The second coming of The Marquis de Sade. Albeit a far less sexually explicit, but no less sadistic de Sade.

Who is this twisted first person narrator guiding us through this sordid collection of demented anecdotes and mostly vile (if not violent) vignettes? Is it Kosinsky? Is it us?

Did this, whatever this - Steps - is, truly win the National Book Award in 1969? Yes. It's not a novel per se, but at 146 pages I wouldn't call it a novella, either. Short story collection? Not by a long shot. So, what is it?

It's loosely connected, piecemealed, malevolent, merciless episodes following the (s)exploits of one twisted, wicked man, hell bent on punishing his persecutors (whether they've indeed persecuted him or not) and even if it means tricking their children into swallowing fishhook-embedded balls of bread dough whole, so that they'll die excruciatingly agonizing slow deaths later...I loved it! Er, loved it like I "love" witnessing torture.

Kosinsky seemed to delight in torturing his readers by evoking in us (or at least attempting to) pleasurable reactions from sick perverted scenarios which should - should - shock us into moral outrage enough to put the damn book down, but he knows the vignettes will make us only cringe or mildly wince (it's just a story after all, right?) and that we'll keep reading wanting more, always more, like we're Nero's Romans applauding the Christians being eaten alive by lions in the Colosseum.

In essence, Kosinsky tricks us to keep reading (knowing as readers we'll think there's some "payoff " by the end) but the only payoff is Kosinski's, not ours, his "amoral" audience, so to speak, and when we reach the last page he's already indicted our depraved indifference as readers - and as a culture - more to the point, and we can't help seeing that the sick joke's on us; on us readers - on society at large - the population that's so compelled, so easily amused and entertained by atrocities: barrages of gang rapes, beheadings, untold degradations of women, and exploitations of the mentally ill. Kosinski gets us good, and we're indicted down to that last destitute image.

Steps takes us step by step, evil by evil, deeper, with every (ours) volitional turn of the page, into the depravity residing inside us (or at least attempts to). And it doesn't hurt Kosinsky's cause that while venturing into some taboo terrain, he can take what's potentially degrading and make it art. Listen to one of his female characters as she delicately describes her experience of a particular sex act and, in Kosinsky's hands, see how she articulates the experience, recognizes the power she possesses over the man (though he thinks he possesses her) during the experience, without once ever slipping into some lowbrow, locker roomish, distasteful "porn spiel":

"I'd be embarassed to say I've actually...you know, it's a weird sensation having it in one's mouth. It's as if the entire body of the man, everything, had suddenly shrunk into this one thing. And then it grows and fills the mouth. It becomes forceful, but at the same time remains frail and vulnerable. It could choke me - or I might bite if off. And as it grows, it is I who give it life; my breathing sustains it, and it uncoils like an enormous tongue."

Not an always comfortable, or pleasant, Sunday stroll through Central Park with the children, Steps, though forty years removed from first publication, these steps, I'd say, are still worth taking. ( )

Despite the grim nature of these stories, I was moved by this book. I was particularly stunned by the final story, and it has stayed with me for years. Any book that can leave such an impression—even if that impression is one of shock and despair, and one that makes me question the honesty of my OWN emotions, is a worthy read. ( )

A grim collection of disconnected vignettes, all first person and apparently narrated by the same person, although this is not certain. The overriding theme is that of sadistic sexual hedonism, in which the narrator recounts a an experience (usually sexual) in which he pleasures in the malicious manipulation of others. I thought at first this was autobiographical, but apparently it is fictional. Either way, Kosinski was one sick puppy, and his later suicide did not surprise me. Well-written, but perverse and depressing. ( )