A Pocket History of Sex in the Twentieth Century: A Memoir

by Jane Vandenburgh

Born into “a certain kind of family”—affluent, white, Protestant—Jane Vandenburgh came of age when the sexual revolution was sweeping the cultural landscape, making its mark in a way that would change our manners and mores forever. But what began as an all-American life soon spun off and went spectacularly awry.
Her father, an architect with a prominent Los Angeles firm, was arrested several times for being in gay bars during the 1950s, and only freed when her grandfather paid bribes to the L.A.P.D. He was ultimately placed in a psychiatric hospital to be “cured” of his homosexuality, and committed suicide when she was nine. Her mother—an artist and freethinker—lost custody of her children when she was committed to a mental hospital. The author and her two brothers were raised by an aunt and uncle who had, under one roof, seven children and problems of their own.
In the midst of private trauma and loss, Vandenburgh delights in revealing larger truths about American culture and her life within it. Quirky, witty, and uncannily wise, A Pocket History of Sex in the Twentieth Century is a brilliant blend of memoir and cultural revelation.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Autobiography

374 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2009

About the author

Jane Vandenburgh is a fifth-generation Californian, who says, “My writing concerns itself with place — both temporal and geographic — and how place entwines with personal history. I’m interested in what’s its been to be a Westerner and a female and a member of Generation Huge, the 77 million who came of age just as the Civil Rights and antiwar movements were causing the culture of the U.S. to drastically change.”

She has taught literature and writing at U.C. Davis, at Georgetown and at the George Washington University in Washington, DC, and has been a Writer-in-Residence at St. Mary’s in Moraga, California.

Married and the mother of two children, she is also the author of the novels, Failure to Zigzag and The Physics of Sunset, the nonfiction book, The Architecture of the Novel, and the memoirs, A Pocket History of Sex in the Twentieth Century, and most recently, The Wrong Dog Dream. She lives in Point Richmond, California.

Reviews

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

The New York Times says this book is "Memoir as fever dream," and I think that's pretty accurate. It's the most right brain oriented, stream of consciousness book I've read since Virginia Woolf. Yet, it is organized and each section has something important to show us--it's kind of like being in an impressionist painting.
Jane's life is full of bodily experienced sensual detail, so when things go haywire, which they do--I don't want to give away the plot, the reader is intimately involved and keeps turning the pages
After a long and interesting childhood section, she skips to an adult life where she's trying to make her way despite the traumas and tragedies of her past. But you can see how the past has marked her, as it does all of us. She is the author/narrator and the story is personal and specific, but universal enough that we become emotionally entangled in the story
Full immersion in this book will take you away from your regular life.

[Alice · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful web of stories from a beautiful novelist. Jane's writing is magical and so brave. Her turbulent childhood could have produced a writer filled with self-doubts -- instead her stories are imbued with forgiveness and hope. Wonderful, wonderful. (and if you don't believe me, check out her review in the Times!)

[Mary Rakow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why Art Matters.......

If one picks up a "Pocket History" of anything, the assumption is that the author as achieved some kind of control over the subject. Some reduction. A distillation which will save the rest of us the trouble. Handy like that. Giving answers.

Which is why it's the perfect title to Vandenburgh's memoir in which nothing of that sort is given. Nothing is "understood" in a way that will last forever. Nothing contained in a tight skin. Nothing made even remotely tidy.

Things push and pull, tenderness and indifference, the gift of humor against the limits of its power to assuage, "belonging" and the hatred of such an absurd idea, a notion of the "normal" as illusive as it is painfully longed for, the constant shifting of disguises laid over the grief of childhood, that nimble resourcefulness.

And in spite of that, and through that, and perhaps because of that refusal to reduce, to tidy up, we have in the last chapters one of the most breathtakingly concrete and transcendent accounts of love between two persons I have ever read or seen with my own eyes.

This is why art matters. Not that we learn about another family or decade or cultural moment that is not our own. Art doesn't matter because we get new content. It matters because our world is expanded by how another person sees. We look up from the last page, as with all of Vandenburgh's work, and say, Geez. In the mess of the particular, I have seen the holy.

[Bap · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is little sex in this pocket history of sex. What you have is a memoir that is powerful and affecting. Jane deal with memory of her fractured family, her father committing suicide, in despair with designing soulless buildings and harassed for his bi-sexuality, when she is 9 or ten and her mother descending into madness as the children form a band the three of them to cope before the mother is institutionalized and the children placed with an aunt wiht four children of her own and a disintegrating marriage.

The first half of the book ends with Kennedy's assasination. (the end of an era to be sure) It is tight and taut. The second half of the book is more impressionistic and has been criticized by several reviewers put off by the change of tone. But, I think it is because childhood memories are so vivid when time is so slow, almost stands still for reflection and assessment whereas as a person gets older time races far faster with a cacaphony of stress, noise, and responsibilty. It is difficult to assess and to process, so it necessarily is more impressionistic.

For Jane life is an amalgamation of the living and the dead, that is for her irresistable. She tries to understand her father and mother and wishes she could repair there incomplete and tragic failure to cope while at the same time knowing that there struggles and adventures are part of her psyche that she would not trade, and could not trade, for they are so much of what Jane is.

I have heard many of Jane's stories over the years, but to have the interwoven in this lustrous book makes me appreciate her all the more.

Anyone who has had the good fortune to come into contact with Jane must read this book as should all others that enjoy good writing and story telling.

Finally, reviewers have struggled with how to take this book. All praise the first half, man are disappointed , unjustifiably in my view, with the second half but the Sunday New York Times Book Review in the form of a graphic review by cartoonist and author Alison Bechdel that is a first for the Book Review and is terrific in its insights and originality. It si aso great fun and fitting for the offbeat zaniness of Jane.

[Nancy Spiller · Rating 5 out of 5]

This memoir picks up where Jane Vandenburgh's novel Failure to Zigzag left off, an unforgettable trip that begins with a noir childhood in Southern California of the '50s. The author's father, a respectable architect with homosexual desires, can't construct a future for himself within the lie he's living, commits suicide, leaving behind a bohemian leaning wife and three young children. Her widowed mother goes mad and loses custody of her children to prosperous relatives living in the San Fernando Valley, where the author finds an alternate reality to the Sunset Magazine myths of the time. The religiously pious, philandering adults maintain an alcohol induced calm around the backyard pool while the drug addled kids surf their way through a sexual revolution. Local color includes a neighbor cop who plays porn films for his teen daughter's girlfriends. Vandenburgh brings a clear eye and a sharp wit to both the hard and hilariously oddball times she's experienced. As an adult who has survived a bad marriage, raised good children and found real love, she brings a Buddhist's graceful acceptance to the telling of this deeply felt and exquisitely observed life, a life her ill-fated parents tragically could never have imagined.

[Richard]

I had the honor of meeting Vandenburgh in Seattle recently and she is a lovely woman - her husband and publisher with Counterpoint Press (Jack Shoemaker) was also at the reading. He figures prominently in her fictional account of a married woman having a tryst "The Physics Of Sunset" which rasied a few eyebrows when it was released. But that is the beauty of Vandenburghs work - like all good writers she is a truth teller.

[Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful woven stories that hypnotize with playful language and direct honesty.

[Allison Nack · Rating 1 out of 5]

The title of this book is so misleading that it is laughable, and I would be willing to bet that the author chose it to catch a few readers who buy by title. I choose it because I love memoirs, and Vandenburgh's story seemed compelling: born into a family with old money, raised by parents who chose to be hippies to teach their children the value of a life lived outside the boundaries set by their own parents. As an additional teaser, we are told that Vandenburgh's mother was a raging alcoholic who was constantly in and out of mental institutions, and her father was a closeted homosexual who commits suicide. Very good material for a memoir, no? Yes, good material, but completely squandered by the writer. There is a vagueness to the narrative, and the jumps backward and forward in time are confusing. Vandenburgh doesn't offer up enough self-reflection or information to produce any type of identification with her, so we are left with facts flatly stated, and occasional digressions into her thoughts about the literary and/or political world that she is traveling in. After 235 pages I still felt I did not know her, and with 154 pages to go, I decided I didn't have the desire to find out. I have a feeling that even if I had finished it, I still would be left unsatisfied. In summation: great title, inferior memoir.

[Monica · Rating 3 out of 5]

A memoir of the author's growing up in Southern California, with a bisexual father harassed by LAPD vice who soon commits suicide, and a mother later admitted to psychiatric hospitals. I wasn't too into the book after the first few chapters of the 1st section (it's divided into two sections); however, unlike another reviewer here, I thoroughly enjoyed the second half, of Vandenburgh's life in Berkeley. Didn't want it to end. Overall, though, the book is a bit all over the place, which sometimes works (I enjoyed her long, digressing stories, going back and forth in time sometimes), and sometimes doesn't. It could have used some editing, or maybe have been separate essays. Parts of it definitely deserved four stars, though.

[Anastasia · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a very disappointing read. I heard an interview with the author on NPR and became very interested in her story. She has a fascinating past, but unfortunately, I don't think her book was that interesting. She told rather than showed, in that some very fascinating things were told rather than described. Her sentences were long, often taking up a whole paragraph, and the second part of her book was rambling, unfocused, certainly not linear. A better read, in my opinion, on a similar topic (memoir of having a quirky family of origin, one of whom was gay and committed suicide) is Alison Bechdel's Fun Home, a graphic novel.

[Kirsten · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've been struggling with this book all week, and I'm finally giving up. The first half is the author's childhood memories of growing up in a bohemian California family, and while it lacks direction occasionally, the writing is lovely and she keeps circling around to some beautiful moments. The second half, however, is just an unreadable mess, and I'm giving up on page 228 because I can't handle this anymore. I'd say the first half rates 3 1/2 stars, and the second half 1 or less, so I'm averaging my rating to 2 stars.

[Fanny · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a lush and darkly funny book, disorienting but very real. It took me a while to get through because, well, it's a long book, but also because the author's voice is so distinctive that I found myself being haunted by it in between reading sessions, and had to take time off here and there. Plus, much of it is quite sad. But when returning to its pages I always read many pages at a time, eager to be back in Vanderburgh's world. Plus, as an East Bayer, I loved how she characterized our weird little corner of the world.

[Alison · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't believe that Jane had the courage to write this book. Her writing is beautiful and funny, an honest examination of the family and events that had shaped her life. The only chapter I did not like was one on DC but I am defensive of my hometown:) It is hard to read a book by someone you know but I kept forgetting that it was Jane's life and just getting lost in the writing.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

absorbing,candid, funny, very smart account of author's unconventional life experiences to date (she's still having them). She jumps around a lot in time and incident in a stream of consciousness style that works for me. Excellent social commentary too. Tragedies are trumped by the author's wild spirit.

[Maris]

I think I liked the book? She employs a lot of stylistic elements that I typically hate (exceedingly casual or conversational, italics for days), but I believe they served their purpose. I'd give it a try.

[Tasha · Rating 2 out of 5]

The covers of this book are too far apart.

[Amanda · Rating 1 out of 5]

A poorly-written mess. Why all the hype?

[Yuliana]

She had me from the very first sentence. Beautiful.

[Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

The true story behind the fictional coming-of-age novel "Failure to Zigzag" . . .

[Loren Jenkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not about sex but about life with Jack & Jane.

[Ashly Sheldon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Got bored and stopped reading this one about halfway through.