Olympia, by Édouard Manet, 1863. Musée d’Orsay, Paris, France.

Eros

Volume II, Number 1 | winter 2009

The Toilette of Venus, by François Boucher, 1751.

Preamble

Transits of Venus

By Lewis H. Lapham

The commodification of sex and love has shaped our attitudes toward both over the past half century, but eros is more than just dollars and cents.

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Three Lovers, by Théodore Géricault, 1817-20.

Not About the Money

By William H. Gass

Sensuality is often mistakenly associated with prostitution and pornography, matters with which true sensual appreciation has only distant connections.

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Map

The Grand Tour

Sexual hazards from around the world and throughout time.

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1684 | London

Failing to Rise to the Occasion

Damned to the hell of impotence.More

1927 | Milan

To Virginia Woolf

Vita Sackville-West sends one out to the one she loves.More

c. 1861 | Amherst, MA

Rowing in Eden

Wild nightsMore

Charts & Graphs

Impotent Prose

Winners of the Bad Sex in Fiction Award.

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American writer William Styron.

Black and white photograph of C. P. Cavafy wearing thick-rimmed black glasses.

Photograph of American writer Francine Prose.

American poet Wallace Stevens.

Color photograph of American novelist and short-story writer Richard Wright.

Painting of Benjamin Franklin reading a batch of papers next to a classical bust.

Black and white photograph of German novelist and essayist Thomas Mann.

Black and white photograph of American writer and critic Anatole Broyard.

Love lasteth as long as the money endureth.

- William Caxton, 1476

Molière & Albert Camus

Lapham’sDaily

Mountainous Landscape with Approaching Thunderstorm, by anonymous, nineteenth century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Van Day Truex Fund, 2006.

Roundtable

Fear of White Genocide

By Kevan A. Feshami

Tracing the history of a myth from Germany to Charlottesville. More

U.S. secretary of agriculture Sonny Perdue meets with German minister of food and agriculture Christian Schmidt, 2017.

DÉjÀ Vu

Equal Climates

2017:

U.S. Department of Agriculture bans words related to climate change.

-350:

Aristotle denies that the climate is changing.

More

The Fall of Man, by Titian, c. 1550.

LQ Podcast

#13 Stephen Greenblatt

Lewis H. Lapham talks with Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve. More

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