So I just saw Pepper Schwartz, a professor of sociology who for more than three decades has done research into sex and relationships on both an academic and a professional basis (she’s an advisor to a pretty successful online dating service.) She was reading from her new book, Prime: Adventures and Advice on Sex, Love, and the Sensual Years.
And here’s the deal about that.
1) I could say that I think it’s an incredibly important book because it’s a personal, passionate, teach-by-example pitch for sex after age 26 (the normal cutoff for almost all discussion of sexuality, outside of bloggers, in the English-as-a-first-language world.)
1a) Or after age 35, or 44, or 53. (Schwartz is 62.) Everything she recounts in her book took place after her marriage of 23 years dissolved amicably in her 50’s.
1b) And both professionally and personally she’s concerned and committed to getting over the nearly timeless notion that past some certain age women especially but also men lose neither desire nor desirability.
1c) All without at all excluding anyone younger.
2) I could say it’s a wonderfully eyes-wide-open look at romance, online dating, triumphs and failures, and by-and-large thoroughly enjoyable sex without worrying about crossing “the number” that haunts so many especially younger women (“too many”) or younger men (“not enough.”)
3) I could say it’s a wonderful, personal memoir from an accomplished academic who’s previous 15 or so books, while often personable have been about her subjects than herself.
4) I could applaud the way she ends chapters with not only what she learned from her experiences but what we might learn as well.
5) I could even say there are passages so inspiringly erotic it’s hard to imagine finishing some chapters wearing as fully dressed as you begin them in.
But mostly I say it’s a wonderful book because she put her ass on the line and wrote it in her own, widely, widely recognized name instead of a pseudonym. And did so knowing full well that in September, after her book tour is finished, she’ll once again lecturing groups of 700 undergraduates on principles of sociology. And taking questions.
Yes, yes, she’s got a solid reputation. Yes, yes, she’s single and her children are grown. And yes, yes, it might reveal “intimate” details about her life but the book is solidly in her field. As an anonymous blogger who increasingly chaffs at the confinement she’s incredibly inspiring.
Anyway, I think Schwartz’s Prime earns a spot in the Real Adult Sex library.
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One last thing: yes, yes her messages may be most suitable to older heterosexuals but in this context, to paraphrase the old religious punchline, heterosexuals have a broken leg.
