Piaceri singolari

The sole subject of this unique book of short fiction is masturbation, a practice both universal and (pace Mark Twain and Philip Roth) virtually taboo. Sixty-one vignettes record the imaginative varieties of this solitary activity in prose that is playful, intimate, urgent, quirky, and humane. The soloists range in age from nine to eighty; the locales from Australia to Zaire; the means of masturbation from the commonplace to the bizarre. The young man in Gaza with his hair dryers, the woman in Manilla with her cello bow, the long-eared bat, the charioteer, the candelabra - this swirl of unlikely individuals and objects is brought together in such a way that it floods a world born fresh once more. The late Georges Perec, in describing Singular Pleasures as "a great ecumenical work," rightly underscored the essential generosity of an apparently scandalous enterprise, where in the act of making love with ourselves we throw our imaginations open to a union with anything the universe itself has fended and fostered into being. The book is illustrated throughout with watercolors by Francesco Clemente that offer an intriguing counterpoint to Mathews's fictions.