The Frankfurt School of theorists argued that the culture industry works by sublimating our desires into the consumption of commodities. These desires are offered to us in the messages of mass-produced culture, which "appear to offer escape; they suggest pleasure, spontaneity and 'something metaphysically meaningful'" (Adorno). But in the end, say these theorists, such messages are like the pancake makeup of a Felliniesque old whore.

But since the mechanism of capitalism is endless co-optation, ultimately intellectuals and their culture have fallen prey to this whoring as well. Nothing stays virginal in this Gigeresque machine of eroticized industry.

So, we readers are prime meat for the wiles of coy book covers, creamy, yielding pages, and deep, masculine print. We want to be seduced by penetrating minds. You can tell it by the way we walk around in bookstores, fondling the books, gasping with pleasure at new titles. Chain bookstores operate with the come-hither cock-tease aesthetic so central to capitalism. The operating notion is that satisfaction is always somewhere else, just beyond reach. The juxtaposition of the bland, middle-class décor with hints of a "Calgon, take me away" possibility of escape only serves to heighten the sexual tension.

And as with all addictions, the seduction is ritualized. Certain signs and encoding (in used bookstores this means cats, obscure witticisms on the door, the smell of dust and book glue) signal that this is the place where desires can be satisfied. There is the casual browsing, in which the pace quickens, the heart flutters, the knees quake. Eyes light upon possibilities, then cast them aside. Finally a partner is found, and in the inner sanctum, the couch, we submit to pleasure. Later, there is the cruel light of afternoon, when we must leave this intercourse for the harsh reality of our workaday lives.

Until the Marxian utopia of free love is established (monogamy is, as Engels said, only a necessity of private property), we'll go on sublimating our basest urges into the sensuousness of the book.