David Carkeet taught writing and linguistics at UMSL for 30 years; I took at least one of his writing classes. His chosen title first made me wonder if he was writing about his own experiences on campus, so I had to read it, but I quickly realized his title is rather ironic with regard to himself. Note the photo on the front cover, which was staged for his high school newspaper.As a backdrop for his memoir, he uses a real novel titled the same as his, Campus Sexpot, which was written in 1961 by Dale Koby. Koby was formerly a high school English teacher in Carkeet's Sonora, California hometown. Koby's novel weaves a story from the viewpoint of Don Kaufield, a thinly disguised rendering of himself. The book was not marketed to the small town of Sonora, but once it was discovered, the residents clamored for it, to see who else in the story could be identified. It was a bit smutty for the time in 1962, and not a well-written story at that, but Carkeet's mother allowed him to read it. He was just 15 at the time, a four-and-a-half-foot tall trumpet player weighing 75 pounds with a self described baby face and inadequate sexual education.
Carkeet intersperses lines from the novel with his critiques of how poorly written they were; in some rare places, he applauds a well-composed sentence. But also the story allows for Carkeet's own youth and family life to be described while dissecting the book. It's often quite funny, but has sometimes serious commentary.
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