Sager, Mike 1956-

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Sager, Mike 1956-

PERSONAL:

Born 1956; married; children: one son. Education: Graduate of Emory University.

ADDRESSES:

Home—La Jolla, CA. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Washington Post, Washington, DC, began as copy boy, became staff writer. University of California, Irvine, visiting writer; lecturer.

MEMBER:

Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Stories named notable essays by Best American Essays include "A Journey to the Heart of Whiteness," 1997, "Smoking: A Love Story," 1999, and "Is Something Burning," 2005.

WRITINGS:

Scary Monsters and Super Freaks: Stories of Sex, Drugs, Rock 'n' Roll, and Murder (collection), Thunder's Mouth Press (New York, NY), 2003.

Revenge of the Donut Boys: True Stories of Lust, Fame, Survival and Multiple Personality (collection), Thunder's Mouth Press (New York, NY), 2007.

Deviant Behavior: A Novel of Sex, Drugs, Fatherhood, and Crystal Skulls, Grove Press/Black Cat (New York, NY), 2008.

Wounded Warriors: True Tales of Iraq, Vietnam, and Other Wars That Never End, Da Capo Press (Cambridge, MA), 2008.

Work collected in anthologies, including Great Journalism Too Hot to Print, Nation Books, 2004; The Beholder's Eye: A Collection of America's Finest Personal Journalism, Grove Press (New York, NY), 2005; and Drugs, Society, and Behavior, McGraw-Hill (Boston, MA), 2006. Former contributing editor of Rolling Stone; former writer at large for GQ; writer at large for Esquire; contributor to periodicals, including Spy, Vibe, Playboy, Interview, and Washingtonian.

ADAPTATIONS:

"Betrayed by Love" was adapted as a television movie.

SIDELIGHTS:

Mike Sager is a writer noted for his contributions to major publications that include Playboy, and Spy. He is a former contributing editor of Rolling Stone, former writer at large for GQ, and he became a writer at large for Esquire.

Sager briefly attended law school before dropping out to take a job as a graveyard shift copy boy at the Washington Post. In less than a year he was a staff writer, after being promoted by then-metro-editor Bob Woodward. Sager stayed with the Washington Post for six years before leaving to pursue a career writing for magazines. On his Web site Sager notes that in writing his stories he "has lived with a crack gang in Los Angeles; ex-pat Vietnam veterans in Thailand; a 625 pound man in El Monte, CA; teenage pitbull fighters in the Philadelphia barrio; Palestinians in the Gaza Strip; heroin addicts on the Lower East Side; Aryan Nations troopers in Idaho; U.S. Marines at Camp Pendleton; Tupperware saleswomen in suburban Maryland; high school boys in Orange County." Many of Sager's stories have been the inspirations for films.

Sager's essays and articles are collected in two volumes titled Scary Monsters and Super Freaks: Stories of Sex, Drugs, Rock 'n' Roll, and Murder and Revenge of the Donut Boys: True Stories of Lust, Fame, Survival and Multiple Personality. Scary Monsters and Super Freaks collects twenty years of articles written primarily for Rolling Stone and GQ. They include "The Devil and John Holmes," about the porn star whose life was portrayed by Val Kilmer in the film Wonderland, and "Rob Lowe's Girl Trouble," about the sex tape the actor filmed with an underage girl. These and "The Rise and Fall of Super Freak," a commentary on the violent drug user Rick James, are contained in the section on subjects familiar to readers, including former congressman Gary Condit. Other articles are about lesser-known subjects and incidents and include "The Death of a High School Narc" about events that occurred in Midlothian, Texas.

Karen Sandlin Silverman noted in Library Journal that the articles appear in their original form. A Publishers Weekly contributor who called the book a "strong collection" praised two entries in particular. One is a portrait of Janet Cooke, a former Washington Post writer whose Pulitzer Prize-winning story about an eight-year-old girl with a heroin addiction was found to be fake. The other is an article about the life and death of author Carlos Castaneda. Mike Tribby concluded a Booklist review by writing: "Pretty it ain't, but throbbingly real it is—dynamic episodic reading, too."

Most of the articles in Revenge of the Donut Boys were originally published in Esquire. Sager reports on his interviews with personalities such Rosanne Barr, who talked about her multiple personality disorder, and Ice Cube, on race and celebrity. New York Times Book Review contributor Mick Sussman noted, however, that "the famous, almost famous and not famous all get the same Sager treatment." Entertainment Weekly critic Gregory Kirschling felt that the title article, about a gang of boys stealing cars in Newark, New Jersey, only to wreck them at high speeds, "is one of his best." A Publishers Weekly contributor favored a story about Lee Risler, an aging hippie and sandal maker who cut off his own arm to free himself from a wrecked van. "These are savvy, deftly written highlights from a talented career," concluded the reviewer.

Sager also writes of aging swingers in Florida, professional volleyball players, the victims of a California wildfire, and an elderly man living the end of his life in a retirement community. A Kirkus Reviews critic concluded: "Compelling and stylish magazine journalism, rich in novelistic detail. A reminder of what can make sifting through all of those glossy advertisements and subscription cards worthwhile."

Sager told CA: "For some reason, from an early age, I was attracted to typewriters. My grandfather was a country lawyer—I used to go to his office and type. For a long time, I associated those warm feelings with wanting to be a lawyer. Later I realized it was about the typing. I love filling a blank page, making something from nothing.

"My work is influenced by journalists new and old, from George Orwell to H.L. Mencken and A.J. Liebling to Hunter S. Thompson/Tom Wolfe/Gay Talese. I am influenced by twentieth-century North American novelists, and by the deviant writers of the past: Louis-Ferdinand Céline, William Burroughs, Paul Bowles, Henry Miller, Hubert Selby, and Charles Bukowski. I am also heavily influenced by music, movies, and films of all kinds."

When asked to describe his writing process, Sager responded: "Desk, computer, window, solitude. Pacific ocean in distance. Lots of time. Lots of editing and rewriting.

"The most surprising thing I have learned as a writer is not to be surprised by what I learn—just to keep seeking.

"Of my works, I love my collections because they represent thirty years between covers. It is like having all of your family's important pictures in three albums. I can look at them and see what I've done, proof positive that I exist. My third collection, Wounded Warriors: True Tales of Iraq, Vietnam, and Other Wars That Never End, includes an original 30,000-word ‘nonfiction novella’ on the Marines' Wounded Warrior Barracks in North Carolina.

"I love my novel, Deviant Behavior: A Novel of Sex, Drugs, Fatherhood, and Crystal Skulls, because I made it out of nothing. The most amazing thing about the first review I ever got as a novelist, aside from the favorable—and quotable!—blurb, was this amazing sensation that someone was discussing these characters and these situations that I had created out of nothing. They were real. People were discussing them. It blew my mind.

"I hope people will be moved and entertained and informed by what I write. And I hope they will buy the next book because I love to write and I want to continue to write. The longer I do this the more I learn, and the more I feel I have to contribute. When somebody buys your book, you owe them. I try to live up to that."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, January 1, 2004, Mike Tribby, review of Scary Monsters and Super Freaks: Stories of Sex, Drugs, Rock 'n' Roll, and Murder, p. 797.

Entertainment Weekly, August 17, 2007, Gregory Kirschling, review of Revenge of the Donut Boys: True Stories of Lust, Fame, Survival and Multiple Personality, p. 77.

Esquire, February, 2004, review of Scary Monsters and Super Freaks, p. 30.

Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2007, review of Revenge of the Donut Boys.

Library Journal, January, 2004, Karen Sandlin Silverman, review of Scary Monsters and Super Freaks, p. 134.

New York Times Book Review, September 16, 2007, Mick Sussman, review of Revenge of the Donut Boys.

Publishers Weekly, November 24, 2003, review of Scary Monsters and Super Freaks, p. 54; April 16, 2007, review of Revenge of the Donut Boys, p. 40.