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Welcome to the Eric Mataxas Show. It's the show that's about two hours long and it's the show about everything.

So which is it? Find out right now.

Here's everything you want in the host, Eric Mataxas.

I don't know what he just said, but I disagree with it.

Folks, it's the Eric Mataxas Show. We call it the show about everything because we like to talk about many different things.

For example, today we're going to be talking about Renee Gerard.

Now you wonder who is that? Well, that's a whole point. We're going to find out.

I know something of him and his work, but we have today on the line Cynthia Haven, who has written a book about Renee Gerard.

The book is titled Evolution of Desire. Cynthia Haven is in Stanford, not Stanford, Connecticut.

It's Stanford, which is the university in California. She's written for the Times Literary Supplement, the Nation, the Washington Post, and on and on it goes. Cynthia, welcome the program.

Good morning, Eric. Thank you.

It's morning where you are, perhaps. I'm, of course, on the other coast.

I'm so glad to have you on. I was really fascinated a number of years ago with Renee Gerard.

I cannot even remember what got me interested in his work.

And then I talked to John Wilson. You may know John Wilson, books and culture.

I feel appreciate it today about him. When I saw your book, I thought we've got to get you on to help remind me what it is that fascinated me about him when I was closer to his work.

I helped my audience understand who he was, such a major figure. So I thought it would be valuable. And let me ask you before we begin the most obvious question, what put it into your mind to write this book, which just came out this year?

A friendship. He was a good friend of mine. And his ideas, as you know, it's an edifice of thought. His ideas flowed sequentially. People tend to grab a piece of them and describe it.

And I thought he might be more approachable if there was something that would world the life and the work into one whole so I wrote a biography.

It's with a tough job. I can only imagine. I mean, in some of the reviews of your book, it's classic. Anytime you write it by biography, people criticize you for X and other people will criticize you for negative X.

You know, you put too much of his life in. You didn't put enough of his life in you criticize him too much. You didn't criticize him enough. Now he's an interesting figure because he is so sorry, Broly, he spent most of his life writing it.

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