The Naughty Bits

May 28, 2001
Jack Murnighan, former editor-in-chief of sex-friendly Web site Nerve.com, gathers short erotic excerpts from works by more than 70 authors from the Marquis de Sade to Thomas Pynchon, Sappho to Jeanette Winterson, Ovid to J.G. Ballard. Culled from his popular weekly online column, The Naughty Bits (also Brit slang for genitalia) is billed as "the book that literary perverts have been waiting for." One of several recent Nerve.com tie-ins, it's a great idea and one needn't be especially literary or perverted to enjoy it. Murnighan's thoroughly good-natured, erudite introductions add to the bawdy fun.

April 15, 2001
Most people don't read a good book or have great sex nearly as often as they should; then again, most people don't know that the Great Works e.g., Joyce's Ulysses, Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, and Plato's The Symposium are as rife with "naughty bits" as a frat house is with hormones. The general public has Murnighan, former editor-in-chief of the popular sex web-zine Nerve.com, to thank for gleaning the gamut of world literature for amorous interludes, from the painfully romantic to the puke-inducing. Murnighan first excerpted these findings in the web site's "Naughty Bits" column, of which the cr me de la cr me is collected here. Besides giants like Shakespeare, D.H. Lawrence, Dante, and Herman Melville, lesser-knowns, such as 1960s French teen novelist Catherine Breillant, medieval English autobiographer Margery Kempe, and lesbian playwright Holly Hughes, make appearances alongside contemporary cads Larry Flynt and Kenneth Starr. Almost more savory than the wildly varied extracts are Murnighan's learned prefaces. The fan of erotica, the student of literature, and the aspiring sex worker will all relate to his language, a strangely seamless mix of lit crit and potty talk. Highly recommended for erotica collections and larger world literature collections. Heather McCormack, "Library Journal"

Copyright 2001 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.