Product Description
The first book of prose published by either James Thurber or E. B. White, Is Sex Necessary? combines the humor and genius of both authors to examine those great mysteries of life — romance, love, and marriage. A masterp… More >>
Product Description
The first book of prose published by either James Thurber or E. B. White, Is Sex Necessary? combines the humor and genius of both authors to examine those great mysteries of life — romance, love, and marriage. A masterp… More >>
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
There’s no need to actually read this book if you’re a male.
Simply carry it around, and you will find yourself approached by a wide variety of women who are amused and perhaps a bit threatened by the title.
Many of them will be interested in showing you the positive response to the question posed by the book’s title.
It’s quite astonishing, really. You have to try it to believe the results. Good luck.
Rating: 5 / 5
The book is a cute idea and a great parody of ‘professional’ sex ed books that came out around the mid to late 1920′s.
Rating: 3 / 5
Mr. Thurber and Mr. White wrote a very amusing and rich satire on this basic of human conditions. In John Updike’s foreword, he is correct in stating that this little gem of a book is quite phallocratic in its assumptions and has misogynistic tendencies. It was created all in good fun by two men in their early thirties and should be viewed as a product of its times (1929). This is very tame stuff in relation to present-day material, but still worth your time if you enjoy witty, nonsensical compositions. There’s a good reason this baby is still kicking around eight decades after its initial publication. The book is a quick, light read by two pros.
Rating: 4 / 5
A parody in classic vaudevillian style of the (then) newly emergent do-it-yourself psychology books. Thurber’s drawing on p. 52 (Queen’s House edition, 1978) with its accompanying text “This peculiar posture was discovered by Dr. Titbridge in a patient who for thirty years, boy and man, had been unable to tell love from passion and who allowed it to prey on his mind. Drawing from the Titbridge collection of American male postures.” is, by itself, worth the price.
Rating: 5 / 5
Thurber’s and White’s text satirizing the hullabaloo that our dearest lunatic, Mr. Sigmund Freud, began takes whatever cake is being handed out for satirical writing. It’s universally funny, lucid, and did I mention funny? It’s hilarious. One should pull out one’s thesaurus at this point to find other such words, and all will be a propos. The book should have been a trilogy.
Rating: 5 / 5