Potential Embarrassment (2 cents)

One of the books I recently picked up is called "Politics". It is not about politics at all. It is a book of fiction written by a young English author and literary figure, Adam Thirlwell. And, I soon learned, it is about sex.

I wonder about books about sex. Where do authors get the nerve to write them? That is the source of my wonder.

The plot line is simple. A young half-Jewish Englishman (and struggling actor) is in love with a young six foot tall non-Jewish English architectural Ph.D. student, but their relationship gets complicated where, at his girlfriend's initiative, a young Anglo-Indian friend of his and struggling actress joins them to form a menage a trois. The book, narrated by a second young man, who seems to know these three, but who only appears as a voyeur (if that) talks of their physical and psychological relationships. The images are all x-rated, and the psychology more humorous than profound.

But interspersed with all of this in this relatively short book are illusions to various matters of European and American cultural interest. For example, the story of the relationship between Osip Mandelstam and the communist state, the plot of "Cabaret" and the goings-on in then contemporary Germany, the architecture of Rem Koolhass and particularly his view on Prada store design, a visit to Targu Jiu, Romania and the outdoor sculpture of Constatine Brancusi (and who knew that his name is pronounced Broncoosh?), the moral lessons of the movie Casablanca, the sexual habits of Mao Tse Tung as published by his physician after Mao's death, Bauhaus architecture and Mies van der Rohe, and the prison notebooks of Italian revolutionary Antonio Gramsci. As opposed to the philosophizing I got lost in when reading Michel Rio's Dreaming Jungles, and the fake intellectualizing of David Nokes' The Nightingale Papers, I found it all rather refreshing.

Then why the potential embarrassment? I took the book with me to the gym this morning. As the cover said "Politics" I was originally not worried, but what if someone had said, "what is that book on politics about?" and taken it from me? I would have had to find a new gym.