The Joy of Sex: The Ultimate Revised Edition
By Alex Comfort Crown
288 pp.
The only thing worse than being in the naughty section of the bookstore while taking notes down in a little notebook for a book review was being caught doing it. Taking notes—in the naughty section of the bookstore—I mean.
I won’t go further into the awkwardness ensuing from that story, but I will say this: the new edition of The Joy of Sex just doesn’t have the same sexy zest as its no-holds-barred compatriots lining the shelves of the back-most corner at Indigo. Granted, the book was first written in 1972, many years predating our current blasé pornoramic existence, but far from the explosive phenomenon of its youth, The Joy of Sex is now about as stimulating as pawing through Jane Eyre whilst engaging in a rousing session of needlepoint.
The Joy of Sex, written by a philandering English doctor—Dr. Alex Comfort—exploits the timeless truism that sex and food make delightful bedfellows. The manual divvies up the various sexual pleasures into appetizers, main courses, pickles and sauces. Why there is not a dessert category, I’m not sure. This new edition has cleaned up much of the distasteful—to today’s politically puritanical palate, anyway—language used by Comfort throughout the book. “Don’t get yourself raped,” for example, is no longer listed in this recipe for good sex. The illustrations are also revamped for easier digestion; namely, there is less hair. Rear-entry sex is also no longer called “à la negresse,” and for good reason.
But without these entertaining throw-backs to a time when “being politically correct” meant opposing Nixon, the book is no more than a canonically-approved treatise on sex for the sweater-set and high-collar variety. Its imposition of artificial and rigid categories onto what can be one of the most creative of human expressions in fact takes all the Joy out of sex. If this is supposed to be a beginners’ manual to a delicious night in the sack, I can just imagine the consternation of novices taking these categories too literally. “But honey, we’ve already had the main course! Baby, those sauces aren’t complimentary! Darling, we don’t have the proper china for that!” I also take issue with the fact that for men and women alike, the book advises that if one is to become an expert in bed, one must spurn alcohol and develop a taste for mineral water. I believe I could dig up a rather extensive set of evidence to the contrary.
What’s even more worrying is the book’s rampant white hetero-normativity. There is no talk of LGBTQ sex, nor do any of the illustrations portray anyone other than beautiful white people. The book depicts no diversity—racial, sexual, physical or otherwise.
Maybe I’m not in the right demographic for this book. While I certainly think sex should be spoken of—and engaged in—often and liberally, Joy of Sex depicts an entirely unrepresentative slice of the sex-cake in which people indulge on quite a regular basis. That being said, if Comfort’s treatise gives otherwise-inhibited individuals the impetus to expand their carnal horizons, then it is undoubtedly a smash hit. But for those who enjoy subversive soufflés and fantasy foie gras—the foods that defy Comfort’s taxonomy—this manual is better left shelved.
—Heather Christie
Descartes’ Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason
By Russell Shorto
Doubleday 299 pp.
Did you know that René Descartes—a French philosopher who worked in the Netherlands for most of his adult life—died in Sweden unexpectedly from pneumonia at the age of 53? Did you know he was buried in Sweden but his body was later unearthed and shipped back to 16 years after his death by a Catholic official of the French Court, who kept one of Descartes’ finger bones as a souvenir? Did you know his body was exhumed again during the French Revolution and reburied at the Museum of French Monuments—one of the most popular tourist attractions in Paris at the time—but when the museum eventually closed Descartes’ body was unburied for a third time and transported to the cemetery at St.-Germain-des-Prés? Did you know that when this happened it was discovered that his skull was missing? If you had read Russel Shorto’s latest non-fiction book—Descartes’ Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason—you might have. You might also know what happened to Descartes’ head.
Shorto, who regularly contributes to The New York Times Magazine and is also the best-selling author of The Island of the Center of the World, picked a very interesting topic for his fourth non-fiction book. Unfortunately, Descartes’ Bones only has enough information about Descartes’ actual bones to fill a newspaper article. So Shorto adds a lot of information to his book about the history of Enlightenment politics, thought and science. Information that is supposed to be both topical and metaphorical but which ultimately just confuses the narrative and makes the book difficult to follow. As a result, Descartes’ Bones may lead to excellent dinner-table conversations, but it doesn’t make for a very interesting read.
—Siscoe Boschman
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