Today was cold, mainly as a result of last night’s snow which left a wet slush on the sidewalks of the townhouse complex. I trudged through the slush to dispose of garbage in the common shed from which it is collected at irregular intervals. Lying in the shed was a yellowed copy of an old paperback with the provocative title Is Sex Necessary?
Truth is the authors’ names first caught my attention: James Thurber & E.B. White. They wrote the book in 1929 because, as EBW says in the 1950 reprint:
Thurber and I were neither more, nor less, interested in the subject of love and marriage than anybody else of our age in that era. I recall that we were both profoundly interested in earning a living, and I think we somehow managed, simultaneously, to arrive at the conclusion that the heavy writers had got sex down and were breaking its arm. We were determined that sex should retain its high spirits. So we decided to spoof the medical books and, incidentally, to have a quick look at love and passion.
Because it was cold outside, I sat beside the heater and read the book. It is topical. Consider this paragraph:
There is an erroneous impression current nowadays the sex is everything. It is similar to the psychological delusion common during the war years [i.e., the years of the First World War of 1919-1918] that the war would never end. Man is inclined to exaggerate the immensity of his chief preoccupations. Thus when the Word War was in progress, men convinced themselves that there would never be anything else but war. Then the war ended, and Man was left, as it were, stranded. Used to tremendous preoccupation, he had to have another. He turned to sex, out of sheer momentum, and overestimated its importance as he had magnified the immensity of war.
I cannot but ask: we now have a tremendous preoccupation with both war and sex—have we advanced or just broadened our scope?
We still struggle with terms. Consider:
One reason a man has trouble telling love from passion is because neither term has been clearly defined. Even after one has experienced love, one finds difficulty defining it. Likewise, one may define it and then have all kinds of trouble experiencing it, because, once having defined it, one is in too pompous a frame of mind ever again to submit to its sweet illusion.
Who today would have the temerity to call sex a sweet illusion?
The day passed pleasantly enough in the company of these two geniuses from an age past. I do not know if you can still get the book. But if you can, get it, so that you are equipped for a cold, slushy day, and do not want to think about mining in preference to sex.
