Well, we know the title now, at least, and the date.

And the memes have already begun.

And one of the things they’re reminding us of, that it is good for us Old People to remember and the young folk to learn, is just how gross and awful the ’70s really were…

…and hirsute…

…and I can say authoritatively, from my own memories, how unwashed.

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In case there are readers too young to remember, however, I am happy to fill in the punchline. The photo above is not the official cover of Pope Francis’ Exhortation, which we expect to be published in a week. It comes from the cover art of an early edition of the “Joy of Sex: a gourmet guide to lovemaking,” published in 1972, that served as a kind of sexual political manifesto by the Sexual Revolutionaries who have since then almost succeeded in totally eradicating 2000 years of Christian culture.

I’m not going to include any more of the revolting and quasi-pornographic images that it contained, but obviously I can’t stop the curious from googling it. But this is what the 70s was all about boys and girls, and this is what Francers and his buddies are working to bring back.

Oh, how well I remember that book. We hippie kids were usually given it as a primer, usually just before puberty. (I was six when it was published, and I think my mother got the 1976 edition and just had it on the shelf in our living room. I was officially encouraged to start looking at it when I was 12 or so.) In the Left Coast hippie world I was raised in, it probably would have been considered irresponsible for a parent not to give the book to the kids. Especially to the daughters.

It might also be a good time to point out that when the noisome book came out (ahem) it was deliberately titled to, at the same time, mock and ride the publishing coattails of one of the world’s most popular and enduring cookery books, a veritable icon of domestic virtue, the Joy of Cooking.

Any book titled the “Joy of…” something comes from the massive success of the JoC, first published in 1936. But not only was the title of the sex book meant to remind people of the cook book as a deliberate mockery, it was meant to reassure people that sex could be treated with the same kind of clinical and objective approach as cookery. It was intended to become the kind of book that no house should be without, as ubiquitous and normative as Mrs. Rombauer’s book.

I have two editions of the JoC, one that was my mother’s in 1986 and the 1946 edition that had belonged to the mother of a good friend. It is not only a manual on cooking but can serve as a kind of text book for people wanting to bring back the social graces that our friends the Boomers tried so hard to eradicate. I have used it to teach young people how to cook, particularly young men who often leave home with little knowledge even on the most basic tasks. It has large sections on the nutritional content of foods, on food preservation and even some of the social history of the various foods we eat. It’s a textbook for making a house a home and stands as a kind of summation of everything our culture used to take for granted.

In short, if you want your house to look like June Cleaver’s, you need a good ’50s edition of the Joy of Cooking.

If instead you want to go to Hell, and send your kids there, do be sure to pick up a copy of Dr. Alex Comfort’s disgusting magnum opus.

Perhaps now would also be a good time to recall that we have already been informed that one of the ghost writers of Pope Francis’ 200-page offering, was this man. Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernández, author of the seminal (ahem) theological work on kissing.

Yep. “Heal me with your mouth” the art of kissing.”

Starting to detect a pattern?

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