Defending Pleasure Noted Gourmet Speaks Out Passionately For Enjoyment Of Life’s Finer Things, But His Attack On Naysayers Is Strangely Muted
“The Pleasure Police”
By David Shaw (Doubleday, 307 pages, $23)
As the millennium closes, David Shaw worries. He worries that the things he holds dearest - a good cigar, vintage wine, glorious food - are being soundly discredited, especially in America.
“We may well be the most anxious, frightened society in history,” he observes in his new book, “The Pleasure Police.”
“Instead of enjoying the advantages of modern life, we spend all our time worrying about its (alleged) disadvantages. Almost every day, it seems, we read and see and hear about a new (purported) threat to our health, safety and happiness.”
Pleasure has become anathema. Anyone who has too much fun is suspect. After a hard day at work, we return home to work harder depriving ourselves of the very things we once worked for: relaxation, indulgences, fantasies.
Lunches are skipped for exercise, though, as Shaw notes, “wouldn’t it be healthier to take a break from hard work by relaxing over a simple meal rather than working even harder on Nautilus or NordicTrack?”
Shaw, media critic for the Los Angeles Times, collected historical information, current statistics and a trove of anecdotes to demonstrate that contemporary behavior is often ludicrous.
Although most adults do not have a problem with alcohol, the assumption is that we have become a nation of dipsomaniacs.
We are bombarded with constant scoldings from an absurd lot of baby sitters: television actors, sports stars, even beer bottles. Consequently, even moderate drinkers feel guilty about enjoying a glass of wine, especially on a school night.
As a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, Shaw is known for being tough on his colleagues and eluding popularity contests. In criticizing newspapers, he has never spared his own employer.
But “The Pleasure Police” is remarkably tame. Like a nervous fencer, he lunges at a subject only to retreat several paces. He attacks the hysteria over second-hand smoke yet spends pages denouncing the evil of cigarettes.
He writes about the pleasures of sex, then declares “in this era of AIDs and unwanted teenage pregnancy, I would be the last to encourage promiscuity.” That sounds remarkably defensive. Could it be that the pleasure police have gotten to Shaw more than he thinks?
There are some keen observations here, especially on how the religious right and politically correct left are linked in their condemnation of pleasure. But Shaw founders at identifying the larger origins of our current climate.
There is some silly musing that the closing of the millennium “does strange things to some people.” (No sex tonight, dear, I am worried about that 21st century!) Once again, those evil Puritans are given too much credit for our less-than-wanton ways. And journalists are criticized for jumping on every health and cancer study the second it is released, making sure that nothing is safe for human consumption.
But there is a great deal the author missed. Our confusion about personal liberty is inherent in the Constitution. We will fight to the finish for our right to privacy, to do whatever we please, but we will also champion free speech to say what we wish about others.
Shaw can smoke that cigar, but he cannot stop a stranger from telling him to put it out.
The new passions for abstinence and dieting have as much to do with an aging populace, with a less forgiving metabolism, than it has to do with the calendar. As for the constant worries about disease, people are fighting old age more fervently today precisely because they can.
In a nation that has always craved larger, better and more, why is Shaw surprised that people would not opt for longer?
It is not just the speed and lack of restraint in our age of information, but also the sheer glut. Americans have the ability to know more than ever, from the sex lives of strangers to the contents of a Snickers bar. And knowledge can be a killer of pleasure. In fact, it is the bounty of everything - food, alcohol, leisure, information - that may have as much to do with the attack on fun as anything. Americans suffer from an embarrassment of riches, liberties and choice. Perhaps, due to guilt or confusion, we are putting up walls, policing our own freedoms, limiting choice.
Shaw rightly admits that “The Pleasure Police” is “a very personal, very subjective book.” Interlaced with his reporting is a memoir of pleasure.
As a writer, Shaw is startlingly honest and open - perhaps too much so. For while his arguments are, for the most part, sound and well documented, Shaw’s personal history sets him apart from his readers.
He shares with the reader that he had a “menage a trois” in college. (Why?) A gourmet aesthete of almost epic proportions, Shaw ships his wine ahead for all domestic vacations and brings his own stock to many restaurants. He caters his meals on airlines. Before indulging in his first cigar - in a restaurant in Switzerland - Shaw phoned a physician in Los Angeles to get his blessings.
And there is far too much - as well as too much hyperbole (“cigar smokers have become the most vilified pariahs of all”) - on this rarefied habit practiced by only 9 million Americans.
An assimilated Jew, Shaw also used a portion of this book for a brief spiritual exploration, consulting rabbis on the Talmud’s approval of recreational sex. Interesting, but Jews, like cigar smokers, are a small minority in this country. There is also far too much on Shaw’s young son, Lucas.
It is lovely that Shaw loves his child so much; I just did not want to know about Lucas’ first sips of wine or the moment he discovered his private parts.
“The Pleasure Police” should have been either a ribald memoir of pleasure, or a clear yet fearless discourse on the death of fun. Only the rarest of writers can pull off the hybrid book. Despite his love of fun, Shaw is not among the lucky few.