Singular Pleasures

A “cool, humorous, and affectionate” book of vignettes about a practice that is universal and universally taboo: masturbation.

In sixty-one vignettes, Harry Mathews records the imaginative varieties of this solitary activity in prose that is playful, intimate, and humane. The soloists range in age from nine to eighty; the locales from Australia to Zaire; the means from the commonplace to the bizarre. There is the young man in Gaza with his hair dryers, the woman in Manila with her cello bow, the long-eared bat, the charioteer, the candelabra...

“There is nothing pornographic, in the strict sense, about Mathews' text, since it does not seek to arouse the reader,” wrote John Ash for Artforum. “His intention is to leave us deeply impressed by the ingenuity, tenacity, and inventiveness with which humans in all places and at all ages have pursued their own pleasure. He succeeds completely.” The text is illustrated throughout with watercolors by Francesco Clemente that offer an intriguing counterpoint to Mathews's fictions.