Is Sex Necessary? or Why You Feel The Way You Do: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Is Sex Necessary? or Why You Feel The Way You Do, credited to James Thurber; E. B. White, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of Is Sex Necessary? or Why You Feel The Way You Do by James Thurber; E. B. White. Read in English by Zach Hoyt. From the Foreword: “During the past year, two factors in our civilization have been greatly overemphasized. One is aviation, the other is sex. Looked at calmly, neither diversion is entitled to the space it has been accorded. Each has been deliberately promoted. In the case of aviation, persons interested in the sport saw that the problem was to simplify it and make it seem safer. They introduced stabilizers and emergency landing fields. Even so, the plain fact remained that very few people were fitted for flying. With sex, the opposite was true. Everybody was fitted for it but there was a lack of general interest. The problem in this case was to make sex seem more complex and dangerous. This task was taken up by sociologists, analysts, gynecologists, psychologists, and authors; they approached it with a good deal of scientific knowledge and an immense zeal. They joined forces and made the whole matter of sex complicated beyond the wildest dreams of our fathers. The whole country became flooded with books. Sex, which had hitherto been a physical expression, became largely mental…….” From the Preface: “Men and women have always sought, by one means and another, to be together rather than apart. At first they were together by the simple expedient of being unicellular, and there was no conflict. Later the cell separated, for reasons which are not clear even today, although there is considerable talk. Almost immediately the two halves of the original cell began experiencing a desire to unite again-usually with a half of some other cell. This urge has survived down to our time. Its commonest manifestations are marriage, divorce, neuroses, and a little less frequently, gun-fire.” - Summary by E. B. White and James Thurber To see Thurber's drawings from this book please follow this link: PDF file (99MB)

Recording facts

• Recording title: Is Sex Necessary? or Why You Feel The Way You Do
• Author credits: James Thurber; E. B. White
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 12
• Listed recording duration: 2:18:22

Catalogue topics

• humor
• parody

Track guide

1. 00 - Epigraph, Note To Confused Readers, Foreword, and Preface — 14:30
2. 01 - The Nature Of The American Male: A Study Of Pedestalism — 17:42
3. 02 - How To Tell Love From Passion — 11:05
4. 03 - A Discussion Of Feminine Types — 13:17
5. 04 - The Sexual Revolution: Being A Rather Complete Survey Of The Entire Sexual Scene — 11:40
6. 05 - The Lilies-And-Bluebird Delusion — 11:47
7. 06 - What Should Children Tell Parents? — 12:35
8. 07 - Claustrophobia, Or What Every Young Wife Should Know — 16:32
9. 08 - Frigidity In Men — 12:37
10. 09 - Answers To Hard Questions — 7:40
11. 10 - Glossary — 6:17
12. 11 - A Note On The Drawings In This Book — 2:40

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.