What do you think?
Rate this book
Polymath: The Life and Professions of Dr. Alex Comfort, Author of The Joy of Sex
We have so much more to learn about (the author of) The Joy of Sex !, this biography covers it the life of a young poet, pacifism, anarchist activism, academic life, the 60s counterculture, starting over in California, The Joy of Sex , aging and death.
Polymath is the first biography of one of the most remarkable and wide-ranging intellectuals of the second half of the 20th century. Alex Comfort was a British poet, novelist, biologist, cultural critic, activist, and anarchist, and the author of the international bestseller, The Joy of Sex . He played a vital role in making gerontology (the study of aging) a viable branch of modern science, energizing the direct-action movement for nuclear disarmament, revitalizing anarchism as a political philosophy in the post-World War II decades, and persuading 12 million readers of his most popular book to banish guilt and anxiety from sex in favor of pleasure and closer human understanding.
The Joy of Sex spent eleven weeks atop the NYT bestseller list—and seventy-two weeks in the top five. But the book took on a life of its own as a couple generations of youth and adults used The Joy of Sex as a tool to understand pleasure outside the realm of guilt and shame and opened the doors to a healthier sexual culture.
Comfort liked to say that everything he did was part of "one big project": to bring about a new consciousness, grounded in science, of the importance of personal responsibility in human relationships, including the obligation to disobey when authority was being exercised abusively. Polymath traces the intersection in Comfort's life and work between biology and literature, anarchism and humanism, sex and sociality, and how his writings, research, and activism continue to shed critical light on the moral and political choices we make today. Laursen's book relates the event-filled life of a brilliant and complex figure, including his victory over a possibly career-ending disability, his tumultuous second marriage, his struggles with the scientific establishment, and the fascinating story of the making of The Joy of Sex . It will be vital reading for anyone who wants to understand how the personal became political and the political became personal in the last 100 years.
Polymath is the first biography of one of the most remarkable and wide-ranging intellectuals of the second half of the 20th century. Alex Comfort was a British poet, novelist, biologist, cultural critic, activist, and anarchist, and the author of the international bestseller, The Joy of Sex . He played a vital role in making gerontology (the study of aging) a viable branch of modern science, energizing the direct-action movement for nuclear disarmament, revitalizing anarchism as a political philosophy in the post-World War II decades, and persuading 12 million readers of his most popular book to banish guilt and anxiety from sex in favor of pleasure and closer human understanding.
The Joy of Sex spent eleven weeks atop the NYT bestseller list—and seventy-two weeks in the top five. But the book took on a life of its own as a couple generations of youth and adults used The Joy of Sex as a tool to understand pleasure outside the realm of guilt and shame and opened the doors to a healthier sexual culture.
Comfort liked to say that everything he did was part of "one big project": to bring about a new consciousness, grounded in science, of the importance of personal responsibility in human relationships, including the obligation to disobey when authority was being exercised abusively. Polymath traces the intersection in Comfort's life and work between biology and literature, anarchism and humanism, sex and sociality, and how his writings, research, and activism continue to shed critical light on the moral and political choices we make today. Laursen's book relates the event-filled life of a brilliant and complex figure, including his victory over a possibly career-ending disability, his tumultuous second marriage, his struggles with the scientific establishment, and the fascinating story of the making of The Joy of Sex . It will be vital reading for anyone who wants to understand how the personal became political and the political became personal in the last 100 years.
760 pages, Paperback
Published August 22, 2023
2 people are currently reading
2141 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 23, 2023
”Personal responsibility and freedom from convention.”
The above evaluation by one of Alex Comfort’s contemporaries of the congruence between The Joy of Sex and Comfort’s other works specifies Eric Laursen’s accomplishment in his splendid biography. He shows how far Comfort’s writings reached in the fifty books and monographs that made him renowned. Polymath’s engaging style (notably close to Alex Comfort’s own), and its author’s mastery of 20th century history and literature, are rare. Because of the latter especially, each context of Comfort’s career is painstakingly revealed. Each context offers new perspectives.
The book lauds Comfort’s belief that close, joyous communion exists only in a social unit small enough to make trust a first priority. This is probably essential to his yearning for anarchism: human society is truly loving only in very small, compatible groups, where imperious authority cannot exist. Laursen’s chapter on “The Anarchist” makes a provocative comparison between _1984_ and Comfort’s equation of Authority and Delinquency (the title of one of his most influential works).
From a childhood trainspotter, and early admirer of Magnus Hershfield and Marie Stopes, Comfort became a student of pacificism at Cambridge. He supported the working classes on the occasion of George VI's coronation, and his controversies involving Orwell and Americans such as Dwight MacDonald are the early marks of a leftist public intellectual. One of Laursen’s special achievements is the revelation of his subject 's poetic reputation, of which the early “The Atoll in the Mind " is exemplary..
Comfort’s writings as he became a "public intellectual" range from natural history (20 papers on mollusks!) through human aging, to sensitive awareness of the damage done by the era’s assertions about homosexuality and literary censorship. He was nothing if not an “encyclopedist,” a term the various shades of which, bright and dark, Laursen is adept at calling to attention.
For this reviewer, the high point in a work with many revelations about Comfort is how successful he was in his plethora of essays on how to combat the long-honored link between pleasure and fear: “the “poisoned embrace.” He is candid about how impossible it is to be definitive on how to do this. .
The conception, marketing, and reception of _The Joy of Sex_ is uniquely revealing. From diverse contacts and influences Laursen is able to specify in scrupulous detail the connection between sexual energy and undiluted pleasure. This leads to a fine understanding of what Comfort meant by the “tastefulness” of his manual .
For Comfort, The joy of sex was that it was a kind of “indoor sport. ” It was also a kind of cookbook, alluding to _The Joy of Cooking_, with “starters” and “main courses.” Its uniqueness lies in a rejection of the high seriousness associated with a subject previously tainted with shame and prurience.
The last chapters are the best example I know of elegiac admiration. Laursen has captured for posterity that rarest of species, a public servant with a creative, anarchist ideal born of deepest respect for humanity.
The above evaluation by one of Alex Comfort’s contemporaries of the congruence between The Joy of Sex and Comfort’s other works specifies Eric Laursen’s accomplishment in his splendid biography. He shows how far Comfort’s writings reached in the fifty books and monographs that made him renowned. Polymath’s engaging style (notably close to Alex Comfort’s own), and its author’s mastery of 20th century history and literature, are rare. Because of the latter especially, each context of Comfort’s career is painstakingly revealed. Each context offers new perspectives.
The book lauds Comfort’s belief that close, joyous communion exists only in a social unit small enough to make trust a first priority. This is probably essential to his yearning for anarchism: human society is truly loving only in very small, compatible groups, where imperious authority cannot exist. Laursen’s chapter on “The Anarchist” makes a provocative comparison between _1984_ and Comfort’s equation of Authority and Delinquency (the title of one of his most influential works).
From a childhood trainspotter, and early admirer of Magnus Hershfield and Marie Stopes, Comfort became a student of pacificism at Cambridge. He supported the working classes on the occasion of George VI's coronation, and his controversies involving Orwell and Americans such as Dwight MacDonald are the early marks of a leftist public intellectual. One of Laursen’s special achievements is the revelation of his subject 's poetic reputation, of which the early “The Atoll in the Mind " is exemplary..
Comfort’s writings as he became a "public intellectual" range from natural history (20 papers on mollusks!) through human aging, to sensitive awareness of the damage done by the era’s assertions about homosexuality and literary censorship. He was nothing if not an “encyclopedist,” a term the various shades of which, bright and dark, Laursen is adept at calling to attention.
For this reviewer, the high point in a work with many revelations about Comfort is how successful he was in his plethora of essays on how to combat the long-honored link between pleasure and fear: “the “poisoned embrace.” He is candid about how impossible it is to be definitive on how to do this. .
The conception, marketing, and reception of _The Joy of Sex_ is uniquely revealing. From diverse contacts and influences Laursen is able to specify in scrupulous detail the connection between sexual energy and undiluted pleasure. This leads to a fine understanding of what Comfort meant by the “tastefulness” of his manual .
For Comfort, The joy of sex was that it was a kind of “indoor sport. ” It was also a kind of cookbook, alluding to _The Joy of Cooking_, with “starters” and “main courses.” Its uniqueness lies in a rejection of the high seriousness associated with a subject previously tainted with shame and prurience.
The last chapters are the best example I know of elegiac admiration. Laursen has captured for posterity that rarest of species, a public servant with a creative, anarchist ideal born of deepest respect for humanity.
October 14, 2024
Interesting biography of the author of “The Joy of Sex”…
… But as it turned out he was so very much more than that. I was not familiar with Alex Comfort other than his famous tome on lovemaking, but I was delighted to learn he was a true Renaissance man with significant interests in medicine, natural biology, anarchist and pacifist politics, satire, poetry, gerontology, and even metaphysics and philosophy of mind. Laursen’s book is exhaustive in detailing Comfort’s career, which for the early years can make for dry reading. But it does paint a comprehensive and evolutionary picture of a thoroughly interesting and engaged intellectual, often reminding me of Bertrand Russell.
… But as it turned out he was so very much more than that. I was not familiar with Alex Comfort other than his famous tome on lovemaking, but I was delighted to learn he was a true Renaissance man with significant interests in medicine, natural biology, anarchist and pacifist politics, satire, poetry, gerontology, and even metaphysics and philosophy of mind. Laursen’s book is exhaustive in detailing Comfort’s career, which for the early years can make for dry reading. But it does paint a comprehensive and evolutionary picture of a thoroughly interesting and engaged intellectual, often reminding me of Bertrand Russell.
July 8, 2025
Hi Eric Laursen
I hope you’re doing well!
I came across your book and wanted to reach out. Did you know that Amazon ranks your book higher not only by sales but also by how many readers view and review it?
I run a community of over 3,000 real readers who enjoy discovering new books and sharing honest reviews.
If you’d like to learn more about how this can help your book’s visibility, just reply “Yes” and I’ll share the details step by step.
Best,
mitchelllauren
I hope you’re doing well!
I came across your book and wanted to reach out. Did you know that Amazon ranks your book higher not only by sales but also by how many readers view and review it?
I run a community of over 3,000 real readers who enjoy discovering new books and sharing honest reviews.
If you’d like to learn more about how this can help your book’s visibility, just reply “Yes” and I’ll share the details step by step.
Best,
mitchelllauren
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews