The East, the West, and Sex: A History of Erotic Encounters [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Richard Bernstein (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2, 2009

A rich and seductive narrative of the powerful erotic pull the East has always had for the West—a pervasive yet often ignored aspect of their long historical relationship—and a deep exploration of the intimate connection between sex and power.

Richard Bernstein defines the East widely—northern Africa, the Middle East, Asia, the Pacific Islands—and frames it as a place where sexual pleasure was not commonly associated with sin, as it was in the West, and where a different sexual culture offered the Western men who came as conquerers and traders thrilling but morally ambiguous opportunities that were mostly unavailable at home. Bernstein maps this erotic history through a chronology of notable personalities. Here are some of Europe’s greatest literary personalities and explorers: Marco Polo, writing on the harem of Kublai Khan; Gustave Flaubert, describing his dalliances with Egyptian prostitutes (and the diseases he picked up along the way); and Richard Francis Burton, adventurer, lothario, anthropologist—and translator of The Arabian Nights.

Here also are those figures less well-known but with stories no less captivating or surprising: Europeans whose “temporary marriages” to Japanese women might have inspired Puccini’s Madama Butterfly; rare visitors to the boudoirs of Chinese emperors in the Forbidden City; American G.I.s and journalists in Vietnam discovering the sexual emoluments of postcolonial power; men attracted to the sex bazaars of yesterday’s North Africa and the Thailand of today. And throughout, Bernstein explores the lives of those women who suffered for or profited from the fantasies of Western men.

A remarkable work of history: as unexpected as it is lucid, and as provocative as it is brilliantly illuminating.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. œIs the notion of the East as a zone of special erotic possibilities purely a matter of Western fantasy and wishful thinking...? This question is at the center of Bernstein's wide-ranging, critically astute history of the complicated relationship between Western male sexuality and the East. The book opens in 2006 Shanghai and concludes in contemporary Bangkok; in between, we are led through a sweeping yet focused, male-centered history of sexuality, spanning a broadly defined East and West, from antiquity to the 21st century. Bernstein examines Flaubert's sexual exploits in Egypt, where he vividly recorded œa sensual intensity, impossible in the West; British explorer Richard Burton's travels through the Middle East, India and Africa, all exemplified by a sexual artistry uncultivated in Christian Europe; the fascinating case of the secretive Henry de Montherlant, a pederast who spent years in North Africa œgreedy for flesh and eventually took his own life. Former New York Times correspondent Bernstein (Fragile Glory) writes lucidly and with verve. This probing, absorbing and eclectic study critically challenges morally and politically correct interpretations of the Western sexual exploitation of the East. 12 illus. (June 2)
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Review

“Fascinating . . . Accessible, much-researched and far-reaching . . . Bernstein’s book provocatively externalizes, and maps, the heterosexual male erotic mind.”
-Toni Bentley, The New York Times Book Review

“The East, the West, and Sex is the best sort of book about sex: It is replete with anecdotes from history that titillate as they inform and observations on human nature that amuse as they illuminate, all delivered in language and tone that is broadly moral without being moralizing.”
-Tunku Varadarajan, The Wall Street Journal

“Provocative and intriguing . . . Properly high-minded . . . Very good and eminently discussable.”
-Simon Winchester, The New York Times

“Bernstein negotiates this territory with great delicacy and considerable historical knowledge . . . [An] elegantly written book.”
-Laura Miller, salon.com

“Bernstein is very good at telling these stories . . . [He] is brave to insist, in the face of much postmodern academic writing about colonialism, that for various reasons having nothing to do with the West, women . . . were far more readily available in the Middle and Far East than in Europe.”
-Thomas W. Laqueur, San Francisco Chronicle

“Wide-ranging [and] critically astute . . . Sweeping yet focused . . . Former New York Times correspondent Bernstein writes lucidly and with verve. This probing, absorbing, and eclectic study critically challenges morally and politically correct interpretations of the Western sexual exploitation of the East.”
-Starred review, Publishers Weekly

“A survey whose range is almost stupefyingly wide . . . Bernstein’s book . . . introduces the complexity of everyday reality into a world about which it is easy to preach.”
-Colin Thubron, The New York Review of Books

“In his loose-limbed style . . . a diligent scholar pursues a subject . . . intriguing any way you look at it.”
-Kirkus

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; First Edition edition (June 2, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375414096
• ISBN-13: 978-0375414091
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #918,337 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Long Conversation, July 16, 2009

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The East, the West, and Sex: A History of Erotic Encounters (Hardcover)

The very words are exotic - think of the harem, the geisha, the Kama Sutra, all of them indicating the exoticism and eroticism of the East. The sexual culture of the orient (however that got to be defined) has for centuries captivated, first, Western explorers, and afterwards, Western imperialists and visitors. The erotic allure of the East for Western men is the subject of a grand history, _The East, The West, and Sex: A History of Erotic Encounters_ (Knopf) by Richard Bernstein. The author has been a foreign correspondent serving in Asia, and himself has a wife named Zhongmei Li, whom he appreciatively calls "my vision of the East". The topic, then, is close to his heart, and his book is a spectacular history of peculiarities of culture. There is some titillation here, descriptions of acts and accessibilities that cannot help but be curious and arousing, but the historical anecdotes are wonderful illustrations of general human behavior, besides often being amusing. Bernstein has described things as they have been and how things are are, with only an admirably small amount of wondering how they _ought_ to be, and certainly without any prudishness.

They do sex differently "over there". This is a constant theme within Bernstein's book, and the source of the special erotic fascination men have for North and East Africa and Asia. The West had a generally Christian morality, promoting monogamy and often stressing the sinfulness of sexual fun even within marriage. In many Eastern cultures, sex was not tightly linked to love or sin. It was often assumed that men, especially powerful men, naturally would enjoy sexual favors from many women, and that desires were to be satisfied, possibly by a particular class of women. Trained sexual masseurs, courtesans, harem girls, and legal prostitutes all come under Bernstein's broad definition of harem culture. The pattern has continued to modern times. Lt. Col. John Paul Vann was an advisor to the South Vietnamese Army in the 1960s. He had a wife in the States, two girlfriends in separate households in Saigon, and countless bar girls now and then. American servicemen didn't usually have his resources, but all of them knew places to get serviced. Many Vietnam veterans are involved in what Bernstein calls "the latest phase of the long erotic adventure of the West into the East," living in Thailand for warm weather, cheap living, good food, the companionship of fellow vets (they even have official Veterans of Foreign Wars chapters), and of course the accessible women. "Do the arithmetic," one of the vets tells us. "She's 51 years younger than me. Do you think I could have somebody like her in Pennsylvania?"

Bernstein is scrupulous in his understanding that a degree of sexual oppression comes from invading forces, whether commercial or military. He cannot escape that his subject matter forces him to write about powerful and eager males and compliant, often commercial females, so the subject is rife with political incorrectness. Even so, there is a practical give and take to both sides. The Thai bar-girl slang for a foreign man translates to "a walking ATM". There is a story that is not unusual about a bar girl who got her besotted Austrian client to marry her and build her a house. In Thailand, land and houses can only be owned by Thai citizens, so when she moved into the house with her real boyfriend and sought an end to the marriage, he had no claim on the goods. It isn't all greed; most of the girls use their earnings to help poorer members of their families. There might be religious judgments to be made upon the girls or their clients, but it is a clear commercial transaction. The clients should take care not to confuse compliance and service with love, but at the same time foreigners ought to reject notions that these particular women are merely sex slaves. There is no dispute that the money is beneficial; a member of the Thai legislature says, "Which is better as foreign assistance, foreign assistance through sex, or foreign assistance through the government that never gets to the people anyway?" Kipling knew that East was East, and West was West; neither has a monopoly on the "right" way to handle sexual matters. But with all due respect to Kipling, the two do meet, through the centuries and through intimate sensualities. Bernstein's book is an detailed look at the long sexual conversation between two different worlds.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mr. Berstein is a man you'd like to dine with, July 6, 2009

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Pont du Gard - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The East, the West, and Sex: A History of Erotic Encounters (Hardcover)

A fascinating book that kept me engrossed. I wish the author would have elaborated on how Asian harem culture influenced how Asian cultures warred within their own realm... for example, the atrocious sexual crimes practiced by the Japanese during their repeated attempts to conquer China (i.e. Nanking). Of course, this is a personal desire that should not detract from such an excellent book. Conversational in tone, impressive in historical scope, and stunningly easy to read. The author comes across as authoratitive and likable.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A readable work of scholarship and insight, October 5, 2009

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David Robinson (Oakland, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The East, the West, and Sex: A History of Erotic Encounters (Hardcover)

Despite the alluring title, this is a serious work of scholarship.

Bernstein's readable, wide ranging book addresses Westerners fascination with the mysterious East from Victorian novelists slumming in Egyptian brothels to plane-loads of sex-tourists descending on Thailand. In some ways, this book is a counter-blast to Said's Orientalism the premise of which was (in simplified form): sexual mores were no more lax in the East than in the West, it was just the Westerner's need to project their own values on "the other".

Bernstein combines a combination of historical research with contemporary interviews in a style that is lucid and readable. This book comes to some startling conclusions: Maybe there was a sexual reason why many American servicemen volunteered for repeat tours of duty in Vietnam, and there may be worse things in life than being a go-go dancer in a Thai bar catering to foreigners.