Finished
Thy Neighbors Wife, a sex history of the United States through the 1970's. I can remember in 1980 being on my lunch break at work and spending time in a nearby bookstore thumbing through this book looking for the dirty stuff. Now that I've read it 20 years later, turns out it's not that kind of book and there really isn't that kind of dirty stuff in it. The author, Gay
Talese claimed to do 9 years worth of research on the topic and he even wrote himself into the book at the end as a kind of third person character.
This is a very ambitious book.
Talese focused on several areas, a history of smut and porn magazines in America and their battle with legal censorship, the life of Hugh Hefner the founder of
Playboy magazine and an examination of open relationships and wife swapping that seemed to be all the rage in the 1970's. When it comes to sex you name it, and
Talese appeared to look into it.
In the first part of the book dirty magazines and nudist books set up a battleground over censorship in America. The fact that it's sleazy little men battling with the United States Post office over the right to sell this stuff makes it a fascinating piece of Americana in a slimy kind of way.
The Hugh Hefner saga is a pathetically interesting page turner. Hefner seems to be a smart guy who was able to take his adolescent sex fantasies and wring an entire lifestyle and lifetime of silly hedonistic behavior into a career. Was the "Playboy" world of the pipe smoking
tuxedoed bachelor ever cool? It was like watching an adolescent boy sneak his first R rated movie past his parents and then being pleased with himself afterwards. Even Hefner, the 60's swinger manages to get himself entangled with two playboy playmates, Barbie Benton and Karen
Christy. The women become involved with him but ultimately they both end up leaving him since he isn't really able to satisfy them emotionally. His childish behavior over the breakup of these relationships is pretty revealing.
Finally
Talese spends a lot of time on Sandstone Retreat, a partner swapping commune located in Malibu California. Here the reader gets a look into for lack of a better term a "sex resort" for the pretty people. The goals of the founders, to practice an open lifestyle seem honest and sincere, but by the end of this little adventure, Sandstone seems more like a glorified brothel.
In someways it all came to a screaming end with the AIDS epidemic.
For me, the big problem with this book is the author's conclusion "Americans have always wanted it both ways when it comes to sex and morality." It kind of seems to me that after 550 pages on the complexities of sex in a culture like the United States, there should be a little more of an insight than this rather obvious point. A Wednesday afternoon watching Dr. Phil will tell you pretty much the same thing.
Still, the book is very interesting, yeah it's a period piece now but a pretty interesting period piece extremely well written.
Finished Thy Neighbors Wife, a sex history of the United States through the 1970's. I can remember in 1980 being on my lunch break at work and spending time in a nearby bookstore thumbing through this book looking for the dirty stuff. Now that I've read it 20 years later, turns out it's not that kind of book and there really isn't that kind of dirty stuff in it. The author, Gay Talese claimed to do 9 years worth of research on the topic and he even wrote himself into the book at the end as a kind of third person character.
This is a very ambitious book. Talese focused on several areas, a history of smut and porn magazines in America and their battle with legal censorship, the life of Hugh Hefner the founder of Playboy magazine and an examination of open relationships and wife swapping that seemed to be all the rage in the 1970's. When it comes to sex you name it, and Talese appeared to look into it.
In the first part of the book dirty magazines and nudist books set up a battleground over censorship in America. The fact that it's sleazy little men battling with the United States Post office over the right to sell this stuff makes it a fascinating piece of Americana in a slimy kind of way.
The Hugh Hefner saga is a pathetically interesting page turner. Hefner seems to be a smart guy who was able to take his adolescent sex fantasies and wring an entire lifestyle and lifetime of silly hedonistic behavior into a career. Was the "Playboy" world of the pipe smoking tuxedoed bachelor ever cool? It was like watching an adolescent boy sneak his first R rated movie past his parents and then being pleased with himself afterwards. Even Hefner, the 60's swinger manages to get himself entangled with two playboy playmates, Barbie Benton and Karen Christy. The women become involved with him but ultimately they both end up leaving him since he isn't really able to satisfy them emotionally. His childish behavior over the breakup of these relationships is pretty revealing.
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