You are right in almost everything you say. Sex in great literature (I too am not a Lawrence fan, but he is undoubtedly a Great Writer) is an encounter between two people who long to be intimate at a deep human level. Because the couple are in the foreground, with their sorrows, their vulnerability, their longing not to be alone, their physicality does not need to be graphic because it already partakes of poetry, the poetry of personhood.
In smut, kinky and pornographic writing, personhood is absent. There is only the body. Without a soul inhabiting it, the body becomes grotesque, ugly, deformed and its contortions depraved.
When I rule the world I shall have a bonfire of all pornographic and kinky books, beginning with your second author. I will insist she retrains as a carer ie that she gets a real job.
My only demur with your essay is that beauty does not exist just for beauty's sake, any more than Art exists for Art's sake. Beauty exists for Truth.
Sex with a loving partner can be many things, what it shouldn't be is painful, violent, degrading, fear filled or terrifying. To posit that sexual violence, deliberately inculcated fear and total subservience on the part of one participitant is normal is to do the very beauty and fulfilment of sexual desire and satisfaction a dangerous disservice. Yes, there are people who enjoy sexual violence and degradation, but that is not normal loving behaviour and should not be portrayed as such in literatute or film.
The Literary Review used to publish a Bad Sex in Literature Award for the worst sex scene in a novel that year. The Gaitskill would have been a nice contender.
Here's what Norman Mailer won for in 2007:
"His mouth lathered with her sap, he turned around and embraced her face with all the passion of his own lips and face, ready at last to grind into her with the Hound, drive it into her piety"
Nice.
The worst sex scenes I've ever read occur in Gregory David Roberts' maybe-autobiographical novel Shantaram. He writes very well about about Soviet helicopter attacks on Mujahideen guerrillas. He writes tender sex scenes in a similar way.
I agree with many points from Liza Libes piece, Your Kink Isn’t Art, but will add that some writing must be pornographic by nature. In an upcoming piece on autofiction, sex writing, and my novel, American Pleasure, I write:
“…I would suggest I wrote nothing pornographic for obscenity’s sake. The ongoing discussion about obscenity and pornography seems to neglect the fact that pornographic is not strictly a style, or mode, or description of an event, but pornography is also a subject matter in and of itself. Particularly in the cultural landscape of today, pornography has cemented itself as a mainstay—writers, one way or another, had best learn to write about it, or if not, become comfortable with others doing so. I stress the difference between the obscene and the pornograph-ic, and the absolute subject of pornograph-y, as a cultural phenomenon which requires some wrestling, by someone, somewhere, for the sake of us all. I don’t claim to be that person—of course, I wrote the book only for my very own sake, and for the sake of nobody else.”
For what it is worth, writing of sex is a delicate and difficult needle to thread. The touch and go of where to stop is crucial. But it does not require one write about sex throughout the entire scene. One still has room for the ocean, the stars, the angels and the demons and all that. I never wrote anything sexual to titillate, but to inform the power of the interaction itself.
Mary Gaitskill’s Bad Behavior (definitely not a serious work of literature).
Blasphemy.
I submit that both works became springboards for sexuality being appreciated much more than it would be in these States United, which are still overtly puritanical, comparatively speaking [to most of Europe, for example].
Agree and disagree. Sex is also fun and enjoyable and that is part of human life, even if kept under wraps most of the time. Yes it can be cringy to read about it, but not all literature needs to be serious. it can be humorous too and sex in all its varieties and absurdities can be very funny. Helen DeWit in ‘Lightening Rods’ and Ian McEwan in ‘On Chesil Beach’ write amusingly about sex. I think they manage to pull it off well in novels that are literary in nature.
"A healthy society, after all, does not broadcast its sexual deviants..."
I completely agree with you, but I think the difference between our outlook and that of those who normalize the broadcasting of sexual deviancy is that they reject from the start the categories of normalcy and deviancy, replacing them with the idea that nothing is off limits when it comes to sex and that the search for sexual pleasure is itself a "good", if not "the good", irrespective of other considerations, the only external moral guideline permitted being that of consent.
Tangential but in retrospect, Gaiman’s long-term obsession with the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund makes more sense. The first amendment does not exist to legalize porn. It exists so we can freely criticize our government and religious organizations.
You’re exactly right. Mary Gaitskill doesn’t write literature but she fancies she does. I have the same beef with Bret Easton Ellis.
You are right in almost everything you say. Sex in great literature (I too am not a Lawrence fan, but he is undoubtedly a Great Writer) is an encounter between two people who long to be intimate at a deep human level. Because the couple are in the foreground, with their sorrows, their vulnerability, their longing not to be alone, their physicality does not need to be graphic because it already partakes of poetry, the poetry of personhood.
In smut, kinky and pornographic writing, personhood is absent. There is only the body. Without a soul inhabiting it, the body becomes grotesque, ugly, deformed and its contortions depraved.
When I rule the world I shall have a bonfire of all pornographic and kinky books, beginning with your second author. I will insist she retrains as a carer ie that she gets a real job.
My only demur with your essay is that beauty does not exist just for beauty's sake, any more than Art exists for Art's sake. Beauty exists for Truth.
As Keats once wrote...
Sex with a loving partner can be many things, what it shouldn't be is painful, violent, degrading, fear filled or terrifying. To posit that sexual violence, deliberately inculcated fear and total subservience on the part of one participitant is normal is to do the very beauty and fulfilment of sexual desire and satisfaction a dangerous disservice. Yes, there are people who enjoy sexual violence and degradation, but that is not normal loving behaviour and should not be portrayed as such in literatute or film.
"We owe ourselves a duty not only to restore beauty to literature but also to restore normal human connection to our society."
A great point. Makes me wonder how much beauty and virtue in imaginary worlds correlates to beauty and virtue in the real one.
The Literary Review used to publish a Bad Sex in Literature Award for the worst sex scene in a novel that year. The Gaitskill would have been a nice contender.
Here's what Norman Mailer won for in 2007:
"His mouth lathered with her sap, he turned around and embraced her face with all the passion of his own lips and face, ready at last to grind into her with the Hound, drive it into her piety"
Nice.
The worst sex scenes I've ever read occur in Gregory David Roberts' maybe-autobiographical novel Shantaram. He writes very well about about Soviet helicopter attacks on Mujahideen guerrillas. He writes tender sex scenes in a similar way.
I agree with many points from Liza Libes piece, Your Kink Isn’t Art, but will add that some writing must be pornographic by nature. In an upcoming piece on autofiction, sex writing, and my novel, American Pleasure, I write:
“…I would suggest I wrote nothing pornographic for obscenity’s sake. The ongoing discussion about obscenity and pornography seems to neglect the fact that pornographic is not strictly a style, or mode, or description of an event, but pornography is also a subject matter in and of itself. Particularly in the cultural landscape of today, pornography has cemented itself as a mainstay—writers, one way or another, had best learn to write about it, or if not, become comfortable with others doing so. I stress the difference between the obscene and the pornograph-ic, and the absolute subject of pornograph-y, as a cultural phenomenon which requires some wrestling, by someone, somewhere, for the sake of us all. I don’t claim to be that person—of course, I wrote the book only for my very own sake, and for the sake of nobody else.”
For what it is worth, writing of sex is a delicate and difficult needle to thread. The touch and go of where to stop is crucial. But it does not require one write about sex throughout the entire scene. One still has room for the ocean, the stars, the angels and the demons and all that. I never wrote anything sexual to titillate, but to inform the power of the interaction itself.
Mary Gaitskill’s Bad Behavior (definitely not a serious work of literature).
Blasphemy.
I submit that both works became springboards for sexuality being appreciated much more than it would be in these States United, which are still overtly puritanical, comparatively speaking [to most of Europe, for example].
"because he uses language to reveal the universal through the particular"
I'm not sure the above is right, but it is essential; it makes a certain position on the matter crystal-clear with few words.
Agree and disagree. Sex is also fun and enjoyable and that is part of human life, even if kept under wraps most of the time. Yes it can be cringy to read about it, but not all literature needs to be serious. it can be humorous too and sex in all its varieties and absurdities can be very funny. Helen DeWit in ‘Lightening Rods’ and Ian McEwan in ‘On Chesil Beach’ write amusingly about sex. I think they manage to pull it off well in novels that are literary in nature.
🎯
"A healthy society, after all, does not broadcast its sexual deviants..."
I completely agree with you, but I think the difference between our outlook and that of those who normalize the broadcasting of sexual deviancy is that they reject from the start the categories of normalcy and deviancy, replacing them with the idea that nothing is off limits when it comes to sex and that the search for sexual pleasure is itself a "good", if not "the good", irrespective of other considerations, the only external moral guideline permitted being that of consent.
Tangential but in retrospect, Gaiman’s long-term obsession with the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund makes more sense. The first amendment does not exist to legalize porn. It exists so we can freely criticize our government and religious organizations.