Future Sex
In Future Sex, Witt explores internet dating, internet pornography, polyamory, and other avant-garde sexual subcultures as sites of possibility. She observes her encounters with these scenes with a wry sense of humor, capturing them in all their strangeness, ridiculousness, and beauty. The result is an open-minded, honest account of the contemporary pursuit of connection and pleasure, and an inspiring new model of female sexuality—open, forgiving, and unafraid.
Hardcover, 224 pages.
Selected Reviews
“...a smart, funny, beautifully written account of contemporary women trying to understand their sexual desires—and fashion physically and emotionally safe ways to express them.” —Benoit Denizet-Lewis, The New York Times
“Insightful, generation-defining . . . Future Sex is Joan Didion meets fetish porn.” —Laura Adamczyk, The A.V. Club
“Even at its funniest (and it’s frequently very funny) there is a curiosity and an openness to Witt’s writing that prevents the laughs ever feeling as though they are imposed by force from above . . . Part of what makes Future Sex so compelling, and so fascinating, is the indeterminacy of its author’s own position in relation to the world she’s writing about . . . An engrossing and illuminating experience.” —Mark O’Connell, Slate
“A gutsy first book … Witt is a sharp observer of the behavior and the motivations of others, a wry, affectionate portraitist of idealistic people and the increasingly surreal place they belong to.” —Alexandra Schwartz, The New Yorker
“The greatest ambition for a reported book is to offer a true history of the present; Emily Witt has succeeded in an effort few even attempt . . . Witt is not only a committed reporter, but a writer of rare range; her language is as tough-minded, stark, and provocative as it is tender, careful, and exposed. Future Sex glitters in its poignancy. It makes itself felt far beyond the usual expectations.” —Gideon Lewis-Kraus, author of A Sense of Direction
“Emily Witt is our perfectly ambivalent yet somehow smart and hungry guide on this casually lurid tour of female driven porn, idly pervy webcams, Burning Man, and polyamory. If you think of those boring books that probably still send single straight women off to Europe to meet a nice man, Future Sex looms even more clearly into view as a hotter choice for actually almost anyone.” —Eileen Myles, author of Chelsea Girls
“Emily Witt’s Future Sex is moody, dark, and powerful, brilliantly gloomy and inspiringly funny. This is the best book by far I’ve read on women’s sexuality in the new century, because Witt is the finest writer. I don’t know if this is the future of sex, but the future belongs to Emily Witt.” —Mark Greif, author of Against Everything
“I highly enjoyed Future Sex―a moving, novelistic, exploratory, wryly funny, darkly colorful, many-storied book about 21st century romantic relationships, the rarity of love, the female body, polyamory, birth control, childlessness, internet dating and porn, and the search for more than mere contentment.” —Tao Lin, author of Taipei
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