Sex and Real Estate
Why We Love Houses
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- USD 9.99
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- USD 9.99
Descripción editorial
Cultural historian Marjorie Garber offers incisive and witty commentary on what men and women today really want in her enlightening study of what may be the most meaningful relationship any of us will ever have.
Real estate has become a form of “yuppie pornography.” Hopes of summer romance have given way to hopes of summer homes, and fantasies of Romeo have been replaced by fantasies of remodeling. Even real estate ads are flirtatious in their offers of bedrooms that are sensuous and sinks that are seductive. Thus the house you live in, like the partner you choose, can be everything from your beloved to your dream to a status symbol trophy. Marjorie Garber has fashioned a uniquely fascinating book that is as provocative as it is pleasurable, as erudite as it is entertaining, one sure to make readers consider more closely the rooms in which they live.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Anyone who has looked, even casually, at what are called "shelter" magazines, or who has engaged in the exhausting process of buying or selling property, will have been struck by the peculiarly erotic quality of the language used to describe the houses we live in or seek to own. Perhaps prompted by her own foray into real estate, Garber, author of Symptoms of Culture and Dog Love, among many other books, applies her richly stocked scholarly imagination to a consideration of the cultural role of the house. In a series of witty essays on the "House as Mother," as "Beloved," as "Body," as "Trophy" and the like, Garber segues smoothly in the course of a page or two from Freud and Jung to Chaucer, Shakespeare and popular film, effectively elaborating her contention that the house is not just something on which we lavish our erotic or emotional attention in lieu of a more appropriate object, but is also "a primary object of affection and desire." As a professor of English at Harvard and director of its Humanity Center, Garber is an established academic. While dazzling, her erudition is not intimidating; this book is bound to prompt lively after dinner discussion and perhaps a little abashed self-recognition in the nation's suburban great rooms and downtown lofts.
