How to Think More About Sex (The School of Life)

Homework

A large number of books, articles, films and conversations contributed towards the ideas in this book. The following were useful.

I. Introduction

Pessimism about human nature, sex included, is beautifully explored by Pascal in his Pensées, by Arthur Schopenhauer in his Maxims on the Wisdom of Life and by John Gray in his Straw Dogs. All three authors are alive to the thought that cheering someone up should never be confused with telling him or her something cheerful. As they recognize, it is far better to say extreme and grim things that will lead to the redrawing of expectations, and thereby occasion gratitude for small mercies.

II. The Pleasures of Sex

There is a surprising amount to be learnt about our fantasies from Nancy Friday’s My Secret Garden and Shere Hite’s The Hite Report. Friday’s chapters on incest, prostitution and rape are particularly compelling.

Fetishes are amply documented and taxonomized by Richard von Krafft-Ebing in Psychopathia Sexualis and by Havelock Ellis in his Studies in the Psychology of Sex. Both books are, unfortunately, very boring.

David Perrett’s In Your Face: The New Science of Human Attraction provides a good introduction to the evolutionary–biological perspective on beauty and sex. Kenneth Clark’s The Nude is impressive on themes of beauty and desire. For Ingres, Andrew Carrington Shelton’s monograph, Ingres and his Critics, is a useful source.

Wilhelm Worringer’s Abstraction and Empathy puts forward his thought-provoking theory on the psychology of artistic taste.

The significance of beauty and its connection to virtue and morality are exquisitely explored by John Armstrong in The Secret Power of Beauty.

The best film ever made about fetishism is Eric Rohmer’s Le genou de Claire.

There is more about Natalie Portman at www.natalieportman.com and more on Scarlett Johansson at www.scarlettjohansson.org.

The Italian fashion label Marni, at www.marni.com, makes some of the best flat shoes on the planet.

III. The Problems of Sex

The difficulties we face with sex in long-term relationships are among the topics considered in a collection of essays called Rethinking Marriage, edited by the psychoanalyst Christopher Clulow. Freud is also interesting at many points, especially in his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality.

William Masters and Virginia Johnson are fascinating in their Human Sexual Inadequacy, which feels, in the reading, almost like a novel about twentieth-century America masquerading as a guide on how to overcome premature ejaculation, impotence and vaginismus.

Couples seeking to reinvigorate their relationships should contemplate a stay at a branch of the Park Hyatt hotel chain: www.park.hyatt.com. Predictably and sadly, this will be ruinously expensive.

There is more on Manet and asparagus in Manet, inventeur du moderne by Stéphane Guégan and John Lee.

I have learnt about pornography from www.pornhub.com. There are some good insights to be had into censorship and the Catholic justification for it in Henry Kamen’s The Spanish Inquisition. Cécile Laborde discusses the hijab in Critical Republicanism: The Hijab Controversy and Political Philosophy.

What a pornography of the future might look like is hinted at in some of the superlative images in Jessica Todd Harper’s book, Interior Exposure.

Marriage and adultery are covered in Tony Tanner’s classic study, Adultery and the Novel. John Armstrong is again strong on this theme in Conditions of Love – as is Gustave Flaubert, of course, in Madame Bovary. For my part, I haven’t changed my mind about some of the things I wrote about in my first book, Essays in Love.

Overall, the whole theme of love and marriage is best captured by Ingmar Bergman in his film Scenes from a Marriage, which all prospective spouses should be forced to watch by government decree before they tie the knot.

IV. Conclusion

The sweaty charms of sexuality are best experienced in Manhattan in late July. Natalie Merchant’s album Ophelia is an outstanding choice for anyone who has just been left in love. Arthur Schopenhauer (see notes on the Introduction) isn’t bad either.