He reread the epigraph: While there was a great variety in response, the majority of females who had orgasms, whether brought on manually, orally, or through intercourse, reached the climactic state in seven minutes. - The Collingwood Study of 100 Women, Ages 18 to 45 (London, 1931) Those seven minutes, Barrett now knew, had been represented by seven chapters in Jadway’s book, each chapter in turn representing one minute in the mind of one woman who was lying on a bed having sexual intercourse with an unnamed, unseen man. The entire novel was told through the thoughts in this woman’s head her feelings, her memories, her dreams, during the seven minutes of copulation. That was the framework and method of The Seven Minutes. Suddenly Barrett wondered whether Jadway had known or had at least met James Joyce during Joyce’s last years in Paris. And whether Jadway had read the Odyssey Press edition of Ulysses that had been circulating in’Paris in those years.
