A relatable, timely analysis of pornography’s history and its effect on the mindset of the gay community.
A New York writer and sex therapist’s treatise on pornography and gay men portrays the genre as a double-edged sword.
Long before the days of internet porn and smartphone hookup apps, Times Square grind houses were teeming with adult films that catered to the curious, the horny, and the ubiquitous men in old raincoats. To Shewey (Sam Shepard, 1997, etc.), the 1970s gay porn films helped the audience connect with their erotic selves and filled a void in representation, showing a fledgling gay audience “a world where everyone is enthusiastically, unapologetically gay.” As porn theaters gave way to home video, and the classified ads gave way to online dating, people’s mindsets changed along with the innovations in technology. Solitary and repetitive home viewing of porn began weakening relationships while the impossible male porn standards of everlasting strength and massive endowment were altering ideas of what was normal. As a sex therapist, Shewey is able to recount many complaints from people who grapple with feelings of inadequacy and performance problems, and he writes about how pornographic images have exacerbated his clients’ unrealistic expectations. Though he is clearly a lifelong fan of adult films and credits them with teaching him and others a great deal, he also blames porn for “liberating some inhibitions but installing others in their place, enslaving us to libidinal impulses at the expense of our health and mental well-being.” He concludes with results from a study he conducted that included 50 men who were interviewed about their habits and feelings about porn. The author’s effort to dive into the gay male psyche effectively touches on many significant topics, including the challenge of enjoying sex in times of great fear and calamity, such as during the height of the AIDS epidemic. Gay community history is skillfully told here, especially as it relates to the erotic side of things, and his warnings about subscribing to porn norms in everyday life sound important in an era of muscle clones and smartphone app players. Stories from his clients are told somewhat rapid-fire, but the intent is to remind people they aren’t alone in their struggles and that intimacy can be rediscovered. There are many intriguing excerpts from other writers, including heavyweights in and outside of the gay community.
A relatable, timely analysis of pornography’s history and its effect on the mindset of the gay community.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-73213-440-9
Page Count: 226
Publisher: Joybody Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Possibly inspired by the letters Cleary has received as a children's author, this begins with second-grader Leigh Botts' misspelled fan letter to Mr. Henshaw, whose fictitious book itself derives from the old take-off title Forty Ways W. Amuse a Dog. Soon Leigh is in sixth grade and bombarding his still-favorite author with a list of questions to be answered and returned by "next Friday," the day his author report is due. Leigh is disgruntled when Mr. Henshaw's answer comes late, and accompanied by a set of questions for Leigh to answer. He threatens not to, but as "Mom keeps nagging me about your dumb old questions" he finally gets the job done—and through his answers Mr. Henshaw and readers learn that Leigh considers himself "the mediumest boy in school," that his parents have split up, and that he dreams of his truck-driver dad driving him to school "hauling a forty-foot reefer, which would make his outfit add up to eighteen wheels altogether. . . . I guess I wouldn't seem so medium then." Soon Mr. Henshaw recommends keeping a diary (at least partly to get Leigh off his own back) and so the real letters to Mr. Henshaw taper off, with "pretend," unmailed letters (the diary) taking over. . . until Leigh can write "I don't have to pretend to write to Mr. Henshaw anymore. I have learned to say what I think on a piece of paper." Meanwhile Mr. Henshaw offers writing tips, and Leigh, struggling with a story for a school contest, concludes "I think you're right. Maybe I am not ready to write a story." Instead he writes a "true story" about a truck haul with his father in Leigh's real past, and this wins praise from "a real live author" Leigh meets through the school program. Mr. Henshaw has also advised that "a character in a story should solve a problem or change in some way," a standard juvenile-fiction dictum which Cleary herself applies modestly by having Leigh solve his disappearing lunch problem with a burglar-alarmed lunch box—and, more seriously, come to recognize and accept that his father can't be counted on. All of this, in Leigh's simple words, is capably and unobtrusively structured as well as valid and realistic. From the writing tips to the divorced-kid blues, however, it tends to substitute prevailing wisdom for the little jolts of recognition that made the Ramona books so rewarding.
Pub Date: Aug. 22, 1983
ISBN: 143511096X
Page Count: 133
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1983
A crash course in big-bucks tort litigation, as rich as any novel on the scene. In the mid-'70s, the small industrial town of Woburn, Mass., found itself afflicted with a plague of biblical dimensions: 12 local children, 8 of them close neighbors, had died (or were dying) of leukemia. The parents suspected the water supply, which was foul-smelling, rusty, and undrinkable, but they had no hard evidence of a link to the cancers. But in 1979, the accidental discovery of carcinogenic industrial wastes in the town's wells led the grieving parents to hire personal-injury lawyer Jan Schlichtmann, new to the profession but intoxicated with the sizable damages he'd won so far. This is magazine journalist Harr's first book, but his complex portrait of Schlichtmann is the work of a master. Egomaniacal, quixotic, workaholic, greedy, altruistic, and naive, Schlichtmann is Everylawyer, and as he allows the Woburn case to consume his practice, he almost loses his license and his life. Harr wisely downplays the dying-children angle, focusing instead on Schlichtmann's case against the two corporate Goliaths who dumped the waste: Beatrice Foods (represented by Jerome Facher of Boston's Hale & Dorr) and W.R. Grace (represented by William Cheeseman of Boston's Foley, Hoag & Eliot). Despite their white- shoe lineage, Facher and Cheeseman play dirty, withholding evidence and repeatedly seeking Schlichtmann's suspension for having filed a ``frivolous'' lawsuit. But the real villain of the story is Federal District Judge Walter J. Skinner, whose personal dislike of Schlichtmann (and camaraderie with Facher) leads him to grant the defense's motion to split the trial into two protracted phases. By the time Judge Skinner submits four incomprehensible questions to be bewildered jury, Woburn's young victims have been forgottenand the whole legal system has suffered a tragic loss. A paranoid legal thriller as readable as Grisham, but important and illuminating. (Film rights to Disney)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-394-56349-2
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1995
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