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adamls's review
3.0
Thurber and E.B. White try their hand at satirizing the "sex and marriage" guides popular during their time. Both are brilliant writers; the amount of work they put into their writing, even on something so light, shines in every perfectly constructed sentence and witty turn of phrase. Thurber's drawings show less exacting work, but equal genius.
The great writing can't cover for the standard "men are from Mars, women are from Venus" humor, and I was disappointed the book didn't stick to the structure of its source material. Instead, it's a series of disconnected essays that begin in a faux-scientific tone on one topic of sexuality or another and meander into absurd anecdotes, almost forgetting their original premise entirely each time.
I got extra mileage out of this because of my interest in seeing what popular, erudite sex humor looked like circa the late 1920s. I picked this up from my grandparents' house along with one of the books it satirizes, which gave it some nice context.
The great writing can't cover for the standard "men are from Mars, women are from Venus" humor, and I was disappointed the book didn't stick to the structure of its source material. Instead, it's a series of disconnected essays that begin in a faux-scientific tone on one topic of sexuality or another and meander into absurd anecdotes, almost forgetting their original premise entirely each time.
I got extra mileage out of this because of my interest in seeing what popular, erudite sex humor looked like circa the late 1920s. I picked this up from my grandparents' house along with one of the books it satirizes, which gave it some nice context.
austindoherty's review
4.0
Very funny, creeeeaking gender politics. Now that we are within spitting distance of 100 years since its original publication the subtext is blooming like a midnight flower under the full moon (the writers revealing as much of themselves as of their subject), and maybe we can even get some additional guidance before we read! As it stands, there are only 2 existing prefaces, 1 introduction, and 1 foreword. I need to better know what to expect.
christinel's review
2.0
This book is by two authors I have enjoyed, and written in one of my favourite eras. However, it clunked for me, mostly because it's a satire of something so culturally long gone, it didn't read as funny anymore. It's largely a send-up of the stranglehold that Freud's ideas had on highbrow popular culture in the 1920s, but the jokes didn't read as jokes so long after, and it's hard to tell from here in the future how much of the gender bias is a send-up, and how much is genuinely held by the author.
estrangerdanger's review against another edition
5.0
Anyone wishing to be erudite or witty should read this before even trying. We are standing on the shoulders of giants, and they are Thurber and White.
bibliocyclist's review against another edition
3.0
"There wasn't one woman in ten thousand, riding frontwards on the rear seat of a tandem wheel, who would permit her consort to ride backwards on the front seat. The result of all this was not adjustment, but irritability. Man became frustrated."
"Understanding the principles of passion is like knowing how to drive a car; once mastered, all is smoothed out; no more does one experience the feeling of perilous adventure, the misgivings, the diverting little hesitancies, the wrong turns, the false starts, the glorious insecurity. All is smoothed out, and all, so to speak, is lost."
"Strange to say the habits of birds and flowers have done as little to clarify the human scene as almost any other two manifestations in nature."
"Understanding the principles of passion is like knowing how to drive a car; once mastered, all is smoothed out; no more does one experience the feeling of perilous adventure, the misgivings, the diverting little hesitancies, the wrong turns, the false starts, the glorious insecurity. All is smoothed out, and all, so to speak, is lost."
"Strange to say the habits of birds and flowers have done as little to clarify the human scene as almost any other two manifestations in nature."