Traci Lords: Underneath It All - Softcover

Lords, Traci

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060508213 ISBN 13: 9780060508210

Publisher: It Books, 2005

Synopsis

The moving, gripping, and tell–all autobiography of Traci Elizabeth Lords, a former child porn queen, electronica maven, and cult movie and TV star.

At 14, Nora Kuzma ran away from home and ended up on the dirty streets of Hollywood. She fell in with a fast crowd, and her dreams of modelling soon landed her a spectacular centrefold in Penthouse Magazine, where at 15 she became internationally known as TRACI LORDS. From there she appeared in numerous adult films and magazines, denying her past and battling a deep addiction to cocaine and men. Three years later she got out. This is her memoir–a tale of loss, redemption, and ultimate survival as Traci Elizabeth Lords takes you into her secretive past, faces her demons, and shares her extraordinary journey of personal growth.

About this title

Review:

Traci Lords: Underneath It All is the autobiography of the infamous porn starlet. Nora Kuzma was a troubled teenager from Steubenville, Ohio; Traci Lords was the underage glamour mag/porn queen who became the centerpiece of the adult-video industry's greatest scandal. In reality, they were one and the same, the subject of this slick, if thin autobiography. But what's striking here is not the familiar story line--confused, sexually abused teen falls in with drugs and the wrong Southern California crowd, forges fake IDs to become Penthouse Pet of the Month at 16 and the 80s hottest adult star, then arrested as focus of the Reagan administration's crackdown on porn, only to become reborn as cleaned-up, psychoanalysed/rehabed purveyor of legitimate film, TV and music career. Rather, what's striking is Lords' capacity for denial, compartmentalisation and myopia when it serves her own ends.

Her scandalous tenure in the porn trade--undeniably the sole basis for her infamy and subsequent legitimate career--is glossed over here in a few dozen pages, with more attention paid to the heavy-metal musicians that dotted her life than the motivations and machinations of the Feds who literally changed her life; Slash's snake gets more ink here than Attorney General Ed Meese. Quick to ladle generous sympathy on her own plight, she heaps little but scorn upon those from the seedy past of her porn-star alter-ego, yet seems to have had few qualms about formally adopting that moniker as her legal name.

Many of her former cohorts in the adult industry (some of whom were jailed as targets of Federal law enforcement and tax probes related to her case) have long claimed that Lords was little more than a scheming careerist, and a careful reading of her own words does little to undermine their case. There are indeed many insights to Lords's troubled life here, with more than a few lurking between the lines. --Jerry McCulley, Amazon.com

Review:

“Frank, opinionated, intelligent, drenched in emotion....Will have readers cheering Lords on as they speed through its gritty, big-souled pages.” (Publishers Weekly)

About this edition

• Publisher: It Books
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0060508213
• ISBN 13: 9780060508210
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 292