an explanatory factor. But there is morento discourage Gay’s reader-, he is told,nand told again throughout the volume,nthat the author’s great, unique mentor isnSigmund Freud. Now, whatever we maynthink of the Viennese guru, his transcendentnprestige has with the years eroded.nNot only was he posthumously psychoanalyzednand found inaccurate, fraudulentnin the description of his mostncelebrated case-histories (hating hisnfather, etc.) his regularly evoked namenhas become a bad-smelling label, notnunlike that of brother Marx. If everynsocial phenomenon is explained bynMarxism, and every other by Freudismn(until Marcuse achieved a “synthesis”),nthen, of course, nothing is explained. ButnGay is tenacious: “the theories of Freudnhave been indispensable to me;” “Mynprincipal intellectual obligation isnobviously to Sigmund Freud.” Thenannouncement reeks of upside-downnVictorianism.nEarly in the body of the book. Gaynquotes Freud’s letter to Fliess in whichnhe says he had seen his mother nakednduring a train trip when he was two-anda-half-years-oldn. This is the centralntheme; Gay discovers similar threads innthe sex lives of all bourgeois men, fromnWilliam Gladstone to David Todd. Thenbook itself is an exasperating string ofn”true confessions.” The author quotesnletters, diaries, conversations, medicalndocuments, travelogues, poems,nmuseum catalogues—the whole apparatusnof a scholar—only monotonouslynto insist on bourgeois guiltnfeeling, the heartrending ignorance ofnyoung ladies trapped by their husbands’nsimilar ignorance and consequent impotencenor brutality. This is the world seennfrom the level of a chamber pot. It isnthen not surprising that this ctilturehistoricalnstudy is studded with declarationsnlike; “Mabel Todd’s erotic experiencenthrows light on nineteenth-centurynbourgeois culture.” Such a sentencenwould be laughable if found in a student’snterm paper, but it is sad whennsimilar ones feed 500 professorial pages.nGay makes the reader privy to so manynexamples of sexual relationships that thenreader becomes a voyeur.ntlowever, such details result in highnsales figures, which proves the author’snbusiness acumen. Today we are immersednin a pornographic flood. Therenis no film without the obligatory bednscene, no play without obscene words,nno school without sex education, nonfeminist movement without the inalienablenright to copulate, no modernnlifestyle without wife-swapping. Fromnadvertisements to TV panels, sex crowdsnthe culture-market. Thus, a “scholarly”nexamination of the “cultural history” ofnsex has a ready market. The public isnpanting to read such a book, a treasurentrove of quotations at cocktail parties. Atna certain level, if not of culture, then ofnacademic degree, one may wish to mixnone’s conversation with more than fourletternwords, called for the purposen”erotica.” Peter Gay supplies them innbulk. In other matters, too, he takes thenfashionable side, as when he informsnmales that opposition to women’s rightsncomes from men’s fear of castration bynfemales. Which Congressman wouldnnow dare vote down ERA? He alsonShakespeare SighednArt in England is moribund; it has Mennin a pattern directly correlating to the risenof the many musical noisemakers that itnhas spawned during the past 20 years;nthere will never (again) be an England.nSuch observations are rife today, yetnpeople like playwright Tom Stoppard andnauthor A. N. Wilson lead us to believe thatnall of the bays are not rotting on thenhillsides of England. Stoppard’s The RealnThing on Broadway proves that one neednnot “sell out” to be successfijl; Wilson’snWise Virgin (Viking Press; New York)nindicates that Evelyn Waugh is notnentirely forgotten. Unlike the Stoppardnplay, Wise Virgin, a pre-postmodernnnovel of morals and manners, will un-nnnsupplies arguments to advocates of sexneducation for children—didn’t babynSigmund enjoy seeing his naked mother?nFor good measure, he describes thendevastating effects of ignorance on thenwedding night. He allows us to draw ournown conclusion about tabooed homosexuality,nwhich was also Freud’s conclusion:neverything that ends in ejaculationnis healthy.nMy chief objection to the book (doesnit stem from my castration complex?) isnthat it is boring. A serious writer shouldnchoose his subject in such a way that itnbecomes at once obvious to the readernthat he means to give a view of theneternally human. Now, you might ask,nare love and its erotic aspects notneminently human? Let me then furthernqualify that humanness ought to be seennabove the level of bed and bidet, abovenMabel Todd’s weekly bath in preparationnfor lovemaking, above the orgasmicngrunts of Edmond Goncourt’s mistress.nThe mere fact that things happen and arenuniversal, does not turn them into itemsnof cultural history. A world history ofndefecation, to pick an appropriatenexample, may not be an adequate topicnthrough which to learn about man. Nornotablesn<0^^^nm. ^:^h^ut7L:j=.-n^^’^^SS ‘^Jl^Sh X^^n^jln^ ^ndoubtedly not become a “liit.” The reasonnis more basic than that which claims thatnthere is no market for serious novels, evennif they are as slim as Wilson’s is. People cannidentify with The Real Thing for to them,nthe ticket-buying masses, it signifies Coke.nWise Virgin, on the other hand, is eithernnonsense or an oxymoron as far as thenreigning code of discourse is concerned.nJune 1984n