own enthusiasms, and whether or not you got caught up, or excited by, anything you saw.

Not exactly. There were some things – the performance at Forty Deuce, the meal at Alinea – which I really enjoyed immensely and viscerally, no ironic distance included. But it's true that for most of what I'm reporting on, I was there as an observer, rather than a participant. For example, I spent a lot of times in strip clubs to research this book, and didn't particularly enjoy it, or feel the desire to go back – no knock to those who do love gentleman's clubs, it's just that I'm not wired that way. Instead, I went there as a student, trying to understand an appeal I didn't feel myself. That, I hope, makes for a more interesting book. Among other things, I didn't want to – and couldn't – write a kind of confessional, a book in which I tell you about all the Amazing Decadent Things I've done, along the way implicitly lording it over you poor readers who don't have the same access to excess that I have. There are a lot of books like that, already, and I'm not qualified to write one. But I think those books have an alienating effect... you read about the experiences of a hedonist, and you're still left on the outside, looking in. I'm like most readers, i.e., pretty vanilla. Because I'm like them, I'm hoping that I can serve as a useful and entertaining guide as we venture to the other side of the velvet rope.

Q. Did you come to any conclusions about the people you met, and the things you saw?

Nina Hartley told me that she believes that people's sexual orientation extends far beyond the gay or straight paradigm, and instead extends to things like swinging, polygamy, exhibitionism, etc. Her point was that it's not as if other people, who are doing those things, are somehow more advanced than you are... it's just that they're wired that way, and you're not, and you'd be ultimately as unhappy trying to live their life as they would be trying to live yours. I think that's profoundly true, and extends to all kinds of other areas of life... somebody who really loves tuna casserole would be profoundly unhappy eating at Alinea, for example. It's not so much an acquired taste as an inborn one. That said, if there is any lesson to the book, it's that of all the choices you can make in life, figuring out what it is you actually want, and then pursuing that with energy and resolve and regard for others, is a good choice. A lot better than sitting around for the rest of your life and wondering, though, as I say, that has its pleasures, too.

Q. Did you have any models in mind, in terms of other writers you wanted to emulate?

I'm a devoted fan of humorous non-fiction, the kind of writing that tells you something you didn't know about something you maybe didn't even know you needed to know about, but is vastly entertaining along the way. Among the writers in this genre I most admire are Ian Frazier, Nicholson Baker, David Foster Wallace, PJ O'Rourke, and Roy Blount, Jr. I'm lucky enough to have met all these gentlemen, though Wallace wouldn't remember it. I also love the style of nonfiction storytelling as perfected by Ira Glass and the many writers he has nurtured via This American Life: Sarah Vowell, David Rakoff, Jonathan Goldstein, Starlee Kine, and of course David Sedaris. And this is what I learned from David Sedaris: he always knows exactly where to end things.