From a book review by Times book critic Dwight Garner that the Times issued this week: "Kinky details are allowed to crawl in. Mr. Christgau says he masturbated when young to the Song of Solomon (the Bible book, not the Toni Morrison novel)."
It seems a bit hypocritical of Mr. Garner to criticize the book author, Robert Christgau, for allowing such details to crawl in, when Mr. Garner himself specializes in including them in his own reviews.
A post here back in September enumerated at least five previous instances in the past four years in which Mr. Garner wrote about masturbation. Smartertimes observed then:
Editors used to keep these matters out of the newspaper, but Mr. Garner seems to be making a kind of game of seeing how far he can push the limits, or showing that those limits that used to exist no longer apply at all, at least to him. Meanwhile, readers lose out, because lots of good and serious books about public policy matters are ignored by the Times daily review column. But books that include a mention or description of masturbation somehow get laudatory coverage from the book critic.
This most recent example brings the total to six instances in four years in which this one Times book critic tackled the topic of masturbation.