It’s been here all the time.

From Education of a Wandering Man: A Memoir by Louis L'Amour

There has been comment from time to time, usually by people with little discernment, on the lack of sex in my stories.

It is very simple. I am not writing about sex, which is a leisure activity; I am writing about men and women who were settling a new country, finding their way through a maze of difficulties, and learning to survive despite them.

Sex in the time before World War I was a private concern, and there were, supposedly, only two places for it: in the bedrooms of married people and in whorehouses. 

[snip]

My stories are not concerned with sex but with entering, passing through, or settling wild country. I am concerned with people building a nation, learning to live together, with establishing towns, homes, and bridges to the future.

Those unfamiliar with the world’s literature might find it interesting to realize that sex, except in its romantic sense, has little to do with seventy-five percent of what has been written.

My greatest complaint with present-day sexual writing is that nobody seems to be having any fun. Sex is an ordeal, or it is rape, or an athletic endeavor. Only the French find it amusing—as it certainly is. Many of those who choose it for subject matter linger on the most unpleasant aspects or treat it like a discovery. Actually, they needn’t. It’s been here all the time.