Pillow Book

by Penny Slinger, Nik Douglas, Nik Douglas and Penny Slinger

hardcover This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0517369931
• ISBN13: 9780517369937
• Release Date: November 1985
• Publisher: Random House Value Publishing
• Weight: 2.15 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Interesting survey

Douglas and Slinger have compiled a helpful introduction to traditional Eastern visual erotica. Over 120 samples present a wide range of visual styles, collected into sections on China/Japan and India/Nepal. After a brief introduction that skims the history of each country's tradition of erotic art, the book dives into reproductions of the art of reproduction. Each picture appears with a brief note describing the image. The captions often provide helpful background, but almost as often state what was clear in the picture itself. Printing meets generally high production standards, with heavy, opaque paper and strong colors. In a few places, however, low contrast cuts into the images' legibility. In others, reduction of the original art to the book's page size has shrunk the players and their play too small to be made out easily. The poses and practices shown cover a wide range. The editors explicitly decided to limit that range to what makes sense as a "pillow book" for heterosexual couples. As a result, it omits same-sex coupling and self-loving, aong other things. Brief attribution is given for each picture - maddeningly brief, often just country of origin, era, size, and materials. Artists' names appear only occasionally, possibly because many are not known. If the reader wants to find more by some artist or in some style, this offers only scant clues. Also, I can't fault a book for having been written in the year it was (1981 in this case), but its entire bibliography comes from the 1960s and 70s. Many books from that era have been superceded or have become hard to find, making the interested reader's search even more difficult. This offers enough to stir the interest of someone unfamiliar with works in these genres, and includes some material that is not often seen elsewhere. Although appetizing, it's just an appetizer - you'll have to sate your appetite for substance and variety elsewhere, and this gives little guidance in finding it. -- wiredweird