The Sadness of Sex

by Barry Yourgrau

Book Overview

From the manThe New York Times Book??Reviewcalled "an uncommon??diagnostician of the curiosities of the human heart" and??hailed on NPR (National Public Radio) as "the??stand-up comedian of the unconscious" comes??this extraordinary new collction of metaphor-rich,??wildly imaginative short-short stories. Barry??Yourgrau, who performs his written work in clubs??across the country and on NPR, Comedy Central, MTVs??Spoken Word programs, and in an upcoming...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385313764
• ISBN13: 9780385313766
• Release Date: March 1995
• Publisher: Delta
• Length: 255 Pages
• Weight: 0.69 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

I Thought All The Great One's Had Already Been Written...

....I was wrong. The Sadness of Sex is the most engrossing and beautifully written novel I have picked up in years. This should be a must read for anyone expecting to spend anytime on this planet...and if you don't see its beauty when you read it...read it again! And if you still are moved by it...have your pulsed checked!

The Sadness of Sex: An intoxicating adventure

When was the last time that you read a collection of short stories so well written and colourful and that you could taste the words thick in your mouth and you flinched at the imagery. Seldom does one stumble across the work of a writer that can demonstrate such a clear understanding and command of the English language as Barry Yourgrau. In The Sadness of Sex, Yourgrau cleverly exposes an upside-down and inside-out non-reality to us by skillfully articulating those curiously insane and fleeting thoughts that most of us would fear to ever entertain. He writes in a contemporary style that is nothing short of profoundly unique. Unique because his words innocently catch you up in imaginary nets fashioned from the fabric of insightful and disturbing comedic absurdities and imagery. The Sadness of Sex is a collection of short attention span short stories, most between two and three pages long. This book is a charming collection of fiction that tricks you into simulaneously entertaining a poetic intimacy and a twisted sense of melancholy. It is a quiet journey into a world of colourful visions and lucid dreams that are a delightfully engaging and startlingly surreal. Yourgrau's The Sadness of Sex is not for everyone though. He often entices the reader into follow him down cerebral avenues where all his, and sometimes our, most peculiar psycho-sexual images and ideas hide. This book is a tribute to the unchecked thoughts, desires and innocent human emotions in all of us. If Pablo Neruda and a not-so-crass Charles Bukowski got together and wrote stories about Salvador Dali paintings while they watched Monty Python re-runs, it might start to sound a little like The Sadness of Sex.