The Erotic Manifesto
By William Hammett 

     Tom Wolfe and Philip Roth have a lovechild in William Hammett and granddaughter in his heroine, Dr. Marionette Dish, a frustrated virgin. She's an accomplished paleontologist with many friends and a soft spot for a blind guy named Lou, but none of that seems to matter in our sexually confused Western society that bans the Ten Commandments or beats you over the head with them (our Supreme Court finally decided that sex between two consenting male adults is not a crime).

     Hammett may have written this wry, sometimes too acid-trippy but witty, ultimately worthy and meaningful social commentary after watching "Temptation Island" or "Love Cruise," the promiscuity-fests so beloved by Fox. Marionette, a.k.a. "The Dish," a.k.a. Solstice Revolution, sees her friend Dorothy Hampton Reed change from politically correct feminist to orgasming in the Big Sky Bone Institute's skull room after Dorothy's loser lover Vlad Gnursk gets hold of some techniques that a polygamist named Buck Regal gleaned from a revolutionary document, The Erotic Manifesto, produced by the ancient sect of Rishi-Divas in Argentina (in the book's loopy fashion, no one has seen this document, but everyone claims to know something about it, like Internet wealth.)

     The Dish, a.k.a. Solstice, who previously found COSMOPOLITAN articles about "The One Sexual Trick You Need To Know" repetitive, goes into hormonal overdrive, and hops a flight down to Argentina where she lets loose in the name of a sexual bonanza and learns a lesson in stereotyping from a sexy Catholic kindhearted lesbian stewardess. There's that skewering of our sexual mores!

     Hammett also gives a thump on the head to the CIA, which decides that Dr. Dish's discovery is a threat to natural security and tails her to San Vidarenza, Argentina, where they kidnap her. So that's what they've been doing instead of finding Osama bin Laden.

     When Marionette finally "joins" the enigmatic asterisk monastery of the Rishi-Divas, she has a mind- and body-altering experience akin to Dorothy in Oz, rediscovers the Beatles' truth, "All You Need Is Love," and finds her own erotic liberation by symbolically switching off both Pat Buchanan and "Temptation Island."