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Œuvres I : Dans ma chambre – Je sors ce soir – Plus fort que moi
Guillaume Dustan' first three novels, published in French between 1996 and 1998, describing the narrator's sexual odyssey through a Paris still haunted by AIDS.
This volume collects a suite of three wildly entertaining and trailblazing short novels by the legendary French anti-assimilationist LGBTQ+ writer Guillaume Dustan. Published sequentially in France between 1996 and 1998, the three novels are exuberant and deliberately affectless accounts of the narrator's sexual odyssey through a Parisian club and bath scene still haunted by AIDS.
In My Room (1996) takes place almost entirely in the narrator's bedroom. The middle volume, I'm Going Out Tonight (1997) finds him venturing out onto the gay scene in one long night. Finally, in Stronger Than Me (1998) the narrator reflects on his early life, which coincided with the appearance and spread of the AIDS virus in France.
A close contemporary of Dennis Cooper, Brett Easton Ellis, Kevin Killian, and Gary Indiana, Guillaume Dustan's deadpan autofiction is at once satirical and intimate, and completely contemporary.
This volume collects a suite of three wildly entertaining and trailblazing short novels by the legendary French anti-assimilationist LGBTQ+ writer Guillaume Dustan. Published sequentially in France between 1996 and 1998, the three novels are exuberant and deliberately affectless accounts of the narrator's sexual odyssey through a Parisian club and bath scene still haunted by AIDS.
In My Room (1996) takes place almost entirely in the narrator's bedroom. The middle volume, I'm Going Out Tonight (1997) finds him venturing out onto the gay scene in one long night. Finally, in Stronger Than Me (1998) the narrator reflects on his early life, which coincided with the appearance and spread of the AIDS virus in France.
A close contemporary of Dennis Cooper, Brett Easton Ellis, Kevin Killian, and Gary Indiana, Guillaume Dustan's deadpan autofiction is at once satirical and intimate, and completely contemporary.
368 pages, Paperback
First published May 15, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 46 reviews
August 26, 2025
this book fucks
March 8, 2023
Well I don't know what target audience Semiotext(e) has in mind for this volume. Someone (not me!) who enjoys those Thomas Clerc academic intros? After skipping them, it's almost continuous gay domestic squabbles and sex. There are footnotes explaining that the Keller, the Transfert etc are "gay nightclubs", and listing the neighborhoods they're in, which for some reason is important. Hilarious.
I thought it was pretty funny that the protagonist whipped up a quick post-sex midnight snack of canned tripe and rice. In Paris, you could walk into a basic supermarket and have your choice of decent cassoulet in a can, braised rabbit in a vacuum-sealed pouch, etc. If there's a nuclear holocaust and we have to subsist on canned food for the rest of our lives, Paris is the place to be.
I'm not sure how much of this kind of sex narrative I need these days. The prose and the translation are pretty crisp though.
I thought it was pretty funny that the protagonist whipped up a quick post-sex midnight snack of canned tripe and rice. In Paris, you could walk into a basic supermarket and have your choice of decent cassoulet in a can, braised rabbit in a vacuum-sealed pouch, etc. If there's a nuclear holocaust and we have to subsist on canned food for the rest of our lives, Paris is the place to be.
I'm not sure how much of this kind of sex narrative I need these days. The prose and the translation are pretty crisp though.
August 25, 2021
I started reading this at a queer campout in Pennsylvania, not anticipating how perfect this book would be for the aesthetic. Semiotext(e) is hit-or-miss, sometimes too pretentious, but these writings are just the right level of wacky. I refuse to believe this is fiction. It's too close to the lived experience. Echoes of Bret Easton Ellis, and not quite as obscene as Dennis Cooper. The first two sections will sound familiar to anyone who spent their 20s in Bushwick (my frame of reference, but these writings paint a vivid portrait of the '90s Paris scene). The last section takes a darker turn, especially when you recall that the novelas cover overlapping periods. An enjoyable read, with lots of nodding along.
February 9, 2022
Written in the late 1990s but not published in English until now (Dustan died in 2005), these mini-novels descend less from Acker or Cooper than Hervé Guibert, who died after producing radical AIDS novel, To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life (1990, Gallimard). Dustan’s protagonist hocus-pocus is immediate, raw, rough-trade BDSM in-the-moment in Paris discos, dungeons and flats. Yet that moment is all inside the Dustan’s “I.” You pilot his id/ego as it gauges cock sizes and second-guesses every decision, Hamlet like: To fist or to be fisted? The effect is spectacular. (“A comic taxonomy,” says Kraus.) And poignant, as AIDS creeps. It’s more purely auto-fiction than anything else here, but the icy tone – self-mockery-exempt, yet frozen in self-consciousness – feels like its own genre.
June 3, 2024
4.5
Euphoric to read. I'm very glad I read these three short novels in quick succession, as they build atop one another in interesting ways to create a tapestry of who Dustan's narrator is with a greater variety of colors and threads than you initially assume. It's pornographic and anxious and sardonic and cold and observant and navel-gazing. All of it is wondrously vulnerable. I also don't think I've read as much about fisting in a single work of fiction as I have here.
Euphoric to read. I'm very glad I read these three short novels in quick succession, as they build atop one another in interesting ways to create a tapestry of who Dustan's narrator is with a greater variety of colors and threads than you initially assume. It's pornographic and anxious and sardonic and cold and observant and navel-gazing. All of it is wondrously vulnerable. I also don't think I've read as much about fisting in a single work of fiction as I have here.
May 4, 2021
I read some of this a while ago in French, but my French is so atrophied I am happy there's a translation. The intro really places Dustan in French queer writing well, but I'm a bit mystified as to why the editor of this edition thinks this is not autofiction. To me, its the best example there is of it. Maybe its because to became a bit of a bourgeois thing in French writing. Anyway, Dustan found a form for gay life to find its way into literature without squeezing it into the novel. Bitchy, gossipy, frank, structured by serial encounters and other aspects of gay life. I love it and learned so much from it.
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November 26, 2023honestly wasnt a huge fan of dustan’s writing or the analysis provided by the editor. with the writing being pretty straightforward and less literary, i see the comparisons to brett easton ellis more than dennis cooper, whose writing, i think, has more descriptive flourishes than easton ellis or dustan. either way, im interested to read the remainder of this collection as it gets released
July 4, 2022
Reading this felt like the literary equivalent of sissy hypno
March 21, 2023
This amazing brilliant book deserves a rating of more than 100 ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
May 3, 2024
Works is bold, verging on tedious through one after another sex scene, but often rescued by an errant thought or set of observations that illuminate the impulses behind the fervid activity.
It's interesting to read Dustan after Edouard Louis, for they approach homosexuality (gay is a loaded word, so the introduction by Thomas Clerk explains) in different ways, yet the ways don't exclude each other. EL is overtly class-based; Dustan is both bourgeois (he was an administrative judge for some years) and semi-bohemian, and while aware of class doesn't rate it as that important (in the trilogy collected here). "Books gave me shelter," he says, from the ages of six to sixteen, and the references to books here, though few, signal that he is, in the gallic sense, an intellectual. Contained within the very front-facing and graphic scenes are arguments, as Clerc points out, with Hervé Guibert and others.
What may bring a reader to this volume of three novels, or repel almost at once, are the sex scenes, especially in the final book, the S&M-heavy Stronger Than Me, particularly after the 'lightness' of I'm Going Out Tonight. The opening book, In My Room, appears mild compared to the other bookend. Throughout there are ideas Dustan has about life and examinations of what makes people tick, the nightclub life, managing to survive in the age of AIDS, the search for love, the hunt for sex, depression, family ties, and more, that eventually, if a reader stays around, equal in importance the drug and sexual paraphernalia use. "From the outset," as Clerc remarks, "an auteur carved out his space in the dark room of sex, death, and writing."
It's interesting to read Dustan after Edouard Louis, for they approach homosexuality (gay is a loaded word, so the introduction by Thomas Clerk explains) in different ways, yet the ways don't exclude each other. EL is overtly class-based; Dustan is both bourgeois (he was an administrative judge for some years) and semi-bohemian, and while aware of class doesn't rate it as that important (in the trilogy collected here). "Books gave me shelter," he says, from the ages of six to sixteen, and the references to books here, though few, signal that he is, in the gallic sense, an intellectual. Contained within the very front-facing and graphic scenes are arguments, as Clerc points out, with Hervé Guibert and others.
What may bring a reader to this volume of three novels, or repel almost at once, are the sex scenes, especially in the final book, the S&M-heavy Stronger Than Me, particularly after the 'lightness' of I'm Going Out Tonight. The opening book, In My Room, appears mild compared to the other bookend. Throughout there are ideas Dustan has about life and examinations of what makes people tick, the nightclub life, managing to survive in the age of AIDS, the search for love, the hunt for sex, depression, family ties, and more, that eventually, if a reader stays around, equal in importance the drug and sexual paraphernalia use. "From the outset," as Clerc remarks, "an auteur carved out his space in the dark room of sex, death, and writing."
July 18, 2022
I enjoyed this collection so much. Though the introductions to each book are dense, they did an amazing job situating dustan's work in both the political and literary time period. and the novels themselves are so unique, I am so happy I found this collection. My favorite of the three was likely I'm Going Out to Tonight, though both In My Room and Stronger Than Me hold their own even while being relatively similar in terms of structure and themes. The collection is a very interesting epilogue/contrast to guibert's to my friend who did not save my life. I hope vol 2 comes out soon!
January 25, 2024
A glorious unfiltered mess. Stories to make you squirm with terror and delight, just as Guillaume did while experiencing them. The coolest motherf*cker.
March 9, 2024
Un génie qu'il ne faut pas oublier. Rest in Piss (je pense qu'il aurait aimé ça)
July 5, 2022
I wanted to like this first volume of his work, three novellas by Guillaume Dustan, newly enamored of the “autofiction” genre as I am, and having just come off of Hervé Guibert’s most famous—and very amusing—book "To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life." Sex, sex and more gay sex it promised, and I was really ready for anything, even after reading the incredibly esoteric introduction by a fellow Frenchman and author who wrote as though his subject were a rock star of transgressive narrative, and the introduction his doctoral dissertation. Alas.
What I got from the introduction ran something like this: Dustan was the anti-Guibert, the living embodiment (nearly) of ACT UP in France, who would not apologize for his homosexuality, his sexual life, none of it—as though Guibert were an apologist, begging for a cure for AIDS in spite of his gayness. Well alright, but what follows is just a diary, really, of night after night at clubs and discos and cruising men, comparing, sneering, sizing up and dressing down, hoping for the super hot guys, hating himself for settling for the ugly ones, awkward relationships built around bad sex, yada yada yada. He admits 90% of the time the sex is nothing to write home about, describes how bored or uninterested he was in this pursuit he obsessed over, yet write about it he does, and I’m trying to figure out why even a reader almost made to order for this book (gay, male, approximately the same age, similar sexual interests) should believe the ridiculous introduction and its transcendent claims of the text’s importance rather than my own boredom. I realize this was written a generation ago, and maybe it was groundbreaking at the time, but it hasn't aged well; what with the sophisticated sexual landscape of the last 10 years (thanks to the internet, I assume) this book comes across as the literary equivalent of "Wouldst thou permit a lowly worm to undo thy corset, milady?"
My guess: Thomas Clerc, the writer of the introduction, got so wrapped up in the elegance of his thesis, was so flattered to have been asked, wanted so badly to believe the best of a fellow countryman, he missed the part where Dustan was actually pretty bored and disgusted with his life of sport sex.
What I got from the introduction ran something like this: Dustan was the anti-Guibert, the living embodiment (nearly) of ACT UP in France, who would not apologize for his homosexuality, his sexual life, none of it—as though Guibert were an apologist, begging for a cure for AIDS in spite of his gayness. Well alright, but what follows is just a diary, really, of night after night at clubs and discos and cruising men, comparing, sneering, sizing up and dressing down, hoping for the super hot guys, hating himself for settling for the ugly ones, awkward relationships built around bad sex, yada yada yada. He admits 90% of the time the sex is nothing to write home about, describes how bored or uninterested he was in this pursuit he obsessed over, yet write about it he does, and I’m trying to figure out why even a reader almost made to order for this book (gay, male, approximately the same age, similar sexual interests) should believe the ridiculous introduction and its transcendent claims of the text’s importance rather than my own boredom. I realize this was written a generation ago, and maybe it was groundbreaking at the time, but it hasn't aged well; what with the sophisticated sexual landscape of the last 10 years (thanks to the internet, I assume) this book comes across as the literary equivalent of "Wouldst thou permit a lowly worm to undo thy corset, milady?"
My guess: Thomas Clerc, the writer of the introduction, got so wrapped up in the elegance of his thesis, was so flattered to have been asked, wanted so badly to believe the best of a fellow countryman, he missed the part where Dustan was actually pretty bored and disgusted with his life of sport sex.
August 26, 2021
I came to this book from Paul B Preciado’s tribute to Guillaume Dustan in *Testo Junkie.* From the gender terrorist’s blurb on the back: “Dustan uses queer sexuality and writing to extract himself from the bourgeois context in which he evolved until his early thirties...”
(I only skimmed the editorial introductions, and was kind of annoyed by them—they bourgeoisized the content, made it Normal, despite the fact that Dustan writes from the (figuratively?) literal ghetto.)
The prose reads within the Hemingway tradition, (explicitly) in the Bret Easton Ellis tradition, short declarative descriptions of actions, supposedly masculine and brusque.
The book is a collection of Dustan’s novels. They’re autofictions about this guy fucking and dancing, deeply 90s, deeply engaged with particular fashions (what are Rangers someone please tell me) and with patterns of S/M translated into the emotional dynamics of relationships, sometimes in a bad way.
My favorite was the second, *I’m Going Out Tonight,* because of the molding of its formalities with its content—when the protagonist waits around at the club and trips on E, the prose follows a kind of languor and then hyperactivity; I wanted a cigarette so badly in the middle of this. The scenery presents as a single night, but it’s emblematic/iconic of a sorta universal experience, or like a equating or a life of dance floor experiences.
The first, *In My Room,* is like a portrait of a particular few months.
The third, *Stronger Than Me,* begins like a sexual bildungsroman, ending on a teacher-dominator role before it segues into the next book(?) *Nicolas Pages,* the endnotes promise, the novel depicting a relationship that came in between *In My Room* and *I’m Going Out Tonight.*
HIV heavily tempers the novels, as the protagonist is #positive. But the emotional tone surrounding it is, as mentioned at one point, like diabetes: an important health concern to think about daily, to get treated regularly, but not something that will destroy oneself. Dustan’s diagnosis (mostly) doesn’t stop him from getting his ho on, but it creates a system of values and complexes and tensions to write into flings and relationships: he can’t truly commit to being boyfriends with someone who is #negative; to bareback is a thrill along and beyond the lines of S/M.
Some fav passages:
I close my eyes. After a while, he asks me what’s wrong. I tell him I want to kill everyone in the world, smash all my toys, stay all along in the blood and scream until I die. He says that would make a nice scene in a movie. (83)
I know that I should have left him much earlier. When I told myself for the first time that I would never be in love with him. But it felt so good to be loved by him. So good. (146)
It’s amazing what assholes can become. (317)
(I only skimmed the editorial introductions, and was kind of annoyed by them—they bourgeoisized the content, made it Normal, despite the fact that Dustan writes from the (figuratively?) literal ghetto.)
The prose reads within the Hemingway tradition, (explicitly) in the Bret Easton Ellis tradition, short declarative descriptions of actions, supposedly masculine and brusque.
The book is a collection of Dustan’s novels. They’re autofictions about this guy fucking and dancing, deeply 90s, deeply engaged with particular fashions (what are Rangers someone please tell me) and with patterns of S/M translated into the emotional dynamics of relationships, sometimes in a bad way.
My favorite was the second, *I’m Going Out Tonight,* because of the molding of its formalities with its content—when the protagonist waits around at the club and trips on E, the prose follows a kind of languor and then hyperactivity; I wanted a cigarette so badly in the middle of this. The scenery presents as a single night, but it’s emblematic/iconic of a sorta universal experience, or like a equating or a life of dance floor experiences.
The first, *In My Room,* is like a portrait of a particular few months.
The third, *Stronger Than Me,* begins like a sexual bildungsroman, ending on a teacher-dominator role before it segues into the next book(?) *Nicolas Pages,* the endnotes promise, the novel depicting a relationship that came in between *In My Room* and *I’m Going Out Tonight.*
HIV heavily tempers the novels, as the protagonist is #positive. But the emotional tone surrounding it is, as mentioned at one point, like diabetes: an important health concern to think about daily, to get treated regularly, but not something that will destroy oneself. Dustan’s diagnosis (mostly) doesn’t stop him from getting his ho on, but it creates a system of values and complexes and tensions to write into flings and relationships: he can’t truly commit to being boyfriends with someone who is #negative; to bareback is a thrill along and beyond the lines of S/M.
Some fav passages:
I close my eyes. After a while, he asks me what’s wrong. I tell him I want to kill everyone in the world, smash all my toys, stay all along in the blood and scream until I die. He says that would make a nice scene in a movie. (83)
I know that I should have left him much earlier. When I told myself for the first time that I would never be in love with him. But it felt so good to be loved by him. So good. (146)
It’s amazing what assholes can become. (317)
October 4, 2021
The 1990s seem like ancient history. Yet the photograph of Guillame Dustan on the cover of this book seems like it could have been photographed yesterday. The three of his novels collected in this volume have sex forward distance that reveal Dustan's admiration of Brett Easton Ellis's Less than Zero. The three books track partnership, nightclub abandon, and a kind of biography of kink. These are books that revel in distanced feeling, of skewing towards the physical in a way that occurs in youth. Dustan, though, died at forty (according to wikipedia, of an accidental overdose, though he was also HIV positive).
Between these covers you'll find a lot of sex, drugs, messy relationships, dance and sex clubs, and early internet hook-up sites. There is a lot of heavy handed literary contextualization from Thomas Clerc. He wrote a novel called 'Interior' which is an endless, fabulous archive of the writer's apartment, so when he refers to the first of Dustan's novels, "In My Room" I expected something so much more hermetic. The Dustan narrator, which does come off rather like the writer himself, may be emotionally defended, but he's hardly a shut in. But then, this isn't about emotion, at least not in a traditional sense. This is that literature of filling emptiness, of compulsive behaviors (like sex and writing). Clerc's assessments come from a heterosexual perspective, queer readers, gay men, will find a truthfulness, and strangely, a vulnerability.
The narrator is lusty, depressive, and in his late 20s. Hungry and horny. The writing exists in that catalog of encounters realm, one that might make you think of "The Sexual Life of Catherine M" another French book of sexual compulsion that came out in 2001. This might be most easily attached to Dustan's "Stronger Than Me," which is an unsentimental education in forms of queer kink, experiences that are enumerated, not exactly written as erotica. The centerpiece of the book is a marathon of submission that the narrator engages, endures (?) on his mother's birthday, a fact mentioned a few times amongst various acts of water sports, fisting, and candle wax drippings onto and into the narrator's penis.
There is truth to the strategy of making these practices public as a queer political act, though there's no getting around the repetition. "I'm Going Out Tonight" is prefaced, by Clerc, as a book that all about the dance, but there is plenty of sex within this cinematic tale of a drug-fueled trance of pleasure, sensation, and serotonin depletion. It predicts Gaspar Noe's glamorous, dancy nightmare film, "Climax" only with less blood. Dustan really takes you there. The interpersonal, carnal universe of these books may not be cozy, but they feel real (as in autobiographical) and beneath the surface, full of emotional life.
Between these covers you'll find a lot of sex, drugs, messy relationships, dance and sex clubs, and early internet hook-up sites. There is a lot of heavy handed literary contextualization from Thomas Clerc. He wrote a novel called 'Interior' which is an endless, fabulous archive of the writer's apartment, so when he refers to the first of Dustan's novels, "In My Room" I expected something so much more hermetic. The Dustan narrator, which does come off rather like the writer himself, may be emotionally defended, but he's hardly a shut in. But then, this isn't about emotion, at least not in a traditional sense. This is that literature of filling emptiness, of compulsive behaviors (like sex and writing). Clerc's assessments come from a heterosexual perspective, queer readers, gay men, will find a truthfulness, and strangely, a vulnerability.
The narrator is lusty, depressive, and in his late 20s. Hungry and horny. The writing exists in that catalog of encounters realm, one that might make you think of "The Sexual Life of Catherine M" another French book of sexual compulsion that came out in 2001. This might be most easily attached to Dustan's "Stronger Than Me," which is an unsentimental education in forms of queer kink, experiences that are enumerated, not exactly written as erotica. The centerpiece of the book is a marathon of submission that the narrator engages, endures (?) on his mother's birthday, a fact mentioned a few times amongst various acts of water sports, fisting, and candle wax drippings onto and into the narrator's penis.
There is truth to the strategy of making these practices public as a queer political act, though there's no getting around the repetition. "I'm Going Out Tonight" is prefaced, by Clerc, as a book that all about the dance, but there is plenty of sex within this cinematic tale of a drug-fueled trance of pleasure, sensation, and serotonin depletion. It predicts Gaspar Noe's glamorous, dancy nightmare film, "Climax" only with less blood. Dustan really takes you there. The interpersonal, carnal universe of these books may not be cozy, but they feel real (as in autobiographical) and beneath the surface, full of emotional life.
October 14, 2023
Relentless, exhausting, narcissistic--and that's not just Clerc's prefatory material.
I think your relationship to Dustin's works hinges on several factors: whether you were hotter in your 20s or in your 30s (30s); your tolerance for autofiction (meh); your fondness for S/m (plenty); and your willingness to be bored stiff by sex scenes in order to get one brilliant paragraph every twenty pages (varies). If you want masturbation scenes, just stick to the multiple prefaces. You can read each of these books in an evening, and it's probably better if you're a bit buzzed--but only I'm Going Out Tonight really soars.
I dated a guy for four years who dumped me in part to get in back into the sporting life. He constantly was sick of gay men and thought kink and sex was ultimately a bit of a bore--and yet he couldn't help but bolt to get back in the game. It didn't matter how often we boned or how wild it got (lots; plenty): he was stuck in the faggy paradox of despair from the idea of missing any possible encounter for sex amid despair right in the middle of sex. In other words, to be done with the sporting life yet never really wanting to leave it. He was hotter in his 20s than in his 30s and if we still talked, I bet he loved these books more than I could.
I think your relationship to Dustin's works hinges on several factors: whether you were hotter in your 20s or in your 30s (30s); your tolerance for autofiction (meh); your fondness for S/m (plenty); and your willingness to be bored stiff by sex scenes in order to get one brilliant paragraph every twenty pages (varies). If you want masturbation scenes, just stick to the multiple prefaces. You can read each of these books in an evening, and it's probably better if you're a bit buzzed--but only I'm Going Out Tonight really soars.
I dated a guy for four years who dumped me in part to get in back into the sporting life. He constantly was sick of gay men and thought kink and sex was ultimately a bit of a bore--and yet he couldn't help but bolt to get back in the game. It didn't matter how often we boned or how wild it got (lots; plenty): he was stuck in the faggy paradox of despair from the idea of missing any possible encounter for sex amid despair right in the middle of sex. In other words, to be done with the sporting life yet never really wanting to leave it. He was hotter in his 20s than in his 30s and if we still talked, I bet he loved these books more than I could.
May 1, 2022
These novels aren’t set that long ago but I wonder if the life Dustan describes in them is one that’s already consigned to history. In the decades since they were published gayness has moved just about as far away from the underground as it possibly could. If there’s nothing necessarily restrictive about gay life, if it exists in broad daylight as much a heterosexual life, what does that mean for the sexual subcultures/countercultures that came about directly as a result of taboos and legal restrictions on gay life? If a society like the one described does exist today, is it fundamentally a nostalgic one? One built around the memory of gay subcultures of the past? And if it’s not underpinned by a sense of nostalgia then surely it must be tinged with a sense of desperation—at any rate, it certainly can’t feel socially/politically transgressive in the way that it might have felt for Dustan. I can’t imagine someone writing so frankly about this today. Garth Greenwell has certainly tried. But his two novels feel contrived and touristy compared to Dustan’s.
February 7, 2022
This is obviously a magnificent read. It's more an autobiography than a work of fiction. The characters actually existed somewhere in France, US, Africa and Chile (South America).
This book is about explicit homosexual sex. Be careful if you're easily offended by it. Especially it is S&M, bondage, and some other fun stuff that Leather guys used to do (now at the verge of extinction in San Francisco, CA USA).
Written in brief chapters. Few pages long. This makes it easy for taking a break (of so much sex) or to do something else -e.g. have sex (borrow ideas from this text).
Obviously, Dustan was the stereotypical gay guy from the 80-90's. Shallow, fit, into fashion, into only pretty guys, into only hairy guys, into virile guys (masc4 masc, no femmes type of behavior). He was also an ageist and likely a racist (don't remember talking about sex with guys of other races). Regardless, it is a fun read. For sure.
This book is about explicit homosexual sex. Be careful if you're easily offended by it. Especially it is S&M, bondage, and some other fun stuff that Leather guys used to do (now at the verge of extinction in San Francisco, CA USA).
Written in brief chapters. Few pages long. This makes it easy for taking a break (of so much sex) or to do something else -e.g. have sex (borrow ideas from this text).
Obviously, Dustan was the stereotypical gay guy from the 80-90's. Shallow, fit, into fashion, into only pretty guys, into only hairy guys, into virile guys (masc4 masc, no femmes type of behavior). He was also an ageist and likely a racist (don't remember talking about sex with guys of other races). Regardless, it is a fun read. For sure.
May 8, 2023
I know more than I ever thought I'd need to about ball gags, weighted nipple clamps, butt plugs, leather masks, cock rings, fisting, barebacking, dildos and poppers! I really appreciated Thomas Clerc's introductions to each of Dustan's radical novellas which document the seductive, pleasure-seeking, dangerous hedonism of gay Paris in the mid-1990s. Writing against the pessimism and ostracism of HIV and AIDS, In My Room, I'm going out tonight and Stronger Than Me are provocative books, celebrations of the obscene, visceral experiences lionizing gay male promiscuity and the search for carnal oblivion through non-stop cruising for sex. There's an unsettling restlessness in each of the short novels and an all-pervading sadness. From what I understand, Dustan was a tour-de-force in queer literature, a contemporary of Herve Guibert and influential, stylistically to writers like Constance Debre. Compelling.
December 12, 2021
I can happily say I love Guillaume Dustan and wish so badly he was still here. This trio of short novels were so fun to read. I’ve never read anything so gross and sexy. His writing style was fun to learn about! I imagine his attitude toward literature is similar to that of the gay community. Moving to the best of his own drum (I’m sure he would hate me saying that).
Spoiler(?):
In the last few pages of Stronger Than Me, Dustan says he only read two books in his last few years of life. One of them was Less Than Zero, and my entire body broke out into chills, a book that is very important to me and I read it every spring. I felt very connected to him in that moment.
I’m so excited for the second volume 💞
Spoiler(?):
In the last few pages of Stronger Than Me, Dustan says he only read two books in his last few years of life. One of them was Less Than Zero, and my entire body broke out into chills, a book that is very important to me and I read it every spring. I felt very connected to him in that moment.
I’m so excited for the second volume 💞
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 1, 2024
Yes, Guillaume Dustan writes about sex, but is he writing it to be erotic? Is it sexy writing about sex? I am having trouble with that question. His writing is graphic, definitely pornographic, and it's a bit trashy, but Dustan's matter-of-fact, subtle, minimalist tone renders the sex acts he describes as more than "just sex." It is realist writing about the life of a Faggot, only made subversive and "extreme" by whatever sexual moralism the reader has been socialized to read into it. It is a life - Dustan's life - laid bare with every taboo detail - sex, drugs, abuse - uncovered. I read it as an extreme act of vulnerability. It's hard to find writing out there that leaves its author so exposed. It's breathtaking.
March 20, 2023
I wonder if it’s better in French
A sexual auto fiction is certainly something I’d enjoy but after the first novel in this collection things become repetitive and the parts about HIV just bring back too many bad memories of the 90s. It’s all well written by a bit relentless and not in a way that made me want to finish the 3rd novel at all. I do wonder if it’s better read in the original but I doubt my French is up to it but I may try some day. The first novel of the three was the best, kind of like when you find a new band and only their first album really does it for you.
A sexual auto fiction is certainly something I’d enjoy but after the first novel in this collection things become repetitive and the parts about HIV just bring back too many bad memories of the 90s. It’s all well written by a bit relentless and not in a way that made me want to finish the 3rd novel at all. I do wonder if it’s better read in the original but I doubt my French is up to it but I may try some day. The first novel of the three was the best, kind of like when you find a new band and only their first album really does it for you.
September 5, 2021
A million years ago I read In My Room. I don't remember liking it much but something about it stuck with me enough that when I saw this, I picked it up.
Unfortunately, it was really boring. I'm Going Out tonight was best, but honestly I feel like I wasted my time reading this. At least each book was short
Unfortunately, it was really boring. I'm Going Out tonight was best, but honestly I feel like I wasted my time reading this. At least each book was short
August 12, 2025
C’est un recueil qui a très mal vieilli.
J��ai énormément de mal avec ce style d’écriture de phrases simples et d’épanchement sur des relations sexuelles sans consistances réelles.
Malheureusement très peu d’écrivains gays se détachent de se style depuis plus de 30 ans et ça en devient redondant, et réellement compliqué d’avoir un avis objectif sur ce genre qui était précurseur à l’époque.
J��ai énormément de mal avec ce style d’écriture de phrases simples et d’épanchement sur des relations sexuelles sans consistances réelles.
Malheureusement très peu d’écrivains gays se détachent de se style depuis plus de 30 ans et ça en devient redondant, et réellement compliqué d’avoir un avis objectif sur ce genre qui était précurseur à l’époque.
December 28, 2022
I can do everything. I kiss. I lick. I suck. I pinch. I twist. I breathe in. I pull. I push. I stroke. I smack. I hold. I open. I spread. I go. I come. I delve. I piss. I drool. I spit. The only thing I still don't know how to do is come in a condom.
February 20, 2022
The novels just got better. Favorite being stronger than me. What a way to condense a life.
August 6, 2022
j’aurais mis 3,5!!!! dérangé*e par certains passages qui sonnent racistes…..
January 2, 2023
Inégal mais fondateur d'une époque et d'un état d'esprit subversif.
June 16, 2023
Under-appreciated auto-fiction.
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