Plaisirs D'Amour: Erotic Guide to the Senses, an

It is a tautology that the predominant theme in literature, art, and film is sex. The insatiable appetite for sex has driven this proliferation of sexual undercurrents in all phases of human activity and creativeness. Sex and erotica is presented in many different forms of course, depending on the media used, and these forms satisfy the needs and also serve to offend the tastes, depending on the individual at hand. This book approaches the subject of erotica from the standpoint of the essential requirements for its indulgence: the five senses of sight, taste, smell, hearing, and touch. Human being with one or more of these missing can still experience the pleasures of sex, as the author shows, with subtle proof, in this book. She calls the book one of "erotic enjoyment, a celebration of the human senses", and it achieves its aim unashamedly. The works of art that the author includes in the book are superb, and they serve to convince the reader of the many cultural attitudes towards sex and its enjoyment. Some sexual activities that some might consider to be of recent vintage are shown to exist many centuries ago, and were publicly portrayed via the medium of painting or illustration. Nature is indeed generous, as the author states, and we humans have within our bodies and minds a delightful capacity to feel the pleasures of sex, an activity that should be pursued, when the time is right, with total abandonment and originality. The author has seen fit to include images of Adam and Eve throughout the book, and she does this, as she explains, to remind us of who we are and the differences between the sexes, and also the possibility of love. The paradigm of Adam and Eve is one of losing paradise and immortality, the author says, but also one of the gaining of humanity. The sensual pleasures and enjoyment between a man and a woman are preferable by an overwhelming degree to the infantile pleasures of the Garden of Eden, she argues. The author is modest about her assertion here, but she has spoken something that is very profound. With the prospect of a finite lifetime and the implaccability of death, humanity is still infinitely better off than having an eternal life of no struggle and pure innocence. Adam and Eve put on clothes when they rejected the life of the Garden, but clothes can just as easily be taken off, and humans can then experience one of the most marvelous gifts that nature has given.