"Promiscuity is like never reading past the first page. Monogamy is like reading the same book over and over"
About this Quote
Cooley lands the joke with a librarian's cruelty: both promiscuity and monogamy get framed as bad reading habits. The line pretends to offer a tidy moral comparison, then quietly refuses it. Promiscuity becomes skimming - serial beginnings, no consequence, no deepening plot. Monogamy becomes rereading - devotion that risks turning into ritual, familiarity that can calcify into a kind of chosen blindness. The sting is that neither posture is granted the prestige we usually assign it.
The metaphor works because reading is one of our most respectable forms of desire: private, attentive, aspirational. By mapping sex onto books, Cooley makes us feel how we manage novelty and meaning. "Never reading past the first page" isn’t just about boredom; it’s about a refusal to be changed by what comes after the hook, the part where characters get complicated and the reader loses control. "Reading the same book over and over" isn’t just loyalty; it’s a suggestion that some people mistake repetition for depth, or use it to avoid the risk of new narratives.
Cooley, an aphorist with a cool eye for self-deception, is writing in a late-20th-century moment when sexual liberation and domestic ideals were loudly competing scripts. His real target isn’t sex so much as our appetite for metaphors that absolve us. He makes both camps sound slightly ridiculous, forcing a third question: are you actually reading the person in front of you, or just collecting openings and rereads to protect your own story?
The metaphor works because reading is one of our most respectable forms of desire: private, attentive, aspirational. By mapping sex onto books, Cooley makes us feel how we manage novelty and meaning. "Never reading past the first page" isn’t just about boredom; it’s about a refusal to be changed by what comes after the hook, the part where characters get complicated and the reader loses control. "Reading the same book over and over" isn’t just loyalty; it’s a suggestion that some people mistake repetition for depth, or use it to avoid the risk of new narratives.
Cooley, an aphorist with a cool eye for self-deception, is writing in a late-20th-century moment when sexual liberation and domestic ideals were loudly competing scripts. His real target isn’t sex so much as our appetite for metaphors that absolve us. He makes both camps sound slightly ridiculous, forcing a third question: are you actually reading the person in front of you, or just collecting openings and rereads to protect your own story?
Quote Details
| Topic | Relationship |
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