THE DANGEROUS JOY OF DR. SEX AND OTHER TRUE STORIES By Pagan Kennedy Santa Fe, SFWP: 2008 818.54 KENJust in time for a newly revised edition of the 1970s bestseller The Joy Of Sex, we have Pagan Kennedy's new book and Ariel Levy's review of it in The New Yorker (January5, 2009).
In The Dangerous Joy Of Dr. Sex And Other True Stories, Dr. Alex Comfort, author of the original Joy Of Sex, leads novelist Pagan Kennedy's cast of real characters.
Alex Comfort (his real name), published The Joy of Sex in 1972, a book that shaped the attitudes of a generation, along with another 1970s classic Our Bodies, Ourselves (produced by the Boston Women's Health Collective). For the implications of the contrast between these two approaches to sexuality, Levy's article is the one to read.
In The Dangerous Joy Of Dr. Sex And Other True Stories, Dr. Alex Comfort, author of the original Joy Of Sex, leads novelist Pagan Kennedy's cast of real characters.
Alex Comfort (his real name), published The Joy of Sex in 1972, a book that shaped the attitudes of a generation, along with another 1970s classic Our Bodies, Ourselves (produced by the Boston Women's Health Collective). For the implications of the contrast between these two approaches to sexuality, Levy's article is the one to read.
Alex Comfort began his career as anything but a Casanova. His choice of a career in medicine was not obvious: he had blown four fingers off his left hand during an adolescent experiment involving sugar, sulfur, and saltpeter. At Cambridge University, Comfort maintained his virginity almost to the end, when he met two girlfriends, Ruth and Jane. Jane was an explosive character herself, but the quiet Ruth confessed her feelings for the skinny young man first and the two married in 1943.
Eventually Alex and Jane commenced an affair, stimulated, so to speak, by Ruth’s quiet personality. After exploring sexuality with the thoroughness of a scientist, Comfort produced the book that he originally called Doing Sex Properly. When it was finally published after several years of research (!), the title had morphed into a word play on the Rombauer family’s classic Joy Of Cooking.
Fame imploded Comfort’s double life, ironically for a man who advocated defying the conventions. Divorced from Ruth and married to Jane, Comfort moved to California, lured by its reputation for sunny hedonism. But Comfort, the scientist, wanted to be taken seriously and for this reason he eventually returned to Britain. Looking for a worthy project and aware of his own advancing age, Comfort took on the problem of ageing and “ageism.” The heady years in California may have contributed to his tendency to wishful thinking. Surely, Comfort argued that, if prejudice and discrimination were ended, people would live much longer. But, felled by a series of strokes, Alex Comfort was wheelchair-bound by the time Pagan Kennedy interviewed him.
Eventually Alex and Jane commenced an affair, stimulated, so to speak, by Ruth’s quiet personality. After exploring sexuality with the thoroughness of a scientist, Comfort produced the book that he originally called Doing Sex Properly. When it was finally published after several years of research (!), the title had morphed into a word play on the Rombauer family’s classic Joy Of Cooking.
Fame imploded Comfort’s double life, ironically for a man who advocated defying the conventions. Divorced from Ruth and married to Jane, Comfort moved to California, lured by its reputation for sunny hedonism. But Comfort, the scientist, wanted to be taken seriously and for this reason he eventually returned to Britain. Looking for a worthy project and aware of his own advancing age, Comfort took on the problem of ageing and “ageism.” The heady years in California may have contributed to his tendency to wishful thinking. Surely, Comfort argued that, if prejudice and discrimination were ended, people would live much longer. But, felled by a series of strokes, Alex Comfort was wheelchair-bound by the time Pagan Kennedy interviewed him.
Comfort's book has dated badly. His off-handed sexism and his lack of empathy for homosexuality are only two of the most glaring lacunae. There is something juvenile about his concoction of French names for various sexual practices and, like most converts to a beleaguered cause, he became a zealot.
A scientist of a different kind is Amy Smith, an instructor at MIT, who has designed medical equipment and labor saving devices to help people in poor countries better their communities. Devices to test and filter water and a phase-change incubator that will allow doctors without reliable electricity to culture bacteria can decrease mortality and provide a better standard of living. Smith once taught a seminar on the uses of duct tape: how to make a hammock, a kaleidoscope and a full suit of armor, while at the same time reminding Kennedy that the lowly tape is beyond the means of third world peoples.
There is another Alex here, too. A parrot who was been taught for 27 years by Dr. Irene Pepperberg, using the model/rival technique she designed at Brandeis University. Alex has learned spelling, addition and subtraction, among other subjects. By teaching Alex to become the best educated parrot on the planet, as Kennedy calls him, Pepperburg has pushed the boundaries of our understanding of intelligence and also of our commonality with other species.
A scientist of a different kind is Amy Smith, an instructor at MIT, who has designed medical equipment and labor saving devices to help people in poor countries better their communities. Devices to test and filter water and a phase-change incubator that will allow doctors without reliable electricity to culture bacteria can decrease mortality and provide a better standard of living. Smith once taught a seminar on the uses of duct tape: how to make a hammock, a kaleidoscope and a full suit of armor, while at the same time reminding Kennedy that the lowly tape is beyond the means of third world peoples.
There is another Alex here, too. A parrot who was been taught for 27 years by Dr. Irene Pepperberg, using the model/rival technique she designed at Brandeis University. Alex has learned spelling, addition and subtraction, among other subjects. By teaching Alex to become the best educated parrot on the planet, as Kennedy calls him, Pepperburg has pushed the boundaries of our understanding of intelligence and also of our commonality with other species.
Kennedy the novelist explores these scientific characters with relish, following their trains of thought to find out what makes a puzzle an attractive project.
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