The Decline and Fall of Sex

Robert Elliot Fitch is Professor of Christian Ethics and Dean of the Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley, California and this sputtering scrutiny of our sexual attitudes appeared originally in the New Republic and stirred considerable notice. Mr. Fitch' sex is tested by literature rather than other media and Elinor Glyn, Hemingway, Norman Mailer, Kinsey are his favorite witnesses as he argues that it was the Puritans who made sex interesting-with the allure of the taboo- while today, emancipated and satiated, sex is just "biologic" and in a deep, intellectual freeze. More fundamentally, and more morally, one can conclude that sex divorced from love, and love from honor, leads to the real devaluation of our time.... The sophistication here counters the suspicion that this could also be a small sermon addressed to an intellectually fashionable audience. (Kirkus Reviews)