Of Simultaneous Orgasms and Other Popular Myths: A Realistic Look at Relationships

By Haresh Shah

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 096544290X
• ISBN13: 9780965442909
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Azad Pubns Inc
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.8" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

A very moving, honest book, will move each reader personally

I greatly enjoyed the book "Of Simultaneous Orgasms and Other Popular Myths," by Haresh Shah. The title playfully tweaks the current politically correct culture, but the personal account of a long relationship that falls apart, bewildering and confusing both the parties involved who had lovingly nurtured it over time, is very moving and forms the main book. The author's 'voice', while always positive, fair, personal, and yet practical, also embodies the an gst of relationships in contemporary American, or modern, culture. As a prescriptive or a how-to, the book is on weaker grounds. In the current ethos which the book exemplifies -- in a culture where all is open and nothing is open at the same time, where the most personal expectations are discussed freely on Oprah but with less ease within the interpersonal domain, and where there is natural conflict between the cultural illusion of perfect communication and the personal reality of imperfect ones -- it is difficult for anyone to provide a laundry list of do's and don'ts. Shah's suggestions on these matters are well-meaning, and inevitable, but the main "lessons" of the book lie in the story itself, which every individual reader will profit from, if he/she meditates on the emotions the book arouse in themselves. This book will not fail to arouse strong emotions in any reader who has dared to love and to dream of perfect love. It is universal, but will speak to each reader very personally. Although Shah steps away from it either consciously or unconsciously, the book is also a reflection on human bonds in a multicultural, assimilated, society. All the characters in the book are of a certain upper-middle class sensibility, and the scenes shift seamlessly from California to Germany to Tokyo. Shah is of the Indian diaspora, and this book appears at about the same time as the NEW YORKER saw fit to devote an entire double issue to the genre of Indian writers writing in English, from India, from the UK and from the US. Shah makes no issue one way or another of his "Indian-ness," save to drop some hints about the background and culture that is deep in him. Various events in this book unfold over the secular signposts of American family culture -- Thanksgiving, Christmas, and so on. But can habits deeply ingrained be overcome by the intellectual patina of shared interests and sensibilities? To take a small instance, Shah, given his Indian moorings and extensive European exposure, cannot conceive of dinner at the American hour of 6 pm; his midwestern "wife", on the other hand, while enjoying the exoticism of this for a period, reverts to her own ingrained habits, and this becomes a point of some sourness between the two as she avoids the late dinner table, and he feels the loss of companionship....obviously a reflection of other things going wrong, but it becomes a signpost on the road nonetheless. This is a small example here of the unspoken issues, small in themselves, but which can loom lar