STORY OF ""J"": The Author of The Sensuous Woman Tells the Bitter Price of Her Crazy Success

by Terry with John Garrity Garrity ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 17, 1984

With an assist from her brother, the once-notorious ""J"" tells how she came to write that 1970 bestseller--and how the subsequent pressures (lawsuits, celebrity, hate-mail, etc.) aggravated a latent ease of ""biochemical mood swing"" into a decade of mental illness. A ""nice"" girl from Minnesota, ""a Carol Burner look-alike who dressed like a schoolteacher,"" Garrity was a publishing PR-woman in 1960s N.Y.--while exploring her own repressed sexual potential via masturbation and other ""J"" standbys. (""It suddenly hit me! Maybe I had to learn to have orgasms!"") So when her erstwhile boss Lyle Stuart decided to commission ""a sex book written by a woman for women,"" Terry was an obvious choice; she took the assignment but insisted on absolute anonymity (largely because of her mother back in Minn.). When the book took off, however, ""Judas"" Stuart secretly leaked the identity of ""J""--leading to the hate-mail, distress for Garrity's quite-understanding mother (soon ill with cancer). The pressure for a follow-up led to a hectic collaboration on Sensuous Man with brother John--and lover/publisher Len, who would soon shift from tenderness to greed. Next Stuart started holding back royalties--leading to years of ugly lawsuits. And then Garrity, based in Palm Beach after a traumatic hysterectomy, began to suffer blackouts on the talk-show circuit, compulsive eating/buying sprees, suicidal depressions, anxiety attacks, etc. The eventual diagnosis? ""Biochemical mood swing,"" with ""endogenous depression""--treated with antidepressants and psychotherapy to reasonably good effect. Through most of this somewhat overextended memoir, Garrity avoids the sensationalism and self-pity suggested by that dreadful subtitle; though not always sympathetic or genuinely revealing, she remains a moderately likable victim of the celebrity roller-coaster. And, while this is only sporadically involving as a Snake Pit confession/recovery tale, there's obvious draw for those who fondly recall the Sensuous phenomenon--and for anyone interested in some vividly unpleasant (unabashedly biased) views of Lyle Stuart as man and publisher.

Pub Date: July 17, 1984

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Morrow

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1984

Categories: NONFICTION