Tag Archives: sexuality

Book review: Neurotica: Jewish Writers on Sex

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Neurotica: Jewish Writers on Sex edited by Melvin Jules Bukiet. Recommended.

“Witness the people of the book, in bed.” Thus editor Melvin Jules Bukiet invites the reader into the intimacies of Neurotica: Jewish Writers on Sex. In this collection, everyone from Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, and Isaac Bashevis Singer to Woody Allen and Erica Jong gets into the act of exploring sex in its many varieties — heterosexual, homosexual, incestuous, paid, humorous, poignant, intellectual, sadistic, masochistic, costumed — always from a distinctive, wry Jewish perspective. Note, though, that you don’t have to be interested in erotica to appreciateNeurotica — just in good stories.

The anthology begins with a memorable story by Woody Allen, “The Whores of Mensa,” an over-the-top private eye tale that cleverly and humorously reveals what many of us know but some have yet to discover — that sex is less a function of the nether regions and more one of the mind. This theme is continued and expanded in “The Courtship” from The Mind-Body Problem” by Rebecca Goldstein, in which the narrator says, “And I remember too the intensity of my pleasure, which wasn’t at all physical . . . my head sang the triumphant thought: I am making love to this man . . . to Noam Himmel, the genius.” Unfortunately, “The Courtship” is marred somewhat by this ending and the tone throughout, which makes it resemble less of a literary work and more of the author’s personal fantasy, or what is known in fan fiction as a “Mary Sue” story.

Philip Roth adds imagination to the mix in an excerpt from The Counterlife in which a dentist suggest to his new assistant that they play dentist and assistant. She says, “Why is it so exciting when all we’re pretending to be is what we are?” When his physical deficiencies win over his imagination, he plummets to the world that is, not what could be, which he cannot long survive.

No matter the theme, any anthology focused on Jewish writers is bound to include references to Germans, World War II, and the Holocaust. In “Jews Have No Business Being Enamored of Germans,” Binnie Kirshenbaum’s narrator confronts the Jewish self-hatred that could make a Jewish man with a “short and convenient view of history” prefer and seek out Germans and “Aryan intellectualism.” Even the narrator’s parents have succumbed to postmodern sense of tolerance or denial. “‘Oh, none of that concerned us,’ my mother waved off the Holocaust and a world war.”

Michael Lowenthal takes a psychologically richer approach in “Infinity of Angles,” in which a Jewish homosexual connects with a German, only to find his would-be lover identifies too closely with the persecuted and demands an unusual punishment.

While there’s some humour in Neurotica, there is also mental illness. The two are combined in “Elvis, Axl, and Me” by Janice Eidus, who proves that Elvis isn’t dead; he lives in The Bronx disguised as a Hasidic Jew. Mental illness appears again in “The Quality of Being a Ruby” by Cheryl Pearl Sucher, a thoroughly modern tale of a bipolar girl experiencing anxiety neurosis who picks up lovers, drops lithium, experiments with cocaine, and resists the advice of her protective father. “For Ruby, the distillation of the illness was ‘Rubessence,’ the perfect calm of inspired originality, the longed-for union of the desired and the real.”

One of the best stories is “Taibele and Her Demon” by Isaac Bashevis Singer, who brings a fairy-tale simplicity to this complex tale of deception and love. As with any collection, there are several stories I didn’t like, such as “Romancing the Yohrzeit Light” by Thane Rosenbaum, who tries too self-consciously to combine the sacred, the profane, and the silly. My favourite story was by Nathan Englander, titled “Peep Show.” The troubled protagonist asks, “What is a boy raised in a world of absolutes to do when he is faced with contradictions?” The answer is, “You question. That’s what you do,” according to the nude rabbi his imagination has conjured. Despite the humorous and ludicrous situations in which the protagonist finds himself at the peep show, the tone of the story is strangely eerie in its reference to peep show nostalgia — a little like the tone of Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes.

Although a few stories are set in places such as France, Germany, Italy, and Israel, most take place in the United States and are by Jewish-American authors. All are from the 20th century, which is disappointing since surely erotica by Jewish writers has been around at least as long as erotica by writers from other traditions. I would like to have seen more representation from other countries and time periods.

The location and time period, however, give Neurotica a couple of themes meant to appeal to a broad audience, including assimilation and secularization. In many of these stories, the faith, traditions, and rituals of Judaism are a mystery to the characters, primarily the younger ones. Noam Himmel, the genius, is an atheist ignorant of his cultural past. At one point, his seducer says, “You have heard of the Talmud?” He says later, “Sometimes, especially on insomniac nights, I start worrying that there may be a God, and worse, that he may be Jewish.” In “Romancing the Yohrzeit Light,” Adam doesn’t “really care to go” to that part of the world, and he allows his Swedish lover to extinguish his mother’s yohrzeit light. Like Adam, many of the characters actively seek goyim as lovers. Some of the older people speak Yiddish, but the young people do not. Yet, while religious, cultural, and even social bonds may seem to be disintegrating with assimilation after World War II,Neurotica shows that there is still a literary voice that has not been silenced and that remains uniquely Jewish.

5 September 2005
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf

Book review: The Collected Stories of Colette

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The Collected Stories of Colette by Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, ed., and with an introduction by, Robert Phelps. Highly recommended.

According to the introduction, this collection represents 100 stories taken from a dozen volumes published during Colette’s lifetime. They are categorised as “Early Stories,” “Backstage at the Music Hall,” “Varieties of Human Nature,” and “Love.” Some, like the Clouk/Chéri stories, appear to be fiction, while many, like “The Rainy Moon” and “Bella-Vista,” seem to be taken straight from Colette’s varied life and acquaintances.

Whether writing fiction or chronicling fact, whether writing in the third-person omniscient or in the first person, Colette herself is always a character — rarely as an influencer, that is, one whose actions or choices drive the plot. Colette’s preferred role is as observer — and it is one for which she is well suited.

An inveterate sensualist and a former music-hall performer, Colette integrates her characters (real and fictional) with everything around them — their clothes (costumes); their abodes, dressing rooms, and haunts (sets); and their neighborhoods and towns (theatres). Much of Colette’s writing, no matter how mundane the surface subject, is about art — the art of living and, notably, the art of loving. In “My Goddaughter,” the subject tells her godmother how she injured herself with scissors and a curling iron and recounts her mother’s reaction. “She said that I had ruined her daughter for her! She said, ‘What have you done with my beautiful hair which I tended so patiently? . . . And that cheek, who gave you permission to spoil it! . . . I’ve taken years, I’ve spent my days and nights, trembling over this masterpiece. . . .'”

Colette is attuned to everything, every sense, every nuance. “A faint fragrance did indeed bring to my nostrils the memory of various scents which are at their strongest in autumn.” (“Gibriche”) “. . . set in a bracelet, which slithered between her fingers like a cold and supple snake.” (“The Bracelet”) ” . . . the supper of rare fruits, an orgy of ice water sparkling in the thin glasses, as intoxicating as champagne . . .” (“Florie”) “Peroxided hair, light-colored eyes, white teeth, something about her of an appetizing but slightly vulgar young washerwoman.” (“Gitanette”)

Colette does not pretend to be an objective observer of human behaviour; she does not hesitate to express to the reader her weariness with certain individuals or situations, and her stories of her vain, pretentious, overbearing friend Valentine reveal her jaded and waning affection. She knows this woman so well that she sees her almost as Valentine sees herself — a drama queen acting out stories, roles, and games without depth of feeling for them. “What Must We Look Like?” becomes Valentine’s driving philosophy, to which Colette responds with “a mild, a kindly pity.” In “The Hard Worker,” Colette says, “I can see she does not hate him, but I cannot see she loves him either.” What Colette sees — and does not see — is to be respected.

Some stories, such as “The Sick Child,” are vivid and imaginative and reveal Colette’s amazing ability to think and dream like a gifted child. “The Advice,” with its mundane beginning and premise and twisted, horrifying ending would enhance any collection of gothic or mystery tales. Other stories, like “Gibriche,” several of the other music-hall stories, and “Bella-Vista,” tackle topics that even today remain controversial. “Bella-Vista,” in which Colette’s moods seem to wane with every familiarity achieved with her hostesses, offers an ending that is heavily foreshadowed throughout but is surprising and gruesome nonetheless.

Most of the stories, whether fiction or nonfiction, seem to come from life in one way or another. The quantity of stories and the quality of the collection reveal the incredible scope of experience of Colette, the dry, often weary yet obsessive observer, interpreter, and chronicler of human nature. As Judith Thurman says in her introduction to Colette’s work, The Pure and the Impure, “This great ode to emptiness was written by a woman who felt full.” As well she should.

27 May 2003
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf

Book review: The Pure and the Impure

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The Pure and the Impure by Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette with introduction by Judith Thurman. Recommended.

Colette believed The Pure and the Impure was her best work. I can’t judge, not having read anything of hers but a few short stories, but this collection of her observations about human attitudes toward relationships and sexuality is insightful and timeless. It is also difficult and obscure at times, perhaps because of the translation and because there is no real structure to such a collection.

Thanks to her milieu, her position in it, and her willingness to seek the story, Colette could draw upon the most interesting people of her time — the givers and the takers. From the older woman who publicly fakes an orgasm while self-pleasuring in an opium house to gladden the heart of her young, sickly lover to the roué who exclaims of women, “They allow us to be their master in the sex act, but never their equal. That is what I cannot forgive them” to the circle of prominent women who learn the ways of sex from servants, dress as men, and love horses (she calls the most notable of these women “La Chevalière”) to the “happy,” alcoholic, lesbian poet Renée Vivien to the gay men with whom she seems most comfortable, Colette covers a spectrum of sexuality and combinations — including those men and women who play their heterosexual and homosexual relations against one another.

“I’m devoted to that boy, with all my heart,” the older woman tells Colette, a stranger to her. “But what is the heart, madame? It’s worth less than people think. It’s quite accommodating. It accepts anything. You give it whatever you have, it’s not very particular. But the body . . . Ha! That’s something else, again.” Thurman believes this sums up Colette’s view precisely, the heart as a slave to the body.

Although Colette apparently wanted to remain an impartial observer, she cannot mask her own feelings and biases. One senses that she could not quite see a woman-woman partnership as “whole,” as passionate, as capable of being the source of tragedy in the same way as other types of relationships. (Anaïs Nin will also hint at something similar in her diaries, at the “incompleteness” of female/female love.) “What woman would not blush to seek out her amie only for sensual pleasure? In no way is it passion that fosters the devotion of two women, but rather a feeling of kinship.”

She is fascinated by the story of Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Sarah Ponsonby, the “Ladies of Llangollen,” who elope and spend several decades living together. During this time, Butler will keep an extensive journal about her life with “My Beloved,” while, to Colette’s consternation and fascination, Ponsonby remains a silent partner. Colette so romanticizes the Ladies that she says they run off together as “young girls,” when in fact Butler was 39 and Ponsonby in her 20s. While there is all kind of detail about their living arrangements, from gardening, sewing, hosting an array of distinguished visitors, and sharing a bedroom and bed, there is nothing known of their emotional or sexual intimacies other than their obvious devotion to one another. They remain a happy, content enigma to Colette and to the present day.

The book concludes on a more personal note — about jealousy, “the only suffering that we endure without ever becoming used to it.” She maintains that “a man never belongs to us” and hints at the unique and not unfriendly relationship two female rivals may have — even rivals who wish to kill one another. When one rival tells Colette all the things that had prevented her from killing Colette in Rambouillet (missed train, stalled car, etc.), Colette says, “I was not in Rambouillet.” The relationship between her and her rival becomes more interesting, more revealing, more important, and more affectionate than with the man over whom they duel.

Colette suffered what many turn-of-the-century female intellectuals must have — a society’s fear of “masculine” women who are too intelligent, too outspoken, too knowing. When she offers to travel with the roué (apparently as a friend), he says in seriousness, “I only like to travel with women,” which, a moment later, is softened by, “You, a woman? Why, try as you will . . .” Even today, there are women who have experienced this.

“This is a sad book,” Colette said. “It doesn’t warm itself at the fire of love, because the flesh doesn’t cheer up its ardent servants.” Thurman adds, “This great ode to emptiness was written by a woman who felt full.”

The Pure and the Impure is a must read for anyone who enjoys Colette’s other writings; it is the most autobiographical of her works.

1 January 2002
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf

Book review: 365 Nights: A Memoir of Intimacy

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365 Nights: A Memoir of Intimacy by Charla Muller with Betsy Thorpe. New York: The Berkeley Publishing Group, 2008. 288 pages.

Charla Muller’s epigraph for 365 Nights: A Memoir of Intimacy is from dramatist Jean Anouilh: “To say yes, you have to sweat and roll up your sleeves and plunge both hands into life up to the elbows.” Out of its context, Anouilh’s quotation summarizes Charla Muller’s attitude toward marital sex: It’s a chore and a bore. That is why, on the occasion of her husband Brad’s 40th birthday, she, in the spirit of self-sacrifice, offers him what she calls “The Gift” — sex every day for the next year. After pages of overwrought mutual analysis about the implications, her husband accepts. In one short chapter, the reader is introduced to what seems to be the most passionless marriage on the planet.

The rest of 365 Nights (give or take a few — mustn’t have sex during menstruation, for example) rarely delves into sex or even intimacy, physical or emotional. Our most penetrating look into the couple’s sex life comes when Muller says, “Wow, that was really nice” (or “yummy”). Her husband replies, “Could you pretend you’re enjoying it?” Muller responds, “How ’bout you just close your eyes.”

Between these flashes of profound love, Muller tirelessly fills the reader in on her rather narrow view of relationships, marriage, parenting, being a working mother (she works two days a week), and how giving her husband what he wants (“The Gift”) has somehow made them stronger as a couple. It’s not the intimacy itself that seems to bring them closer together, but the sense of sacrifice and the willingness to work to overcome the obstacles — not only Muller’s dislike of sex (which she seems to believe she shares with every married mother), but logistics such as work, children, activities, and the need for private time.

Perhaps married women with children who see their husbands as “sperm donors” and “providers,” as Muller writes of some of her friends, will relate to her and her view of love, marriage, and life. Undoubtedly, many will find that she validates the sexual ennui that can set in during any long-term relationship. From my single, childless perspective, she offers no insights, not even as to the underlying reasons she makes every effort to avoid sex with the man she loves and why getting ready for sex means, “I just continue lying there” (prompting her husband to say, “Could you pretend you’re interested in this?”).

When the year of “The Gift” is over, her husband Brad seems happy because he will continue to get sex more frequently (although not every day), and Muller is happy because Brad is more content and her marriage is more solid — and, to me, as free of passion as ever. Muller writes about some of the benefits of sex — it provides exercise and offers improved communication for example (she likes to talk to Brad about the mundane during the act, we learn). She mentions greater emotional intimacy, but she doesn’t convey it or what it means. She touches on the surface of the issues, but is unable or is afraid to say anything meaningful beyond the obvious. While she lies back and gives “The Gift,” she cannot bring herself to mention that she finds any physical pleasure or emotional joy in the act itself (other than that it’s “nice”). She and her husband seem to be well suited to each other, but they could be brother and sister Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert from Anne of Green Gables for all the passion shown in their marriage — with or without sex.

Muller’s perky style is annoying, and her values, which she assumes we all share, are painfully shallow. She disdains ugly mini-vans (and her beloved children’s energy future) in favor of a “cool” SUV. A “polite feminist,” she believes that it’s a “rule” that women, and now men, must pluck their eyebrows (and any other hair that doesn’t meet her concept of perfect grooming and appearance). She is surprised to learn she is pregnant after just a couple of months, calling herself “very fertile” (what does this make her husband?) and making one wonder if she never learned the reasons that contraception became such a hot topic for 19th century women. She abhors the idea of aging naturally and fantasizes about “slight tweaking” through plastic surgery until her husband says, “What will she [daughter] think if she sees her mother conforming to these bizarre societal standards?” — standards to which Muller would have us all make every effort to conform.

Muller presents herself as someone you should want to chat with over coffee about the vicissitudes of married suburban life; indeed, that’s how this book came about. I couldn’t. It’s more than her overuse of words like “nice,” “gal,” and “girls” (this from a “polite feminist”) or the wearisome banality of her endless reflections. She’s one of those people — we all know at least one — who prattle nonstop without saying anything, leaving one feeling tired and empty — or energized, if that is your sort of thing.

365 Nights: A Memoir of Intimacy could have been a compelling story, but it would take a more interesting and thoughtful author than Charla Muller to grasp the topic and its nuances and to do it the justice it deserves.

29 August 2008
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf