The Chapman Report [Paperback]

Irving Wallace (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1960

Based on the "Kinsey Reports" where Dr. Alfred Kinsey conducted interviews with thousands of men and women on their sexual habits, Irving Wallace's blockbuster novel "The Chapman Report" concerns the interviewing of a number of society ladies from a community in California known only as "The Briars". These interviews, intended to extract data for a book on the sexual habits of married women, lead the reader on a trail through the lives and loves of several very different women, and the men in their lives. At the same time, the novel examines the lives of those conducting the interviews, their morals and motives, and at last becomes a treatise on love, and sex, and everything in between.

From the back cover of the 1960 paperback edition:

"Not just Wash. I wanted Perowitz and Lavine and Bardelli - I wanted them all..."
"I don't nkow how I could have endured marriage without Fred. He's so different from my husband."

At first it was asmusing. Then it was titillating. But as the respectable ladies of Briarwood Revealed the most intimate details of their sex lives to the eminent Dr. Chapman and his researchers, they found themselves face to face with long hidden emotions and dangerous desires.

The Chapman Report is an International Bestselling novel, made into a Warner Bros. movie starring Jane Fonda in one of her earliest roles.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 383 pages
• Publisher: Signet (January 1, 1960)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451078616
• ISBN-13: 978-0451078612
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 4.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,779,626 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The beginning, December 21, 2011

By 

Joel, Holden "Barry Eysman MY REAL NAME" (TN..) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Chapman Report (Paperback)

With what uncommonly good grace did Irving Wallace write. The Chapman Report was the first of his novels made into an incredibly bad movie. It was so bad that Efram Zimbalist Jr. seemed like the greatest actor in the world. Like Jack Nicholson in Easy Rider.

Wouldn't they both love those comparisons? The novel itself is very good. It turns the spotlight not solely on the sexology report externally, but internally. It's about the questioners themselves, as well as the women, which is a brilliant idea. We learn that those who seem to know everything really don't.

We see the women of this upscale Los Angeles neighborhood, and is a time machine really back to the 50s, or the 60s too. Wallace was a wonderful storyteller. He never sat still really. He was so eclectic. He took on tough issues huge issues and he did well. Chapman's colleagues are very flawed and Chapman is very wrong about a lot of things.

Amazing how influential people are. Reading it again reminds me how much fun reading used to be. We see Wallace at the beginning of his novelist career. We see women who are so entangled that it seems mostly right that men rule with sex and power and money. The book is, in many respects, not really dated that much.

Like his other novels, it is relevant, as timeless, and of his time as well. Sexual subjugation is something of a parlor game. Many of the women, some of the men, see the hemming in, the using of another person, and knowing it, but that is how it is done. And that over rides everything.

The researchers, statistics and overlays and generalizations actually hurt more than help. And Chapman is a good man, as are some of his colleagues, like Paul for instance who finds himself involved too closely and therefore, the boundary line has been crossed.

Another surveyor finds his ex-wife here, at the Briars, and becomes a stalker and a creep, and that helps the unraveling of the cool, distant men from on high who fall, some who fall quite far. Wallace never plays it safe. He never does what you think he's going to do. The Plot is one of the finest pieces of wonderful captivating magic.

It's almost 1000 pages long and at the ending, you realize what an extraordinary thing this is, and it's happening before your eyes and you did not see it. The Chapman report discovers how needful we are, how we sublimate, and how we ostracize, it's doing the deed a few times a week and as is said in the novel, about as meaningful as a sneeze.

You might expect this novel to be tawdry, but it is far from it. The intriguing part of the book is this, Chapman mentions he knows the statistics and the facts don't go together very well sometimes. If a woman enjoys sex she is a nymphomaniac. If a woman has an affair, she is automatically wrong. Wallace challenges this and everything.

It's been a long time since I have read the word "nymphomaniac." We have new words now, but they all mean the same thing. It's so bizarre really why sexuality is such a conundrum.

The dialogue, the descriptions, the feelings, the thoughts, the delusions, the desperation, all of it is about life and how it's knitted together and the question always is what happens when a person becomes cognizant of the fact it doesn't have to be this way. Irving Wallace gave us really ourselves.

Chapman was constantly playing mental chess with Dr. Jonas, so he had his own priorities and selfishness and hurt pride, and mostly it's a novel that says nobody knows you more than you do. It's a novel of purpose. It's intelligent and thoughtful. Mr. Wallace is able to get inside the mind and heart of each separate person.

And in a real way it's good to have you back old friend.