Thomas Maier is the author of Masters of Sex: The Life and Times of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the Couple Who Taught America How to Love. Masters of Sex has been adapted into a Showtime television series now in its second season. Maier's other books include The Kennedys and Dr. Spock. An investigative reporter for Newsday, he lives on Long Island, N.Y.
Q: Why did you decide to write a biography
of Masters and Johnson?
A: I interviewed Masters in 1994 as an
assignment at Newsday, where I worked as a reporter. I was working on a book
about Dr. Spock, the baby doctor, and then I wrote about the Kennedys. The idea
of writing a book about Masters and Johnson stuck with me for 10 years.
I [eventually] pursued this project;
Masters had died, but I convinced Virginia Johnson to cooperate. Once she did
agree, she provided a great deal of insight. The family of Masters provided me
with his unpublished memoir, and their contemporaries made Bill come alive. The
idea of a man and a woman who studied love and sex, and were emblematic of the
sexual revolution—to me, that was something irresistible.
Q: What did Virginia Johnson think of
the book?
A: Virginia Johnson liked the book. She
didn’t get a chance to look at it until after publication. She was very
generous with her time and with her insights. One of the bigger surprises
[included in the book’s new afterword] was that she finally acknowledged: I
guess I really did love Bill Masters. She had denied it in so many ways in my
initial interviewing of her. Her actions contradicted her claim: I never really
loved him. They were always mesmerized
by each other; they both defined the other.
Q: You write, “The improbable
Pygmalion-like rise from a lowly secretary to medical research partner—though
made possible by Masters—was primarily motivated by Johnson herself…” What did
you learn about the nature of their partnership, and what surprised you most as
you researched the book?
A: I was fascinated by the fact that Masters gave her so
much credit. In many ways, he was the top doctor in his field in St. Louis.
[Dr. Spock’s] wife, Jane, had given help to Dr. Spock, yet he never really
acknowledged it. Masters gave Johnson equal billing. Some people have said that
Bill Masters’ greatest sign of love for Virginia Johnson was his willingness to
share credit. Most men, particularly of his generation, would never have
thought of that.
I was surprised also by [Johnson’s work in] developing their
sex therapy…teaching couples to touch one another [after] so much of their
communication had broken down. Someone who was untrained, without a degree, was
able to come up with this therapy that revolutionized so many things!
Q: In the book, you describe Masters’ and Johnson’s
relationship to feminism. Would you say they were feminists?
A: Virginia Johnson is like a lot of pioneering women who
really made a mark in an almost exclusively men’s world, but don’t necessarily
subscribe to a movement. They see themselves as classic rugged individualists,
not necessarily flag-wavers but iconoclastic individualists….[but] they were
[feminists] by their actions.
Q: What about Masters?
A: Bill Masters clearly was a feminist in his actions by his
willingness, in his greatest work, to give equal credit to a woman. He was
being open-eyed at a time in which Americans’ view of sexuality was dominated
by the Freudian male-dominated view.
[Masters’ and Johnson’s work] showed women had a greater
capacity to be multi-orgasmic. He was brave enough and feminist enough to come
up with a scientific finding that many others would have denied. Their first
book, Human Sexual Response, was two-thirds devoted to findings of female
sexuality.
Being the doctor who opened the eyes of half the world to
their own sexuality, and brought medicine kicking and screaming into the
debate, qualifies him as a feminist, even though he was a registered Republican
and lived in a tony section [of town].
Q: You write that Human Sexual Response “transformed the
public discourse about sex in America, opening a new era of candidness never
seen before in the media.” What was the impact of the book at the time, when
sex was not really a topic of discussion?
A: The impact of Masters’ and Johnson’s work was huge. It
made it acceptable to use clinical medical terms about the human body and
sexual interaction…in newspapers, women’s magazines, popular discourse. There
was a dramatic change between 1966, when the book came out, and five years
later. By 1971, clinical discussions of sex in the mass media was widespread,
due to the acceptability that Masters and Johnson brought to their work.
Q: Did you expect your book to be turned into a television
show, and how would you compare the book and the show?
A: The book was at first a failure by any measure. It came
out in April 2009, and it sold all of 4,000 copies. It was at the very depths
of the recession, and no one was talking about sex, but [instead] about keeping
their jobs. My editor was laid off; my
original editor had died.
It really looked like the book was going to be a major
disappointment. Then The New York Times reviewed Masters of Sex in their daily
and Sunday editions, and it spurred a lot of movie and television interest.
Sony bought the rights, and made an agreement with Showtime. They show it all
around the world, in 30 countries. Television has really transformed the
outcome for this book.
It’s been fun to see how the dramatized interpretation has
really enhanced the overall enjoyment of their story. My book is a nonfiction,
completely on the record version of the truth. The Showtime series is a
fictionalized drama based upon my book. It takes details from the book and
explores them in greater emotional depth. It’s very accurate as it shows the relationship
between Masters and Johnson. Michael Sheen and Lizzy Caplan [the actors portraying them] do a [great] job.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I have a new book coming out, When Lions Roar. It’s a
750-page history of the relationship between the Kennedys and the Churchills. I
am really delighted about that book; there are a lot of surprises in that book.
With the new book, I went back to history with the idea of
somewhat getting away from sex, but the world of the Kennedys and the
Churchills had as much sex in it as Masters of Sex.
Of course, it’s [also] about politics, fathers and sons, and
[the question of] what is greatness.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: It’s amusing that some people have said, Yes, but Masters
and Johnson have had a problem with gay conversion. It’s amusing to me because
I’m the one who reported it in my book!
I’m very proud of the fact that in the last five or six
years since the book came out, that whole discussion about gay conversion
therapy has been revisited. It’s been embraced by right-wing folks, who have
provocatively said to gay people that they can change their orientation, and
they point to the Masters and Johnson 1979 book as “proof.”
Of course, I put the lie to that by showing that the cases
were apparently fabricated by Masters. There’s been a lot of revisiting of that
subject, and the book is given credit…I’m glad it’s had an impact.
For all the discussion about sex, I think the book has
helped provoke a discussion about what is love. In a society awash with sexual
imagery, the eternal question of what draws us to one another is at the heart
of the story of Masters and Johnson.
Their story of being mesmerized by one another in the
workplace setting particularly speaks to today’s generation. The younger
generation knows all the mechanics of sexuality, but is clueless about the
mysteries of love. …
The desire to be understood by another person is at the
heart of the book and the television show, and that’s what is grabbing the
audience.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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