Nerve: Literate Smut

This book is not about how to have great sex. It's about sex. Period. And it's wonderful. The essays compiled by editors Genevieve Field and Rufus Griscom are excellently written, and may give the reader that certain answer to a certain question. Or else, they may simply provide some of that squeaky clean entertaiment we all look forward to when reading about sex. If you have ever wondered what other people - besides your closest friends - think about sex in general, perhaps you should look into this one... And I cannot possibly forget to mention all the wonderful photographs! Although it is obvious that some seem to playfully balance on edge of being classified as porn (our more conservative readers, beware), all of them are undoubtedly art, and most are undoubtedly nude. This is really one of the most intelligent books I've read on the subject of erotica in general...

This review also appears on America Online's "The Book Report" (Sept 8, 1998).The only thing more difficult than writing well about sex is writing about it honestly. That's what a couple of twentysomething editors, Rufus Griscom and Genevieve Field, discovered when they left their jobs to launch the online sex magazine Nerve.com last summer. "Sex is a subject tripwired with insecurities and conflicts --a subject that people lie about as a matter of course," note Griscom and Field in their introduction to NERVE: LITERATE SMUT. One peek at this anthology --- a sampling of previously published essays, stories and photos preserved offline in the traditional way suggests that many of the contributors evidently felt up to the challenge.Nonetheless, the volume's title is something of a misnomer --- there's not much smut (literate or otherwise), and if it's Nancy Friday or Penthouse Forum you're looking after, look elsewhere. But if what you're after are honest and perceptive essays about sex, you'll find several here.... --- Reviewed by Paul Zakrzewski

As a regular reader of Nerve online, I was happy to find my favorite Web site in hard copy. A Publisher's Weekly review of this book pointed out that Nerve's reportage, opinion, and thought pieces might appear in more or less mainstream mags -- true, but for me, the point is that mainstream mags wouldn't give you the sexy stuff all at once. Most magazine editors will put in one sex-related piece per issue, or every few issues. And even if that's the piece that most interests their readers, the readers themselves might not want smut (however literate) piling up on the coffee table where the kids and neighbors can see it. They want something smart but sedate, like the Atlantic, on the coffee table. Ah, but on the Web -- that's different, and that's what's so brilliant about Nerve. It serves up an editorial mix that's similar to the Atlantic et al. (fiction, journalism, essays, reviews, artwork), but all of it focused on what's secretly our favorite subject. For anyone who feels that too much of a good thing is great, here it is.One of the things I like most about the book is that it retains that mix, and reflects different moods, tastes, and preoccupations -- the variety in itself says something about sex, or a possible approach to sex. And each section of the book has both the abovementioned variety *and* coherence, resonance. Very cool. I was daunted at first by the appearance of a section called Reportage, which sounds a bit humorless, but the works in it were totally entertaining and thoughtful -- as were all the section introductions. All told, this is just a delightful book.

Until I read this "Best of" edition of Nerve: Literate Smut, I'd been wary of people who said things like "the mind is the sexiest organ." The mind is mushy and white with a lot of corrugations in it, and it's best kept out of sight inside the skull. I'd have said it's pretty obvious, just watching people walk down the street, that there are three to five body parts clearly much more sexy than the mind, and possibly a lot more. But The Best of Nerve has given me pause. Writers ranging from Norman Mailer to Joycelyn Elders to William Vollman explore just how much of our sex lives goes on between our ears. They demonstrate that it's quite a substantial amount. The Best of Nerve is sexy and literate, just like the title claims. The best thing about it, though, is that you don't feel like you need a shower after you read it. More than anything, you feel smart.Can pictures be literate? Hard to say. But The Best of Nerve also contains plenty of photos--high production values, very provocative. A lot of them are quite funny, which is refreshing in an American book about sex. They'd be worth the price of admission by themselves, even if they weren't decorating hilarious entries like Ben Neihart's rumination on sex and rock-n-roll, "The #1 Song in the Country."

This book is full of real sex. It offers provocative insights and observations that are well articulated yet not abstracted from the sweaty, visceral sensuality of what really goes on in people's minds and bedrooms.