Sexual Pensees Hardcover - 2006

Media reviews

"Once again, Bruce Jay Friedman proves that wit and irony are sometimes the only appropriate response to the sexual imperative. Sexual Pensees is at once funny and salacious. Keep it by the bedside."
— Jay McInerney

"Sexual Pensees is essentially a confection, consisting of little anecdotes and pastiches about Friedman (or some stylized version of him) having sex and thinking about having had sex. Some of the tiny haiku and koan-like reminiscences are on the order of Woody Allen: "It annoyed him that he had lost a woman he cared about to a herring czar." Others bear a certain philosophical acceptance: "With the help of Viagra, he returned to sexual form, so to speak, at age seventy. Oddly enough, he had mixed feelings about this sudden renewal." The book is illustrated with drawings that look a little bit like outtakes from the original The Joy of Sex, and the whole thing is infused with a sweetness and a distinct lack of young-man's urgency."
— Meg Wolitzer in Nextbook

"Friedman does the essential task of rescuing sex from the three P’s- porno, prurience, and pomposity…. These are funny tales of people at their most naked, letting it all hang out, even if they happen to be fully clothed. We’re never more ourselves than when we’re doing the sexual dance. It’s not just for men, or for women, but for adult people who want to laugh, even cry, about what other adult people go through when it comes to topic A. It’s like a blast of fresh air in our polarized, insane times where gay-bashing preachers are outted and sex is once again a dirty word. The drawings, by Andre Barbe, are done with taste and wit and a nice dollop of French perversity.
— Ken Krimstein, Culture Catch