Review: Sex and the Stewardess

Sex and the Stewardess by John Warren Wells
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

John Warren Wells was a pseudonym used by Lawrence Block for a whole series of these supposedly sociological/cultural studies of sexual behavior during the Sexual Revolution in the mid-late 1960s and early 1970s. Here we have "interviews" with stewardesses conducted by Wells. Made up, of course. There are interviews with eight typecast stews: the swinger, the good kid, the hooker, the celebrity hound, etc. Lots of made up biography and armchair psychology and cliched fantasy about hyper-sexual stewardesses. In the introduction it is suggested that stewardesses have replaced farmer's daughters as the new male fantasy (this is 1969). "She is every man's dream mistress, pleasant and poised, neatly groomed and becomingly coifed, cool under stress, always smiling, and - because she is booked on another flight tomorrow morning - as conveniently disposable as an air sickness bag." Even if this ilk of book is all fictional it is an interesting cultural time-machine.

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