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Skipping Towards Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins And The Pursuit Of Happiness In America

by Dan Savage

(Dutton)
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Reviewed by Tasha Robinson
November 22nd, 2002

Never let it be said that Dan Savage is predictable or narrowly focused as a writer. As the easily distracted voice behind the Savage Love sex-advice column, Savage frequently uses his bully pulpit to complain about air travel, air his fantasies about Dude, Where's My Car? star Ashton Kutcher, and rant about movies and politics. Scant wonder that, when given a bigger pulpit in the form of an entire book, Savage wanders where he will, regardless of his original intent. His opening statement of purpose in the new Skipping Towards Gomorrah is intriguing, but his colorful, personal essays are often most entertaining when they meander well off course, which they almost always do. Skipping purports to be a look at the seven deadly sins in modern America, a positivist, pro-sin answer to Robert Bork's dour Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism And American Decline. To no one's surprise, where Bork sees impending doom at the hands of liberals and their freedoms of speech, thought, and action, Savage advocates more freedoms yet. To prove that the founding fathers weren't kidding about the right to pursue happiness, and that the pursuit itself isn't destroying the world nearly as quickly as "virtuecrats" Bork, Bill O'Reilly, Dr. Laura, Pat Buchanan, and William Bennett seem to think, Savage bounces purposefully around the U.S., ostensibly planning to witness and commit the seven deadly sins himself. He generally fails, but his failures are more amusing than his successes. Trying to explore "pride" at a San Francisco gay-pride rally, Savage mostly finds happy partiers justifying their fun with unnecessary rhetoric. (He still indulges in a lengthy screed about the political and personal dangers of "gay pride.") Seeking "anger" at a Texas gun range, Savage learns that he's good at shooting, and he enjoys it. A search for "gluttony" at a fat-acceptance convention instead reveals dangerous self-delusion; an "envy" week among the rich puts him in a ridiculous situation that no one would envy. The "lust" chapter turns into an anti-Bennett diatribe, while "sloth" becomes a factoid-heavy argument for drug legalization. Only "greed" actually features Savage both experiencing greed (while gambling in Las Vegas and an Iowa riverboat casino) and analyzing its pros and cons. Much of Skipping Towards Gomorrah's remainder is either clever, Michael Moore-style political advocacy or jauntily written anecdotes that are less enlightening but just as engaging. Since Savage's entire point is that certain forms of self-indulgence harm no one—not Bork's supposedly suffering, declining, rotten-at-the-core country, and not the sinners themselves—it's no wonder that the book itself is so patently self-indulgent. Sure enough, Savage is right: It doesn't hurt at all.