SEE Magazine
Copyright © 1998. All Rights Reserved.
IN PRINT
BY SCOTT LINGLEYREVIEW
The Sex Chronicles: Strange but True Tales from Around the World
By Lance Rancier
(General Publishing Group)A very alluring title, no? One might imagine author Rancier, a self-styled archaeologist of the horizontal urge, as a sexual Ripley, challenging us to witness his strange-but-true discoveries and believe it - or not! What perversions must he have catalogued, what apocrypha about legendary potency, stamina and proportion. To say nothing of the secrets of technique.
The Sex Chronicles, however, does not indulge us in much that could be construed as lascivious, salacious or even ribald. Here, for your edification, are 250-some-odd pages of terse factoids, culled from civilizations that span the globe, regarding all aspects of close interpersonal relations from puberty to courtship rituals to pregnancy.
Rancier offers no prefatory note nor any real commentary, allowing the fruits of his research to stand alone. And this is no carnival sideshow; you won't find nature's cruel mistakes paraded for your curiosity and guilty arousal. In fact, much of what's contained between these covers is fairly chaste and, well, quaint
· "In some places the moon was thought to be responsible for fertilizing the crops. For this reason, the women of these tribes took care to sleep out of the moonlight, for fear of being impregnated by moonbeams."
· "The central South American Chorowti women, during intercourse, expressed their pleasure and desire by spitting in their partners' faces."
· "At one time in the ancient Far East, cats feet were used as dildos."
All these cultural tidbits are proffered as on one big tray, organized by category, but otherwise laid out smorgasbord-style. And like any smorgasbord, there's more presented than you really care to imbibe, and some of the items get a little desiccated. There are pages and pages of menstrual taboos and laws regarding marriage from cultures that haven't done anything, never mind having sex, in eons. Not exactly the kind of thing that makes you say, "Hey, the Sumerians in 4000 BC referred to sexual intercourse as 'putting the hot fish in her navel.' I do that too!"
If only Rancier shared with us his fascination for sexual arcana, gave us some hint of the exigencies that drove him to such extensive travel and research. More compelling yet would be an account of his adventures unearthing the private details of distant worlds and their peoples - a little Indiana Jones to go along with the ample helping of Margaret Mead.
Unfortunately, what might have been a challenging intellectual feast, with philosophical insights from a guy with a universally appealing area of expertise, ends up as a groaning buffet table. There's lots to choose from but, overall, The Sex Chronicles want for a little personality.
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