GOOD SEX ILLUSTRATED

Why is pleasure "doubled" when it's "shared"?... Do you really have tocut pleasure in two so that it'll exist? I mean, if it's doubled when there are twoof you, then it must be tripled when there are three, quadrupled when there arefour, centupled when there are a hundred, right? Is it O.K. for a hundred to share?And if I get used to trying it all alone, why is it that I'll never love anyoneagain? Is it that good alone and that awful with others?;from Good SexIllustratedFirst published in France in 1973, Good Sex Illustrated gleefullydeciphers the subtext of a popular sex education manual for children produced duringthat period. In so doing, Duvert mounts a scabrous and scathing critique of howdeftly the "sex-positive" ethos was harnessed to promote the ideal of the nuclearfamily. Like Michel Houllebecq, Duvert is highly attuned to all the hypocrisies oflate twentieth century western "sexual liberation" mass movements. As BruceBenderson notes in his introduction, Good Sex Illustrated shows that, "in our sexualorder, orgasm follows the patterns of any other kind of capital... 'good sex' is avoracious profit machine." But unlike Houllebecq, Duvert writes from a passionatebelief in the integrity of unpoliced sex and of pleasure. Even more controversiallynow than when the book was first published, Duvert asserts the child's right to hisor her own playful, unproductive sexuality. Bruce Benderson's translation willbelatedly introduce English-speaking audiences to the most infamous gay Frenchwriter since Jean G?net.