High School Sex Scandal
Once upon a time (1962) in a small nondescript town somewhere in California (Sonora), a nondescript high school teacher (Dale Koby) left the town abruptly and then wrote a fairly nondescript novel (Campus Sexpot) based loosely on a sexual scandal at the local high school starring a senior by the name of Linda Franklin.
Naturally, the publishing of this book complete with its intrigue, loose morals, and the real citizens� names thinly disguised, set the town on its ear. The book had SHOCK, HORROR, SCANDAL, and SMUT, screaming from every pore. And it seems, to all intents and purposes, the only people who cared or were even remotely interested in the book were the citizens of Sonora themselves.
Which is why, one is left scratching one�s head at 2005 publication of David Carkeet�s book Campus Sexpot: A Memoir.
Carkeet reveals that when the book came out in 1962, he was a �hormone saturated sophomore� at the local high school where Dale Koby taught. And now, 43 years later, he jogs down memory lane, using excerpts from Koby�s novel to share his own teenage angst, the joys and heartbreaks of living in a small town, and to provide us with a sense of the intense impact the novel had on this once sleepy town.
Yet for all its� witticisms - including Carkeet�s keen eye and sterling writing chops, where he mercilessly dissects his former English teacher�s sloppy writing skills - one is left with a sense of �who cares?�
This, stems partially from the fact that Carkeet goes out of his way to show how Koby�s book, along with his writing career amounted to pretty much nothing. �Dale Koby�s print trail ends in 1968� Carkeet writes. Koby apparently went from �novelist to editor and maybe publisher� � writing articles and a couple of other novels but mostly low-grade porn. Koby died in 1979 without fanfare, pomp or ceremony.
Back to the head scratching. Why would a clearly talented author such as Carkeet (who according to the jacket of this book has written five novels), use � by his own admission - a not very good book written by someone else � as a literary device to write his own childhood memoir? One gets the sense that Carkeet could have written this memoir without such a cumbersome aid and we�d still want to read about his life.
Carkeet has to perform literary back flips to connect various aspects of Koby�s life to his own, and more often than not he�s forcing round pegs into square holes to achieve this aim. And that�s a shame. As a result, the narrative is choppy and the leaps become more and more difficult to achieve. Nowhere is this revealed more than at the end of Carkeet�s memoir where the final chapter is really devoted to his relationship with his father. By now, we�ve completely forgotten the tenuous connection Carkeet has made with Koby�s novel and the memoir just peters out in a wash of melancholy.
There�s no doubt Carkeet is a talented writer. Some of his observations are hilarious, others are touching and poignant, and it seems a pity that he felt he had to use someone else�s not very good work to grab the reader�s attention.
Carkeet apparently won the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Award for Creative Nonfiction for this memoir. That alone is enough to set off warning bells � what on earth is creative nonfiction? It sounds like an oxymoron; and if Koby were still alive today he might be dragging Carkeet into court for copyright infringement.
Nonetheless, Carkeet�s writing style alone is enough to make one want to seek out some of his other writings. So perhaps he achieved his goals after all.
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San Francisco Chronicle, Brenn Jones, reviewer, Nov. 6, 2005
Writer Looks Back at a Teacher's Steamy Book about His Little Town
Though "Campus Sexpot'' is the title of David Carkeet's new memoir, the milk-shake-swilling author, judging by the book's back cover, was never a young woman with sex appeal. Carkeet takes the title from a novel written by Dale Koby, an English teacher who taught briefly at a Tuolumne County high school in the early '60s. Koby caused a stir in the small town of Sonora by delivering the titillating prose that teenagers crave -- with thinly veiled characters lifted from the school's faculty, no less -- soon after he fled his post.
Carkeet, a Sonora native with five novels to his credit, read the book as a 15-year-old. He critiques the original "Campus Sexpot" from the dual perspective of established writer and sex-hungry teen. As an established writer, he finds the book quaint and the writing laughable. As an adolescent, he wants more of the good stuff.
The original "Campus Sexpot" was about a curvaceous girl's sexual misadventures with faculty, local roughs and a sweet-hearted boy. It's a sign of a different era that the roman a clef didn't spawn any lawsuits. "Everyone wants to know if he's in it,'' wrote one scribe in the local paper. "What's your Koby name?'' asked another. The paper didn't name names.
There must have been strong personal reactions, though. Koby's fictional self in the original book, a teacher named Don Kaufield, seduces the sexpot and leaves town in disgrace. This raises some obvious questions: What were the circumstances around Koby's actual exit? Did he really have sex with his student? What was the effect on the parodied townspeople, particularly the young "sexpot"? Or was the girl purely fictitious? One imagines a "60 Minutes" episode, or more hysterical media treatment. Carkeet's instincts are autobiographical, though, not journalistic. Even when Carkeet zealously tracks down Koby's published paper trail, it is primarily for the purpose of self-revelation.
Carkeet notes that when he entered high school, he was 75 pounds and 4 1/2 feet tall. He was a plucky shrimp: He competed on the high school football and wrestling teams, "kissed furiously for twenty-two hours'' with a flutist during a band trip, and made love to his sink. Despite his minor successes, he felt as though he wasn't getting enough. His problem, more than his diminutive stature, was that "[g]oody-goodies miss out on the fun.'' Though he doesn't say it explicitly, it is implied that Carkeet sees his teenage self as good.
There is a complicated morality to this book. On the one hand, Carkeet condemns the content of the original "Campus Sexpot": "What possible meaning could [it] have other than sexual excitation and, for every Koby-named citizen in its pages, defamation either by direct negative portrayal or by association with a seedy context?'' he writes. On the other hand, Carkeet celebrates the "winsome charm of the clumsy, evasive prose.'' By rehashing the naughty parts, identifying faculty members who were portrayed in the original, and chronicling his own boners, Carkeet becomes complicit in the campy spectacle.
Part of what fuels Carkeet's obsession with the original "Campus Sexpot" is a boy in the novel named Bill Alleyn. Alleyn is the one character who has the sexpot's well-being at heart. Alleyn seems to get it right because, as the original book concluded, "his father had confidence in him, and with his father behind him, Bill walked with a manly stride in the world of men." It's a strange ending given the book's subject matter, which Carkeet piggybacks with a strange ending of his own.
Carkeet concludes with a poignant account of his deceased father, a well-respected judge who "knew virtually everybody in the county of fourteen thousand and yet had no close friends." The judge's legacy is evident in the book. Carkeet frequently references "good" and "bad" kids, and struggles to balance the meting out of justice with more puerile expression. Being the son of a judge could have been the focus of the memoir -- but it isn't. And so Carkeet's description of his father's escape from booze through good love and Christian Science seems like shop-class soldering onto a book that's otherwise about getting it on.
As a light read, "Campus Sexpot'' offers schoolboy guffaws. It evokes adolescence convincingly and, probably for that reason, won the Association of Writers and Writing Programs award for creative nonfiction. To succeed as a more serious work, it would have required more focus. From the salacious title onward, "Campus Sexpot" never feels right as a memoir. Even for an accomplished writer like Carkeet, the most difficult subject to have perspective on is oneself.