TO ORDER All titles may not be immediately available. . . . . . . . . . . . . RECENT REVIEWS: 8/19/97: Men Giving Money, Women Yelling Alice Mattison Fiction 8/18/97: Misfit: The Strange Life of Frederick Exley Jonathan Yardley Nonfiction 8/15/97: Man Crazy Joyce Carol Oates Fiction 8/14/97: Home Body John Thorne Nonfiction 8/13/97: Laughing in the Dark Laurie Stone Nonfiction . . . . . . . . . . . . SEARCH BOOK ARCHIVES BY: title of book author publisher reviewer . . . . . . . . . . . . ALSO IN SALON: The Tijuana Bibles By Susie Bright The "Tijuana Bibles," America's original X-rated underground comics, evoke a time when sex was dirty, innocent and handmade. . . . . . . . . . . . . RECENT BOOK FEATURES

s u p e r - v i x e n s' DYMAXION LOUNGE BY HILLARY JOHNSON BUZZ BOOKS/ ST. MARTIN'S PRESS 162 PAGES NONFICTION BY MARK ATHITAKIS | the first thing you need to know about Hillary Johnson's new book, "Super Vixens' Dymaxion Lounge," is that its Russ Meyer-esque title is a bit of a come-on. Don't look here for tales of rampant Los Angeles hedonism. Absent as well are the empty, ferociously pouty observations on L.A. club culture that the jacket copy (and glam color photos of the author) would lead you to believe are inside. Instead "Lounge" is something much more entertaining and incisive: a slim but wickedly brutal take on existential life in modern L.A., and one woman's quest for depth amidst the neon-drenched chaos and urban (not to mention urbane) sprawl. With a toddler in tow all the while. If Mike Davis' 1992 book "City of Quartz" laid out the definitive map of Southern California's dizzying infrastructure and architecture, Johnson's book -- culled mainly from her essays in Buzz magazine -- seeks out the dingy, drunken corners that its middle-class young adults inhabit: the financial and sexual come-ons, the see-and-be-seen parties and the dark and restless cloud of anxiety that hovers like smog above it all. It's enough to make you want to kill someone, and the best of Johnson's essays details her search for the perfect handgun. If L.A. culture turns everyone into clichés, then Johnson suggests handguns as the perfect way out: "I was suddenly very tired of being an overeducated girl who could do no more harm than write a really mean poem ... I didn't want to slash anyone's tires or call them repeatedly and hang up, or take over a large corporation and fire everybody, or get really, really fat or really, really thin." Much of the book focuses on Johnson's search for a way past such hackneyed responses, but she's also aware of how difficult that is in a town where, a friend tells her, "style is substance." L.A. is a "dymaxion" town, a term used by Buckminster Fuller to describe a world unto itself, where everything intermeshes and everything is available. So she's wise enough to know that the idea of breaking through clichés is a cliché itself. Is she really going to be gratified by seducing the Little Caesar's delivery boy, dating a couple, hanging out with drag queens? Nothing's ironic in a town built on irony; a teacher at a Montessori school placidly tells Johnson that "the playground's in the backyard, very safe from drive-by shootings." What saves "Super Vixens" from wallowing in a puddle of cut-rate Gen-X ennui is Johnson's studied awareness of her own moral groundedness amid the city's absurdities; she might be a resident, but she's no victim. Her observations on the set of a porn flick are rife with the shock of the nude, but also tease out the brittle humanity of stars like Eartha Quake and Dick Nasty, and it's that acknowledgment of humanity that makes Johnson's writing so funny, right and engrossing. She brings a sense of depth to her dymaxion world, a place where maybe -- just maybe -- you'll find true love and an honest conversation, once you get past the silicone breasts and Armani suits, even if it's just for a one-night stand. Aug. 20, 1997 Mark Athitakis lives in San Francisco. He is a regular contributor to Salon. BOOKMARK: http://www.salonmagazine.com/sneaks/sneak.html