After this foray into punk, Wolcott rather surprisingly spends the next part of his story talking about porn in New York at that time. It's rather interesting, but since he was not writing reviews of porn movies, it seems a rather odd thing to focus on. Once again, Wolcott was merely an observer, on the fringes of the degenerate crowd at the porn theaters and avoiding the darker dens of iniquity in the city, so the whole section is interesting but unsettling for little apparent purpose.
Then things really get weird, because next Wolcott moves from porn to ballet. There's no clear explanation for why.
And that is the core problem with this book. The parts don't fit together and there's no effort to try to provide continuity. Perhaps if Wolcott had told us more about himself and his life outside of film criticism, punk, porn, and ballet, more about his own personality and day-to-day existence, that would have helped weave these interests together. But as it is, the only thing they all have in common is that they took place in New York in the '70s and Wolcott was there, and that is not quite enough.
It's not a bad book. There is a lot to enjoy here, and some sentences are so well phrased that anyone who enjoys skilled writing will pause in admiration. But in the end, Lucking Out seems to fall short of what it could have been and to leave one with just the slightest sense of disappointment.
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