Is Sex Necessary? or Why You Feel the Way You Do

Thurber and E.B. White try their hand at satirizing the “sex and marriage” guides popular during their time. Both are brilliant writers; the amount of work they put into their writing, even on something so light, shines in every perfectly constructed sentence and witty turn of phrase. Thurber's drawings show less exacting work, but equal genius.

The great writing can't cover for the standard “men are from Mars, women are from Venus” humor, and I was disappointed the book didn't stick to the structure of its source material. Instead, it's a series of disconnected essays that begin in a faux-scientific tone on one topic of sexuality or another and meander into absurd anecdotes, almost forgetting their original premise entirely each time.

I got extra mileage out of this because of my interest in seeing what popular, erudite sex humor looked like circa the late 1920s. I picked this up from my grandparents' house along with one of the books it satirizes, which gave it some nice context.