The Harrad Experiment

1966 Rimmer, Robert [Henry] (1917-2001). The Harrad Experiment. Los Angeles, CA: Sherburne Press. Rpt. New York: Bantam Books, 1967. 25th anniversary ed. with Exciting New Material. New York: Prometheus Books, 1990. The additions include “The Harrad/Premar Solution” (252-75), an expanded “Annotated Bibliography” (277-90), and “Loving, Learning, Laughter & Ludamus: The Autobiography of Robert H. Rimmer” (291-324). The novel was made into a film in 1973 directed by Ted Post (b. 1918) with a screenplay by Michael Werner and Ted [Theodore Crawford] Cassidy (1932-79). At least one intentional community was founded to put the ideas into practice; see Jack F. “The Harrad Experiment.” Berkeley Tribe 1.25 (December 26, 1969 - January 2, 1970): 4; and Richard Fairfield, “Harrad West.” The Modern Utopian: Alternative Communities of the ‘60s and ‘70s. [Ed.] Richard Fairfield (Port Townsend, WA: Process, 2010), 286-93. A group in Boston briefly published a newsletter called The Harrad Letter (The only known copies are in private hands). DLC, PSt

The good life through sex, but while the emphasis is on the sex, there is a section (225-37) giving the details of a plan for reforming society and the means and stages of doing so, primarily by revamping education with some material on economics and the laws regarding marriage and divorce. Harrad is a college in which men and women are assigned as roommates with the expectation of sexual relations. The men are taught the system of birth control used in the Oneida Community under the leadership of John Humphrey Noyes (1811-86). See also 1968, 1975, 1978, 1980, 1982, and 2000 Rimmer. See his The Harrad Letters to Robert H. Rimmer Including his “Apology from a Man in Search of a Fulcrum” and the Original Introduction to the Harrad Experiment. New York: New American Library, 1969; You and I . . . Searching for Tomorrow; The Second Book of Letters to Robert H. Rimmer plus Marriage 2000, A Participation. New York: New American Library, 1971; Thursday, My Love. A Novel. New York: New American Library, 1972; and The Trade Off--My Husband/Your Wife. San Jose, CA: Writers Club Press, 2000.