In Praise of Vice
This article is only a portion of the full article. If you are already a premium subscriber please login. If you are not a premium subscriber, please subscribe for access to all of our content.

Sex and Isolation and Other Essays
by Bruce Benderson
University of Wisconsin Press. 208 pages, $24.95

BRUCE BENDERSON’S iconoclastic new novel minces no words when it comes to the present state of contemporary culture: he believes a lot of things have changed for the worse. It is Benderson’s contention that a major shift in the culture occurred when virtual reality, or the “on screen” information age, replaced the tactile world of public space. He blames the Internet with its “continuous electronic swaddlings,” which have taken the place of “countless hunts in the streets of midtown New York for sex.”