Twenty-eight-year-old author Katie Roiphe ignited a storm of controversy with her 1993 book "The Morning After: Sex, Fear, and Feminism on Campus," a critique of the '90s feminist movement. Her sophomore effort, "Last Night in Paradise," is less polemical but equally well-observed.
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The book makes intriguing reading, with an emphasis on description and analysis rather than on proving a particular point. As Roiphe said in an interview with The Michigan Daily, "I kind of deliberately wrote a book that couldn't be condensed into three minutes on 'Good Morning America.'"
This is an apt description. Part memoir, part social criticism and part a series of anecdotes and vignettes, "Last Night in Paradise" covers a lot of ground.
Roiphe said the book primarily grew out of her interest in "morality, and the way we search for morality. What are the ways in which people make sense of their conflicted feelings about sex? I think AIDS is one of those ways."
The book includes several scenes related to AIDS, such as a classroom discussion of safe sex, and a chapter on Magic Johnson's 1991 announcement that he had AIDS. It also discusses ways in which the public's attitude has changed, going from the hedonistic '60s and '70s to the safety- and health-obsessed '80s and '90s.
Part of this change in attitude, Roiphe said, is due to baby boomers' aging. "They went through the one-night stands; they had a great time. But as they're raising their own kids they think, I don't want them to go through that."
However, this opinion is not only held by parents. Some of the more striking scenes in the book feature teen-agers talking earnestly about the evils of unprotected sex. As Roiphe said, "I think a lot of younger people feel that they kind of want rules. I don't think total freedom really makes people happy."
Some people, certainly, are happiest when operating under strict guidelines. In "Last Night in Paradise," Roiphe illustrates this idea in an anecdote about Christine, a young woman committed to abstinence and religious morality. This story stands out sharply from the rest of the book, perhaps because, as Roiphe wrote, "it's easy to feel, amidst all the tolerant, glossy fragments of advice, a great drive toward the stern, old-fashioned morality that would pull it all together."
This drive toward morality is really the focus of the book, and Roiphe stated that it would probably be no different in the future.
"Last Night in Paradise" doesn't present a pat conclusion, instead summarizing again the contradictory forces of impulsiveness and caution.
"If I had kids, I wouldn't want them to be raised with this total culture of caution," Roiphe said. "You have to go through it yourself and make mistakes. I don't feel like I have the answers - I have the questions."
While "Last Night in Paradise" is not the last word on sex and morality, it's a good place to begin thinking about these questions.
Katie Roiphe will read from "Last Night in Paradise" on Wednesday at Borders.