Title: The Sex Habits of American Women
Author: Fritz Wittels, M.D.
Cover artist: N.A.
Yours for: $7
[Cloudy parts are just peeling Perma-Gloss...]
Best things about this cover:- Ugh. Way to make sex habits look austere, old, and dusty, Eton Books. This looks like the basement office door in some long-forgotten Institute of Bygone Studies.
- Well, if any name screams "authority on female sexuality," it's Fritz Wittels ("ahem, Dr. Fritz Wittels") (which really should be the name of some anti-hero in an underground sex comic of the early 70s; in fact, I'm pretty sure R. Crumb drew a Fritz Wittels at some point in his career: "Vood yoo like to taste my Vittles?" he'd ask...)
- I was going to mock like crazy the title given to Albert C. Rosenthal ("Planning Director of Graphics Institute"), especially after opening the book to a random page and finding this less-than-inspiring graphic offering:
Terrible stuff, if only because that graphic is totally racist ... but then, I came across an undeniable graphic gem—the kind that gives you remarkable insight into the human condition with just one glance:
Such realism! I mean, first off, that's the onesie *I* wear to bed. Second, what better way to illustrate the three classic post-coital moods: zonked out, playing air piano with one hand while staring at the ceiling, or curled up like Demi Moore when she freaks out near the end of "St. Elmo's Fire." Dig deeper inside, and you find more graphic classics (or "grassics," as I now like to call them). There's the "happy orgasm slide vs. my fat slob of a boyfriend came and then fell out of bed" graphic:
... as well as the "I learned about sex from an older lesbian" graphic:
[Hell yeah, Chart XXX!]
And many more! Now the back cover:
Best things about this back cover:
- I can barely read it through the damned hazy permagloss. *$%& it!
Page 123~
Lesbians are not as obnoxious as a couple of men in love with each other.
In 1951, I believe this attitude was known as "progressive."
~RP
[Follow Rex Parker on Twitter and Tumblr]
6 comments:
Oh, his work is "penetrating" all right!
Statue of Liberty WTF?
Remember, the Statue of Liberty is French, after all. So she probably does know a thing or two about sex.
Are your 'vittles' on the fritz? *wink!*wink!* Then you need me, Fritz Wittels!
Actually he sounds more like a German wiener manufacturer who's set up a factory in Lousiana, rather than a psychoanalyst.
The illustrations all seem to've been drawn by an amateur who copied them from a book on Greek and Roman vases, especially the one which looks like Nero sated after some hardcore debauchery with his mother and pet donkey, and the one with the older woman telling the young girl, "Let me help you come to terms with your sexual anxieties," even as the young girl's wrestling her off, saying, "Hell, lady, I only asked the way to Clitheroe Street!"
I must comment on your Freudian like obsession with the book's Perma-gloss coating, Rex. It reminds me of someone who once revealed to me their first sexual experience involved a banana wrapped in cling-film, (for fear of catching banana rot of the minge!).
Why does the book look like it's been regularly scrolled out of shape, Rex? And how come the Perma-gloss's no longer Perma, Rex?
Why, Rex, why?
thanks for the snark. I snortled so violently that my fat slob of a boyfriend fell out of bed.
Fritz was e.e. cummings therapist. Pause to reflect.
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