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Making Love: An Erotic Odyssey
A frank look at the act of making love describes one man's personal experience of sex and physical love, attempting to understand how those experiences shaped his life. By the author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb. 30,000 first printing. National ad/promo.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 1992
20 people are currently reading
73 people want to read
About the author
Richard Rhodes
115 books621 followersRichard Lee Rhodes is an American journalist, historian, and author of both fiction and non-fiction (which he prefers to call "verity"), including the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986), and most recently, Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race (2007). He has been awarded grants from the Ford Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation among others.
He is an affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He also frequently gives lectures and talks on a broad range of subjects to various audiences, including testifying before the U.S. Senate on nuclear energy.
He is an affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. He also frequently gives lectures and talks on a broad range of subjects to various audiences, including testifying before the U.S. Senate on nuclear energy.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
July 29, 2019
Oh, hi there. I’ve just noticed you noticing me reading Richard Rhodes’ Making Love: An Erotic Odyssey. By the look on your face, I can tell you’re about to run away, hide your kids, and call the cops. But wait! Just because I have this slim, hardcover volume of erotica, with the two semi-naked people entwined on the cover, doesn’t make me a sex-crazed pervert.
There’s a perfectly good explanation why I have this book! It was a joke, see? One of my Goodreads’ friends noticed my intense admiration for Rhodes’ The Making of the Atomic Bomb (it won the Pulitzer Prize; and no, “atomic bomb” is not a euphemism for an orgy in the Yale science department). This friend told me about the existence of Making Love, and we both laughed about the disconnect between sex and a nuclear holocaust. I bought it as a goof. Seriously! Stop dialing 9-1-1…
I’m an American. Beyond that, I was raised Roman Catholic. (In the one true church, touching yourself doesn’t just cause blindness; it’s a mortal sin for which you’ll burn forever). Thus, I naturally feel the need to open this review with a rationalization for not only purchasing Making Love, but also reading it and telling others the same.
But I’m not going to spend my time here defending myself. I’m not ashamed. Strike that. I’m totally ashamed. But that’s not my fault. I’m a product of a culture (and a religion) that glorifies violence, celebrates crudeness, and has a remarkably archaic view on sex.
(Exhibit 1: Super Bowl XXXVIII. Let’s protect our children from Janet Jackson’s pasty-covered nipple, while letting our children watch twenty-four armored men launch their craniums into each other).
I did buy this book as a joke. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. I have to stick to it, or else my wife will beat me senseless with it (and, like I said, it’s hardcover).
However, I read it because I wanted to. Why the hell wouldn’t I? It’s about sex – the thing we all spend inordinate amounts of time talking about, thinking about, fantasizing about, and occasionally doing. Admit it: if you had this book in front of you, you’d read it too.
In typically bombastic, pompous, and self-congratulating style, Rhodes begins his sexual memoir by stating its purpose:
Two things stand out in that paragraph.
First, Making Love was published in 1992, so perhaps the statement – “very few personal narratives” – was true when written. Today, of course, that’s just not the case. I know this because after ordering this book from Amazon, their top-secret algorithm started recommending sexual memoirs of every variety. Of course, Iimmediately bought them all quickly cleared my browsing history.
Second, comparing the “experience of making love” to “war stories and tales of survival” sort of gives you an idea of this book’s tonality. It isn’t fun or funny or lighthearted. It is ponderous, pedantic, overwritten, joyless, and a colossal miscalculation.
Before I go on – with very few nice things to say – I should note that I am a huge Richard Rhodes fan. The Making of the Atomic Bomb is one of my favorite books. The sequel, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, is a wonderful narrative of Cold War tensions. Masters of Death is a terrifying look at the German Einsatzgruppen on the Eastern Front during World War II.
As you might have guessed, none of these brutally violent tomes prepares one to write a sexually explicit memoir with anything resembling grace or subtlety.
Rhodes structures Making Love as a partner-by-partner, thrust-by-thrust recounting of his sexual exploits. Fortunately, there are only a handful. Unfortunately, that’s still too many.
Rhodes made a crucial decision at the outset – which he fully explains in the Preface – to hide the identity of his partners without remaining anonymous himself. Accordingly, the women in the book do not have names. They are instead referred to by the first letter of their names, e.g., O--, N--, and Y--. He does not describe their personalities, their life stories, even the way they look.
Like I said, this was done for a reason. The consequence, though, is that his partners are no longer women, no longer human. Instead they are a collection of orifices that Rhodes penetrates. He might as well have conquered a string of sex dolls. The effect is really off-putting. No, that’s not the right word. The effect is really, really icky.
Moreover, it is a ridiculous symptom of Rhodes’ vanity. If you really wanted to keep these women anonymous, here’s a freaking tip for you: it’s called a pseudonym, a nom de plume, if you will. You know, like Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain and Stephen King/Richard Bachmann. Or if you like alternative rock personas, Garth Brooks/Chris Gaines.
If you have a pen name, you can then change the names of your partners while still giving them dimensions beyond their genitals. Keeping your name on the book is as much a sign of your ego as telling us that your “penis is 5.5 inches long measured out from the belly, 6.5 inches long measured up from the balls…” Making Love was doomed the moment Richard Rhodes decided this was going to be a Richard Rhodes book.
(And all of this sneakiness for nothing. Somehow, like the American cryptographers of the Second World War, I was able to determine that “G--” was actually Rhodes’ wife, Ginger. So, yeah, the plan had a few flaws).
To say that Rhodes writes in a graphic style is to undersell the highly-detailed and extremely clinical nature of the sex scenes found herein. At times, he utilizes jargon better suited for a medical school textbook. For instance, while describing a woman’s orgasm, he notes her “pelvis fibrillating.” At other times, his descriptions can only be described as laughable, such as his depiction of his own glans as being shaped “like a Second World War Italian soldier’s helmet.”
I know what you’re thinking now: I must have this book.
Rhodes tends to be a bit wide-eyed, writing as though his readers are Puritans fresh off the Mayflower. There’s a gulf between 1992 and 2013; I’ll grant you that. But even in the pre-internet 90s, I don’t think Rhodes needed to give us a play-by-play of the pornography he was viewing on his VCR. Simply put, people were never as sexually naïve as Rhodes keeps insisting (this book, after all, follows The Joy of Sex and Gay Talese’s Thy Neighbor’s Wife and the Kinsey Report). This condescension – explaining fellatio; hell, using the term “fellatio” – is just Rhodes patting himself on the back.
I grant Rhodes this. He is unflinchingly honest. Previously, he wrote a memoir called A Hole in the World recounting his abusive childhood. By all accounts, this is a beautiful work, one that has helped many people who’ve suffered their own traumatic upbringings. Some of those horror stories, along with the situational homosexuality he experienced in foster care, makes its way into this memoir.
Rhodes deserves all credit for not only surviving this ordeal, but for thriving. He went on to Yale, won a MacArthur grant, and deservedly received the Pulitzer Prize. However, the inclusion of these dark days is really quite jarring. When Rhodes says “erotic odyssey,” he means “odyssey” in its literal sense, as in full of the horrors of The Odyssey.
Rhodes loves the truth – or, as he insufferably calls it, verity. I’m just not sure it’s appropriate to include such truths in a book called Making Love with two half-naked consenting adults on the cover. Coming at the start of the book, it put me in an ugly, bummed-out frame of mind. It’s difficult to get hot-and-bothered when you just want to sit in a corner, facing the wall, crying. (There is also a trip to an abortion clinic, smack in the middle of the narrative. It’s a gripping passage – and totally out of place).
Sex is a pretty great thing, all told. Making Love might convince you otherwise. It might be that Rhodes is too damaged a narrator (he seems to be working through his demons on the page), or maybe it’s the heavy-handed prose. Whatever the pathology, there is a certain grimness to Rhodes’ sexcapades. (It actually came as a relief to me when one of Rhodes’ partners finally tells him to back off).
Having never read (I swear!) a sexual memoir before, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Having finished this one, I can say that whatever my expectations might have been, they were not met. Sure, my prurient interests were gratified (in the way that only hyper-realistic sex scenes can gratify), but something more important was missing.
I’m no scold. I think consenting adults should do as they please with other consenting adults. I don’t see the end of the world in every fling or hookup or one-night-stand. That said, this book could have used a little love. A little sense that Rhodes had some connection with these women. A little bit of passion. None of Rhodes’ trysts give you even a whiff of the actual transformative powers of sex and love. Instead, they read like a plumber’s manual: this pipe fits into that valve; turn that knob for this result; oh, look at that faucet explode!
I will never be able to revisit The Making of the Atomic Bomb without the vivid reminder that Rhodes often stopped work for marathon masturbation sessions. I will never be able to look at the helmet of an Italian soldier from World War II without thinking about his penis.
Of all the books I’ve read, I’d like to unread this one the most.
There’s a perfectly good explanation why I have this book! It was a joke, see? One of my Goodreads’ friends noticed my intense admiration for Rhodes’ The Making of the Atomic Bomb (it won the Pulitzer Prize; and no, “atomic bomb” is not a euphemism for an orgy in the Yale science department). This friend told me about the existence of Making Love, and we both laughed about the disconnect between sex and a nuclear holocaust. I bought it as a goof. Seriously! Stop dialing 9-1-1…
I’m an American. Beyond that, I was raised Roman Catholic. (In the one true church, touching yourself doesn’t just cause blindness; it’s a mortal sin for which you’ll burn forever). Thus, I naturally feel the need to open this review with a rationalization for not only purchasing Making Love, but also reading it and telling others the same.
But I’m not going to spend my time here defending myself. I’m not ashamed. Strike that. I’m totally ashamed. But that’s not my fault. I’m a product of a culture (and a religion) that glorifies violence, celebrates crudeness, and has a remarkably archaic view on sex.
(Exhibit 1: Super Bowl XXXVIII. Let’s protect our children from Janet Jackson’s pasty-covered nipple, while letting our children watch twenty-four armored men launch their craniums into each other).
I did buy this book as a joke. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. I have to stick to it, or else my wife will beat me senseless with it (and, like I said, it’s hardcover).
However, I read it because I wanted to. Why the hell wouldn’t I? It’s about sex – the thing we all spend inordinate amounts of time talking about, thinking about, fantasizing about, and occasionally doing. Admit it: if you had this book in front of you, you’d read it too.
In typically bombastic, pompous, and self-congratulating style, Rhodes begins his sexual memoir by stating its purpose:
There are war stories and tales of survival, there are political memoirs and confessions of faith, but in all of Western literature there are only a very few personal narratives that honestly and frankly explore the intimate experience of making love – and hardly any to which an author has been willing to sign his name.
Two things stand out in that paragraph.
First, Making Love was published in 1992, so perhaps the statement – “very few personal narratives” – was true when written. Today, of course, that’s just not the case. I know this because after ordering this book from Amazon, their top-secret algorithm started recommending sexual memoirs of every variety. Of course, I
Second, comparing the “experience of making love” to “war stories and tales of survival” sort of gives you an idea of this book’s tonality. It isn’t fun or funny or lighthearted. It is ponderous, pedantic, overwritten, joyless, and a colossal miscalculation.
Before I go on – with very few nice things to say – I should note that I am a huge Richard Rhodes fan. The Making of the Atomic Bomb is one of my favorite books. The sequel, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, is a wonderful narrative of Cold War tensions. Masters of Death is a terrifying look at the German Einsatzgruppen on the Eastern Front during World War II.
As you might have guessed, none of these brutally violent tomes prepares one to write a sexually explicit memoir with anything resembling grace or subtlety.
Rhodes structures Making Love as a partner-by-partner, thrust-by-thrust recounting of his sexual exploits. Fortunately, there are only a handful. Unfortunately, that’s still too many.
Rhodes made a crucial decision at the outset – which he fully explains in the Preface – to hide the identity of his partners without remaining anonymous himself. Accordingly, the women in the book do not have names. They are instead referred to by the first letter of their names, e.g., O--, N--, and Y--. He does not describe their personalities, their life stories, even the way they look.
Like I said, this was done for a reason. The consequence, though, is that his partners are no longer women, no longer human. Instead they are a collection of orifices that Rhodes penetrates. He might as well have conquered a string of sex dolls. The effect is really off-putting. No, that’s not the right word. The effect is really, really icky.
Moreover, it is a ridiculous symptom of Rhodes’ vanity. If you really wanted to keep these women anonymous, here’s a freaking tip for you: it’s called a pseudonym, a nom de plume, if you will. You know, like Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain and Stephen King/Richard Bachmann. Or if you like alternative rock personas, Garth Brooks/Chris Gaines.
If you have a pen name, you can then change the names of your partners while still giving them dimensions beyond their genitals. Keeping your name on the book is as much a sign of your ego as telling us that your “penis is 5.5 inches long measured out from the belly, 6.5 inches long measured up from the balls…” Making Love was doomed the moment Richard Rhodes decided this was going to be a Richard Rhodes book.
(And all of this sneakiness for nothing. Somehow, like the American cryptographers of the Second World War, I was able to determine that “G--” was actually Rhodes’ wife, Ginger. So, yeah, the plan had a few flaws).
To say that Rhodes writes in a graphic style is to undersell the highly-detailed and extremely clinical nature of the sex scenes found herein. At times, he utilizes jargon better suited for a medical school textbook. For instance, while describing a woman’s orgasm, he notes her “pelvis fibrillating.” At other times, his descriptions can only be described as laughable, such as his depiction of his own glans as being shaped “like a Second World War Italian soldier’s helmet.”
I know what you’re thinking now: I must have this book.
Rhodes tends to be a bit wide-eyed, writing as though his readers are Puritans fresh off the Mayflower. There’s a gulf between 1992 and 2013; I’ll grant you that. But even in the pre-internet 90s, I don’t think Rhodes needed to give us a play-by-play of the pornography he was viewing on his VCR. Simply put, people were never as sexually naïve as Rhodes keeps insisting (this book, after all, follows The Joy of Sex and Gay Talese’s Thy Neighbor’s Wife and the Kinsey Report). This condescension – explaining fellatio; hell, using the term “fellatio” – is just Rhodes patting himself on the back.
I grant Rhodes this. He is unflinchingly honest. Previously, he wrote a memoir called A Hole in the World recounting his abusive childhood. By all accounts, this is a beautiful work, one that has helped many people who’ve suffered their own traumatic upbringings. Some of those horror stories, along with the situational homosexuality he experienced in foster care, makes its way into this memoir.
Rhodes deserves all credit for not only surviving this ordeal, but for thriving. He went on to Yale, won a MacArthur grant, and deservedly received the Pulitzer Prize. However, the inclusion of these dark days is really quite jarring. When Rhodes says “erotic odyssey,” he means “odyssey” in its literal sense, as in full of the horrors of The Odyssey.
Rhodes loves the truth – or, as he insufferably calls it, verity. I’m just not sure it’s appropriate to include such truths in a book called Making Love with two half-naked consenting adults on the cover. Coming at the start of the book, it put me in an ugly, bummed-out frame of mind. It’s difficult to get hot-and-bothered when you just want to sit in a corner, facing the wall, crying. (There is also a trip to an abortion clinic, smack in the middle of the narrative. It’s a gripping passage – and totally out of place).
Sex is a pretty great thing, all told. Making Love might convince you otherwise. It might be that Rhodes is too damaged a narrator (he seems to be working through his demons on the page), or maybe it’s the heavy-handed prose. Whatever the pathology, there is a certain grimness to Rhodes’ sexcapades. (It actually came as a relief to me when one of Rhodes’ partners finally tells him to back off).
Having never read (I swear!) a sexual memoir before, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Having finished this one, I can say that whatever my expectations might have been, they were not met. Sure, my prurient interests were gratified (in the way that only hyper-realistic sex scenes can gratify), but something more important was missing.
I’m no scold. I think consenting adults should do as they please with other consenting adults. I don’t see the end of the world in every fling or hookup or one-night-stand. That said, this book could have used a little love. A little sense that Rhodes had some connection with these women. A little bit of passion. None of Rhodes’ trysts give you even a whiff of the actual transformative powers of sex and love. Instead, they read like a plumber’s manual: this pipe fits into that valve; turn that knob for this result; oh, look at that faucet explode!
I will never be able to revisit The Making of the Atomic Bomb without the vivid reminder that Rhodes often stopped work for marathon masturbation sessions. I will never be able to look at the helmet of an Italian soldier from World War II without thinking about his penis.
Of all the books I’ve read, I’d like to unread this one the most.
November 16, 2011
In Letters to My Son: A Father's Wisdom on Manhood, Life, and Love, Kent Nerburn speaks of the old adage, “we humans are destined to live with our feet on the earth and our heads in the heavens, and we can never be at peace because we are pulled both ways” (page 146).
Then in a beautiful and poignant passage, Nerburn explains to his son how our sexuality must be both of the earth and of the heavens.
Richard Rhodes is one of my favorite authors. At the time Making Love was published I was attempting to write a book somewhat inspired by John Jerome's Stone Work: Reflections on Serious Play and Other Aspects of Country Life. I had wanted to capture on the written page some of the beauty and wonder of my musings during my exercise walks in the woods, they seemed to me to be ramblings of great profound philosophical truths. Ha! In one chapter, I felt a deep need to share with the world the beauty of the intimate encounters with my wife, which then and still now are to me sacraments of Divine love. Vast and complete failure! My chapter came off like some third rate erotic novel written by a kid in junior high school. The rest of the book was just as sorry and I wisely never attempted to publish it. I believe the book was vain attempt to capture my life as it slipped away like fine sand through my fingers, inspired no doubt by mid life crisis and the initial cold breeze of the recognition of my own mortality. Anyhow, I lived these wonderful and loving experiences with my wife and failed miserably trying to capture them in writing.
So here I was, some guy that worked in a factory, trying to depart a sense of beauty and mystery of love between a woman and man and getting lost in a tawdry mess of vague descriptions of methods to connect plumbing. So when I saw Richard Rhodes' Making Love I thought, "hallelujah, I will learn from a master" (not realizing yet what a turd the rest of my book was as well). Well Rhodes wrote in exacting X-rated detail the precise methods of connecting the plumbing.
The man can write no doubt, he is one of my favorite authors, and he left nothing to the imagination in Making Love. I am no prude or stranger to sexually explicit writing, and yet I was not only disappointed with this book, I was devastated by it. While Rhodes more than adequately described the "feet on the earth" aspect of sexuality in sweaty detail, he seemed to miss altogether the "heads in heavens" aspect. He left nothing to the imagination except perhaps any sense of higher purpose or spirituality, which seemed to be completely absent from his experience. I felt like a voyeur reading it. I remember of setting the book down and thinking this book was not about making love, it was about f---ing. Not only was I dismayed by his description, it seemed to cheapen and defile mine. If making love is this tawdry experience for the great Richard Rhodes, how can my experience be anything more than the musings of a romantic fool looking at a base and ignoble act of biological necessity through rose colored glasses? So instead of getting a hint or hopefully a lesson on how to write about sexuality to capture both its earthiness and its Holiness, I was led to believe that not only are such writings impossible but that I should regard the experience itself with some suspicion.
Fortunately, this suspicion was not allowed to fester into a full drawn conclusion. I discussed the book with my wife and told her that I found myself questioning the validity of our own experience, which of course was silly...but we are talking Richard Rhodes here. Rather than using words to fight words, my wife used the ancient wisdom of women to more than adequately demonstrate that, yes, making love is indeed of the earth, but it is also heaven on earth, that neither I or Richard Rhodes could capture with mere words.
I am no longer in mid life crisis, but on the threshold of old age. Making love with my wife has become a bit more physically challenging with bad backs and arthritic hips and knees and yet it has become a far richer and deeply rewarding experience than what we had in our 20s or even our 40s. There is no longer this terrifying requirement that every thing must go off with the precision of a NASA launch as in our 20s. Performance anxieties are a young people's sport. We now have time and freedom, unlike our 40s, to pursue an entire afternoon in bed lying in a relaxed sweet embrace drifting off for a nap only to wake up for round two.
It occurs to me now that the phrase making love has two components...the earthly action in the word "making," and the heavenly spiritual state found in the word "love". In my 20s the "making" was more important than the "love". In my 40s the "making" and the "love" were perhaps an equality, but now in my 60s the "love" is far more important than the "making". Oh everything follows the same basic script, but the action is far from pile driving and the embrace is far more loving.
Perhaps, I should give Making Love another reading. Perhaps I would see something in it now that I missed earlier. I am sure that I would no longer get a sense of tawdry ribaldry from it. Sex has moved out of the arena of the filth for me. It can beautiful, or it can be mundane, or it can be ugly. It is humanity's search to find the Divine through the body. If it is anything less than sublime, it not the sex that is at fault, sex is after all only sex. It is the profane gods that we pursue that have failed us. I think to re-read Making Love, now would no longer engender a sense of voyeurism, but rather a deep feeling of pity for the lost Divine.
Then in a beautiful and poignant passage, Nerburn explains to his son how our sexuality must be both of the earth and of the heavens.
Richard Rhodes is one of my favorite authors. At the time Making Love was published I was attempting to write a book somewhat inspired by John Jerome's Stone Work: Reflections on Serious Play and Other Aspects of Country Life. I had wanted to capture on the written page some of the beauty and wonder of my musings during my exercise walks in the woods, they seemed to me to be ramblings of great profound philosophical truths. Ha! In one chapter, I felt a deep need to share with the world the beauty of the intimate encounters with my wife, which then and still now are to me sacraments of Divine love. Vast and complete failure! My chapter came off like some third rate erotic novel written by a kid in junior high school. The rest of the book was just as sorry and I wisely never attempted to publish it. I believe the book was vain attempt to capture my life as it slipped away like fine sand through my fingers, inspired no doubt by mid life crisis and the initial cold breeze of the recognition of my own mortality. Anyhow, I lived these wonderful and loving experiences with my wife and failed miserably trying to capture them in writing.
So here I was, some guy that worked in a factory, trying to depart a sense of beauty and mystery of love between a woman and man and getting lost in a tawdry mess of vague descriptions of methods to connect plumbing. So when I saw Richard Rhodes' Making Love I thought, "hallelujah, I will learn from a master" (not realizing yet what a turd the rest of my book was as well). Well Rhodes wrote in exacting X-rated detail the precise methods of connecting the plumbing.
The man can write no doubt, he is one of my favorite authors, and he left nothing to the imagination in Making Love. I am no prude or stranger to sexually explicit writing, and yet I was not only disappointed with this book, I was devastated by it. While Rhodes more than adequately described the "feet on the earth" aspect of sexuality in sweaty detail, he seemed to miss altogether the "heads in heavens" aspect. He left nothing to the imagination except perhaps any sense of higher purpose or spirituality, which seemed to be completely absent from his experience. I felt like a voyeur reading it. I remember of setting the book down and thinking this book was not about making love, it was about f---ing. Not only was I dismayed by his description, it seemed to cheapen and defile mine. If making love is this tawdry experience for the great Richard Rhodes, how can my experience be anything more than the musings of a romantic fool looking at a base and ignoble act of biological necessity through rose colored glasses? So instead of getting a hint or hopefully a lesson on how to write about sexuality to capture both its earthiness and its Holiness, I was led to believe that not only are such writings impossible but that I should regard the experience itself with some suspicion.
Fortunately, this suspicion was not allowed to fester into a full drawn conclusion. I discussed the book with my wife and told her that I found myself questioning the validity of our own experience, which of course was silly...but we are talking Richard Rhodes here. Rather than using words to fight words, my wife used the ancient wisdom of women to more than adequately demonstrate that, yes, making love is indeed of the earth, but it is also heaven on earth, that neither I or Richard Rhodes could capture with mere words.
I am no longer in mid life crisis, but on the threshold of old age. Making love with my wife has become a bit more physically challenging with bad backs and arthritic hips and knees and yet it has become a far richer and deeply rewarding experience than what we had in our 20s or even our 40s. There is no longer this terrifying requirement that every thing must go off with the precision of a NASA launch as in our 20s. Performance anxieties are a young people's sport. We now have time and freedom, unlike our 40s, to pursue an entire afternoon in bed lying in a relaxed sweet embrace drifting off for a nap only to wake up for round two.
It occurs to me now that the phrase making love has two components...the earthly action in the word "making," and the heavenly spiritual state found in the word "love". In my 20s the "making" was more important than the "love". In my 40s the "making" and the "love" were perhaps an equality, but now in my 60s the "love" is far more important than the "making". Oh everything follows the same basic script, but the action is far from pile driving and the embrace is far more loving.
Perhaps, I should give Making Love another reading. Perhaps I would see something in it now that I missed earlier. I am sure that I would no longer get a sense of tawdry ribaldry from it. Sex has moved out of the arena of the filth for me. It can beautiful, or it can be mundane, or it can be ugly. It is humanity's search to find the Divine through the body. If it is anything less than sublime, it not the sex that is at fault, sex is after all only sex. It is the profane gods that we pursue that have failed us. I think to re-read Making Love, now would no longer engender a sense of voyeurism, but rather a deep feeling of pity for the lost Divine.
January 2, 2014
This was an incredible, insightful, healing, honest and inspiring book about making love. I recommend it to anyone who is looking for a way to be more in tune with themselves- mind, body, and soul. It is not that he has managed to write about the experience of sex, as much as it is that he has written about his experiences and through that gives the opportunity for readers to search themselves to discover. What you discover, of course, is entirely up to you. Happy reading.
March 30, 2018
Richard Rhodes is best known for his Pulitzer Prize winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb, but my library doesn’t have a copy. I searched his name using my library’s interlibrary loan system and found this work, Making Love: An Erotic Odyssey. At some point, I decided to prioritize memoirs written by scholars as they approach retirement. Rhodes was born in 1937 and this book was published in 1992, so it seemed to fit the bill even if Rhodes has continued writing to this day. What can I say about this work? Well, it’s a memoir of his life as a sexual being rather than a stunt memoir in which a middle aged man goes on sexual adventures. It is very frank. I’m not at all convinced that North America is more comfortable with sex, even if it does seem to accept more sexualities, than it was forty years ago. Although I'm embarrassed to admit it, I had to remind myself not to be embarrassed as I went to the librarian to sign it out (in my system, interlibrary loans must be borrowed and returned directly to the librarian). The book is short, less than 200 pages.
July 4, 2014
I love reading about sex and erotica, but this got boring. Rhodes is a favorite author and Making of the Atomic Bomb is one of my all-time favorites, but this was a little too much (descriptions were anatomical and not erotic). It just never came together for me. It was quick and one of the Hawaii books I read june of 2014.
January 10, 2021
It was a bit shocking and over scandalous as he recounting stories from his life
August 19, 2025
Wieso, fragt sich der amerikanische Schriftsteller Richard Rhodes kann man sehr wohl Bücher schreiben, in denen die schrecklichsten Dinge passieren, nicht aber ein ehrliches Buch über Liebe und Sexualität? Warum darf in Büchern Blut fließen, aber man soll nicht zu genau beschreiben, was zwischen Mann und Frau vor sich geht?
Als er keine befriedigende Antwort auf seine Fragen findet, macht sich Richard Rhodes selbst daran, ein Buch über die Liebe zu schreiben. Nicht nur über das Gefühl, sondern über den Akt.
Es ist sicher nicht einfach, detailliert über Sex zu schreiben wie der Autor das tut, ohne dabei ins Vulgäre abzurutschen. Rhodes gelingt das recht gut. Er beschreibt sehr genau was er tut, empfindet, riecht oder schmeckt, aber gleichzeitig hält er einen Abstand zum Geschehenen so dass das Geschriebene wie ein neutraler Bericht wirkt.
Rhodes erzählt von seinen ersten Erlebnissen als Junge bis zu seiner Beziehung mit einer Frau namens G., für die er seine Frau verlässt. Anfangs geht er an die Sache mit einer unschuldigen Neugier heran, später erinnern mich seine Erzählungen eher an eine wissenschaftliche Untersuchung. Mehr als einmal liest er etwas und will es dann ausprobieren. Seine jeweiligen Partnerinnen machen immer mit, was mich überrascht. Denn einiges, was er ausprobiert finde ich schon extrem.
Im Lauf des Buchs ändert sich die Art, wie Richard Rhodes über sich erzählt. Er wirkt immer zufriedener mit seiner Leistung und der Inhalt passt nicht mehr wirklich zur Überschrift. Es geht nicht mehr um Liebe, sondern um das Erreichen einer bestimmten Marke und das gute Image als Liebhaber.
Ich weiß nicht so recht, was ich vom Buch erwartet habe bevor ich mit dem Lesen angefangen habe. Aber von dem, was ich am Anfang gelesen habe, habe ich definitiv eine andere Entwicklung erwartet.
Als er keine befriedigende Antwort auf seine Fragen findet, macht sich Richard Rhodes selbst daran, ein Buch über die Liebe zu schreiben. Nicht nur über das Gefühl, sondern über den Akt.
Es ist sicher nicht einfach, detailliert über Sex zu schreiben wie der Autor das tut, ohne dabei ins Vulgäre abzurutschen. Rhodes gelingt das recht gut. Er beschreibt sehr genau was er tut, empfindet, riecht oder schmeckt, aber gleichzeitig hält er einen Abstand zum Geschehenen so dass das Geschriebene wie ein neutraler Bericht wirkt.
Rhodes erzählt von seinen ersten Erlebnissen als Junge bis zu seiner Beziehung mit einer Frau namens G., für die er seine Frau verlässt. Anfangs geht er an die Sache mit einer unschuldigen Neugier heran, später erinnern mich seine Erzählungen eher an eine wissenschaftliche Untersuchung. Mehr als einmal liest er etwas und will es dann ausprobieren. Seine jeweiligen Partnerinnen machen immer mit, was mich überrascht. Denn einiges, was er ausprobiert finde ich schon extrem.
Im Lauf des Buchs ändert sich die Art, wie Richard Rhodes über sich erzählt. Er wirkt immer zufriedener mit seiner Leistung und der Inhalt passt nicht mehr wirklich zur Überschrift. Es geht nicht mehr um Liebe, sondern um das Erreichen einer bestimmten Marke und das gute Image als Liebhaber.
Ich weiß nicht so recht, was ich vom Buch erwartet habe bevor ich mit dem Lesen angefangen habe. Aber von dem, was ich am Anfang gelesen habe, habe ich definitiv eine andere Entwicklung erwartet.
May 14, 2021
Brave Self Revealing
Rhodes is a brilliant writer and in this sexual autobiography he has chosen to expose his and our most vulnerable self- his sexuality. He is a man haunted by his traumatic past and fighting anxiety through alcohol abuse and obsessive sexual performance. For me I found that, like with pornography, there is a saturation point beyond which pursuing his story became tiring and that it began to seem mundane rather than revelatory. Thus the four star rating.
In addition it disturbed me, as with other writers who combine traumatic pasts with some sexual explicitness, the role of alcohol/substance abuse is largely underplayed, a few pages late in the book. Katharine Harris’s The Kiss and Alice Sebold’s Lucky stand out in this regard. Perhaps these and other authors are fearful of being judged as defective for exposing the extent of addictive behavior. However such an approach offers a misleading picture of trauma’s impact and thus can lead readers with trauma backgrounds to feel that they are more impaired by comparison because substance use plays a much larger role in their lives. Despite this quibble I heartily recommend this book. I have yet to read one of his books that are not thoroughly enjoyable and comprehensive in their coverage of the topic being covered.
Rhodes is a brilliant writer and in this sexual autobiography he has chosen to expose his and our most vulnerable self- his sexuality. He is a man haunted by his traumatic past and fighting anxiety through alcohol abuse and obsessive sexual performance. For me I found that, like with pornography, there is a saturation point beyond which pursuing his story became tiring and that it began to seem mundane rather than revelatory. Thus the four star rating.
In addition it disturbed me, as with other writers who combine traumatic pasts with some sexual explicitness, the role of alcohol/substance abuse is largely underplayed, a few pages late in the book. Katharine Harris’s The Kiss and Alice Sebold’s Lucky stand out in this regard. Perhaps these and other authors are fearful of being judged as defective for exposing the extent of addictive behavior. However such an approach offers a misleading picture of trauma’s impact and thus can lead readers with trauma backgrounds to feel that they are more impaired by comparison because substance use plays a much larger role in their lives. Despite this quibble I heartily recommend this book. I have yet to read one of his books that are not thoroughly enjoyable and comprehensive in their coverage of the topic being covered.
November 6, 2022
Here it is, remembered another book I read many , many , years ago. I had to have still been in my 20's, when I would just tell myself, I need a book to read, it could be any book on a variety of subjects and voila, this book just sparked something in me and I tell myself, this might be a good book. This book is written by a male so to put it mildly , if you are looking for some romantic novel written by a woman, this book might not be for you, then again it probably would not be too shocking to many women. As I said, I read it a long time ago and I do remember quite a few books that I read a long time ago, but this book was like reading pornographic literature, it was quite detailed.
Read
March 22, 2024from the front pages of the book: "We are made up of fragments so shapelessly and strangely assembled that every moment, every piece plays its own game. And there is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others." Montaigne "Essays"
Sex is a sovereignty waiting to be explored, just as consciousness was for early modern fiction. I'm a writer. Writing is my work. ... I believe that all that can be thought must be spoken and written, communicated and shared, that ignorance and silence are pain, that to speak (to write) is to contribute to alleviating that pain." p. 14
Sex is a sovereignty waiting to be explored, just as consciousness was for early modern fiction. I'm a writer. Writing is my work. ... I believe that all that can be thought must be spoken and written, communicated and shared, that ignorance and silence are pain, that to speak (to write) is to contribute to alleviating that pain." p. 14
April 30, 2015
heard about this book from another author JD (on the radio)get this soon
John Dunn 1992 on literary arts archive project he was on with his wife Joan
Didion
from the library computer--here temporarily until I get the book--there are many points about this book which interest me greatly:
.
"Making Love is a brilliant, illuminating and often shocking exploration of one man's sexual odyssey. Beautifully written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb and A Hole in the World, Making Love is at once a revolutionary document of sexual frankness and a breathtaking erotic manifesto, a book that will challenge and liberate every reader, male and female. Making Love is a stunning departure for Richard Rhodes--a compellingly truthful work of art that marks the first time a major author has written with such complete and unapologetic candor of his most intimate experiences, fantasies and thoughts. As Rhodes himself writes:. "I wrote Making Love to explore a part of daily life that has been cut off from open discussion for centuries. I wanted to describe honestly one man's personal experience--my personal experience--of sex and of physical love. I wanted to try to understand how that common experience shaped my life from childhood up to the present, how it helped me work through the trauma of child abuse, what I learned from it about my partners, what it contributed to intimacy and in coming to love. Men and women will find intimate experience here to compare with their own. "Explicit description of sexual experience has long been taboo. For that reason, some readers will find Making Love shocking at first. Knowledge is always better than ignorance. Pain and shame poison the air behind too many locked bedroom doors. When the shock wears off, I hope readers will appreciate my candor."
John Dunn 1992 on literary arts archive project he was on with his wife Joan
Didion
from the library computer--here temporarily until I get the book--there are many points about this book which interest me greatly:
.
"Making Love is a brilliant, illuminating and often shocking exploration of one man's sexual odyssey. Beautifully written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb and A Hole in the World, Making Love is at once a revolutionary document of sexual frankness and a breathtaking erotic manifesto, a book that will challenge and liberate every reader, male and female. Making Love is a stunning departure for Richard Rhodes--a compellingly truthful work of art that marks the first time a major author has written with such complete and unapologetic candor of his most intimate experiences, fantasies and thoughts. As Rhodes himself writes:. "I wrote Making Love to explore a part of daily life that has been cut off from open discussion for centuries. I wanted to describe honestly one man's personal experience--my personal experience--of sex and of physical love. I wanted to try to understand how that common experience shaped my life from childhood up to the present, how it helped me work through the trauma of child abuse, what I learned from it about my partners, what it contributed to intimacy and in coming to love. Men and women will find intimate experience here to compare with their own. "Explicit description of sexual experience has long been taboo. For that reason, some readers will find Making Love shocking at first. Knowledge is always better than ignorance. Pain and shame poison the air behind too many locked bedroom doors. When the shock wears off, I hope readers will appreciate my candor."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 2, 2021
Would really love to read the sequel.
July 15, 2024
Heartbreaking, tender, steamy and at times assuming.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews