A Pocket History of Sex in the Twentieth Century: A Memoir [Hardcover]

Jane Vandenburgh (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2009

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In her memoir, novelist Vandenburgh (Failure to Zigzag) tells of her dysfunctional Protestant family, rebellious adolescence, a flirtation with lesbianism, a survived car crash and famous friends. She begins the narrative at age nine, barefoot and scrappy, skipping school and wreaking unsupervised havoc with her two brothers (aged 13 and five) in 1950s Redondo, Calif. Their bohemian bliss sours when their father, who had been arrested several times for hanging around gay bars, commits suicide, sending Vandenburgh's already fragile, mentally unstable mother off the deep end. She loses custody, and Jane and her brothers are sent to a suburb of L.A. to live with their aunt, a fervent Christian who has four children of her own, as well as an adulterous husband. Then comes suburban ennui and rebellion: short skirts, shoplifting, watching porn. Vandenburgh's story is engaging, though feels familiar-in fact, Vandenburgh has written parts of it before (Failure to Zigzag features a crazy, often negligent mother; The Physics of Sunset focuses on an adulterous affair in Berkeley, Calif.). In a neat narrative twist, she has an affair with a person who ends up being the publisher of her book.
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Review

"The author has mined this material before: Her acclaimed first novel, Failure to Zigzag (1989), featured a teenage narrator with a mentally disturbed mother and a father who committed suicide—all drawn, we see here, from Vandenburgh's difficult early years in California. Her depressed and troubled father, with whom she was very close, was repeatedly arrested in gay bars. He committed suicide by throwing himself off the roof of his office building in 1958, when she was just nine years old. Her mother, a freethinking artist, quickly spiraled downward into insanity, and was committed to a mental hospital. Vandenburgh and he two brothers were taken to live with an aunt and uncle who already had four kids of their own. The first half of the book, which recalls this lonely and troubled childhood, is exquisitely written and awash with poignant, moving details, like her description of how she left down the lid of her record-player after her mother was committed so that it would keep trapped forever the air her mother had breathed. Vandenburgh also does a wonderful job of documenting her teenage sexual awakening—hence the memoir's title—and deftly captures the era: 'Drugs haven't happened yet, but you can feel them on the edge of things, waiting like the crisp paper wrapper on a noisy present.' The second half, which jumps ahead to adulthood, doesn't quite match the tour-de-force of her childhood memories, but the whole is nonetheless striking and insightful. Effectively employing the author's fiction-writing talents to tell her life story, this memoir will likely cause readers to seek out her novels." —Kirkus

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint (March 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 158243459X
• ISBN-13: 978-1582434599
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,448,340 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Superb Shared History, May 15, 2009

By 

Nancy Spiller (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Pocket History of Sex in the Twentieth Century: A Memoir (Hardcover)

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.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pocket History is Funny, Outstanding, March 2, 2009

By 

H. Vandenburgh "Sociological Materialist" (Albany, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Pocket History of Sex in the Twentieth Century: A Memoir (Hardcover)

Outstanding. When many memoirs are nothing but exegeses on disease episodes, or attempts to lend "fine writing" to life history, this gets it in a way that's sensible and novel. Few can write as transparently as Vandenburgh does here-- the words never get in the way, and it's damn funny. Integration of the peculiar social history of the 50s-60s is artfully done-- and there are new insights aplenty. Sex is handled refreshingly, neither fetishized nor dismissed, in a way that seems to almost transcend the usual requirements for gendered writers to make their case "in one way or another." The first part of the book is one of the stronger accounts of adolescence I have ever read. A masterpiece.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing Memoir, June 7, 2010

By 

Washington "Seal" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Pocket History of Sex in the Twentieth Century: A Memoir (Paperback)

I loved this book. The writing is spacious--that is to say, it breathes. I was incredibly moved by this memoir. The author has a wide scope, so that I felt carried as a reader. There is a depth to the prose that comes from skilled writing, wit, and perspective.