On the Nature of Things Erotic

Many readers surely will identify with this physician-essayist's lament that the modern woman is too dependent on facial makeup and men's opinions of her. But when he argues that women still represent an embodiment of the life force, at once redeeming and dangerous, he seems to endorse an old-fashioned biological view of female destiny. Turning to men, Gonzalez-Crussi (Notes of an Anatomist) links their need to dominate and devalue women to the Greeks' elevation of homosexuality and the medieval church's antifeminism. One essay offers a perceptive diagnosis of male jealousy, another reassesses the Marquis de Sade as a taxonomist of cruelty. Topics dissected in the eight erudite essays gathered here include lovers' need for secrecy, a Chinese novelist's clinical account of seduction and the concept of romantic passion as a feverish illness. First serial to the New York Times Book Review. (April)