"Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex" by Mary Roach; W.W.
Norton; 319 pages; $25.
Mary Roach, who has been called America's funniest science writer, prefers
to research her books in person, "to report things as they happen." That can
be a problem when the topic is sex.
For her new book she traveled far and wide - England, Egypt, Taiwan, Denmark
- to visit laboratories studying the physiology of such things as arousal,
orgasm and impotence.
Not surprisingly, she wasn't always welcome to look over the shoulders of
the volunteers in action.
She got around that by volunteering herself. For an ultrasound scan of
"two-party human coitus," she even brought along her husband, Ed.
"It was less awkward than people imagine," Roach said in a phone interview
from Oakland, Calif., where she lives. "It was more like a medical procedure
than sex."
Although our culture is often described and derided as obsessed with sex,
there are huge gaps in our understanding of it - what happens in the body,
and why, and how, in Roach's words, "to make it happen better."
When she learned a few years back that there are actually people who study
this, Roach decided it was time for somebody to peek behind the closed
doors. Even if it meant being called a pervert.
"My husband's family, they're all wonderful people, but I'm sure they think
I'm a little strange," Roach said. "Certainly there are all manner of things
being said about me behind my back."
Roach, 49, has an unusual background for a science writer. She grew up in
New Hampshire, the second of two kids, born to a father who was 65. "It was
difficult bringing friends home," she said. "They always wanted to know who
the geezer was."
She studied psychology at Wesleyan, an eclectic place that "fostered the
notion that you are a nifty, unique individual" - perfect training, in other
words, for moving to San Francisco after graduation with no earthly idea
what to do for a living.
Incurably curious, she looked for work by thumbing through the phone book
and calling places that sounded interesting, like the California Prune
Advisory Board.
"I knew it had something to do with prunes, but I couldn't imagine who they
would be advising," she said. For some reason the folks there "were
suspicious of my call."
Eventually she landed in P.R. at the San Francisco Zoo, working in a trailer
next to the gorillas and handling queries about elephant wart-removal. On
the side, she freelanced for newspapers and magazines, and her funny touch
caught the eye of editors at places like National Geographic and Outside.
Her first book, "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers," came out in
2003 and garnered both critical praise and a place on The New York Times
best-seller list. Entertainment Weekly called it "gross, educational, and
unexpectedly side-splitting."
The second book, "Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife," was a best-seller,
too.
"She has a huge heart, a strong sense of empathy for the oddball, and she's
willing to go to great lengths to find and report stories from the
hinterlands of understanding," a Chicago Tribune reviewer wrote.
Roach said her lack of scientific training can be a plus. She's forced to
get her subjects to talk about their work in layman's terms so she can
understand it. Readers benefit from the clarity.
And as an outsider, she can spot absurdities that often escape the deeply
immersed, such as the time one scientist told her, with a straight face,
"masturbation is a touchy area."
"Bonk" is full of footnotes - too full, according to some early quibbles
from reviewers. "I left very little out," Roach admitted, laughing. But many
of the asides are also among the book's funniest moments.
(One PG-13 sample: "The patent includes three pages of drawings, including a
penis wearing a ghost outfit, another in the robes of the Grim Reaper, and
one dressed up to look like a snowman. I tried to call the examiner listed
on the patent, Michael A. Brown, but he has left the U.S. Patent and Trade
Office. And who can blame him.")
Roach said she's not particularly funny in person. "Nobody ever tells me I
should be doing stand-up," she said. "And I'm not a storyteller. The humor
is a thing I do in a room by myself."
What she found interesting about the sex research, she said, is "the fact
that there are still some very basic things about physiology we don't
understand" - such as whether there's a connection between female orgasm and
conception. (That one took her to a pig farm in Denmark, for a chapter
called "The Upsuck Chronicles.")
She hopes those who read the book "will be tremendously entertained and
learn a lot. And if along the way they find that their sex life is improved,
great."
Roach worries that she's running out of things to write about, because "95
percent of science isn't funny." But she's already at work on her next book,
about space exploration. The research for that one figures to be really out
there, even for her.
