THE INTIMATE SEX LIVES OF FAMOUS PEOPLE

It was inevitable, probably, that the Wallace list factory would eventually process sex, just as it was almost inevitable that the finished product would be a voluminous mass of trivia and not-always-relevant detail--more than 600 pages of libidinous gossip, the ultimate qualities of which rest squarely on an individual's appetite for sexual histories of the deceased. The late Hollywood types--Flynn, Gable, Joan Crawford, etc.--are the bait, and lead off the book. Only a seriously obsessed reader, after all, would pick it up for, say, Hans Christian Andersen or any of the many other writers, painters, poets, statesmen, and already notorious deviates who populate it. US Presidents--Kennedy, Ike--are not immune. To achieve this mass of alleged erotic data, the authors have thrown in numerous famous and sensational names for whom they have not enough explicit material to constitute a ""sex life""; in these cases, the vague allusions are categoried ""love life""--a definite copout. No idioms or specific biological terms are spared whenever the opportunity arises to characterize a subject's lusts or perversities (the latter usually no revelation), or when quoting alleged communicants or confessors. So, though it's gotten up to look like a biographical reference, what we have here is a soggily salacious package.