BOOK AND PODCAST REVIEWS - NON-FICTION

Eros and Thanatos (1999)   Klaus Bottger Forbidden Erotica (2000) Mark Lee Rotenberg Tom Poulton: The Secret Art of an English Gentleman (2006) Editor - Dian Hanson The ostensible purpose of Eros and Thanatos is to give us the work of Klaus Bottger, a German artist (1942-1992) whose ouevre of erotic prints has been picked up by the Erotic Prints Society in 1999 and padded out with an introduction and two pornographic short stories (by English writers) with a German theme - one set amongst the free love German student community of cliche and the other providing a mock psycho-analytic case study in which a brutal Freikorps soldier learns gemutlichkeit and leaves his bourgeois analyst in something of a disturbed erotic state. Bottger has talent but the work goes nowhere. While the stories have some some interest, they do not have great interest while the Germanic link between sex and death is laboured. It would have been far better to produce a slimmer book of prints with some

Sex in History (1980) Reay Tannahill Art Nouveau and the Erotic (2000) Ghislaine Wood Sex in History is over forty years old but still provides an informed, often wry, and certainly intelligent review of the history of sexuality. It is a first point of call for anyone new to the subject who is looking to understand how we became what we are both as a culture and as individuals (at least in the West).  Tannahill's judgement is excellent, given the facts at her disposal. I strongly approve of her refusal to take at face value any later imposition of theory on how minds worked in the past. We can know nothing of past thoughts.  The Freudianism that was still regarded as respectable when she was writing the book is now seen for what it is - another 'grand projet' from comfortably off dead white males and their camp-followers. It gets only a couple of mentions and then with not much respect. Good! She is also not sentimental. The Amerindians may have been treated appal

King Kong Theory (2006)  Virginie Despentes   This is a review of the English Edition, published by Serpent's Tail, rather than the French Edition. Let's get the negatives out of the way quickly because this is an important little book that might have got more praise if its faults had been more sincerely addressed by its Editors. It has three spectacularly interesting chapters on rape, prostitution and pornography that would have made excellent articles in some intelligent monthly. These sit oddly between an equally interesting introduction, in which Virginie Despentes places her book in some context, and an utterly daft rant at the end in which she lets vent to her furies. There are plenty of blank pages between chapters and the print is large so that this reads like a collection of articles or a pamphlet, scarcely a book at all. It is also so 'French' as to make it dangerously close to being dismissed in Anglo-Saxon circles. There are cultural differences

The World of Sex (1940)  Henry Miller   Men's Adventure Magazines in Post-War America: The Rich Oberg Collection (2004) Taschen Big Bosoms and Square Jaws: The Biography of Russ Meyer, King of the Sex Film (2005) Jimmy McDonough   Miscellany of Sex (2007) Francesca Twinn   Members Only: The Life and Times of Paul Raymond, Soho's Billionaire King of Burlesque (2010) Paul Willetts     Henry Miller wrote the original draft of his long essay The World of Sex in 1940 when he was about to turn 50, somewhat of a turning point for any redblooded male, but the text was substantially revised for a secondary publication in 1957 when he was nearing 70. This is a relevant set of facts. This is not a male view of sex so much as that of a highly sexualised male past his powers and frustrated at a world that had always failed to accept him publicly for what he was. He would not have been alone in that frustration - America 're-moralised' itself in the wake of the Great Depressi