A review by bibliocyclist
Thy Neighbor's Wife by Gay Talese

3.0

"The spirit is dead. The secular feast is ended."

Farther upstate was a farming community named Bryn Athyn that was inhabited by many Reich readers who believed that there was indeed a correlation between monogamy, possessiveness, jealousy, and war; but this agricultural community, like so many others that were populated by campus-bred radicals, would flounder financially because its members spent too much time reading quality paperbacks and pontificating around the fireplace and not enough time in the barn milking the cows.

Everywhere, cars that wouldn't run and pumps that wouldn't pump because everybody knew all about the occult history of tarot and nobody knew anything about mechanics. Everywhere, people who strove for self-sufficiency and freedom from the capitalist system but accepted food stamps and handouts from Daddy, a corporate sales VP. Sinks filled with dishes, cows wandering through gates left open, and no one to blame. Everywhere, instability, transiency. Somebody was always splitting, rolling up his bag, packing his guitar and kissing good-bye--off in search of the truly free, unhungup community.

"Murder is a crime. Describing murder is not. Sex is not a crime. Describing it is."