Good Sex Illustrated

First published in France in 1973, _Good Sex Illustrated_gleefully deciphers the subtext of a popular sex education manual for children produced during that period. In so doing, Duvert mounts a scabrous and scathing critique of how deftly the “sex-positive” ethos was harnessed to promote the ideal of the nuclear family. Like Michel Houllebecq, Duvert is highly attuned to all the hypocrisies of late twentieth century western “sexual liberation” mass movements.

As Bruce Benderson notes in his introduction, Good Sex Illustrated shows that, “in our sexual order, orgasm follows the patterns of any other kind of capital … ‘good sex’ is a voracious profit machine.” But unlike Houllebecq, Duvert writes from a passionate belief in the integrity of unpoliced sex and of pleasure.

Even more controversially now than when the book was first published, Duvert asserts the child’s right to his or her own playful, unproductive sexuality. Bruce Benderson’s translation will belatedly introduce English-speaking audiences to the most infamous gay French writer since Jean Gênet.