The one with Den Dennys. The one with the CD where one of the tracks was titled "Vim Is Angry." The one with "You overdubbed my bass line."
"Bad News"! That's it. (I think. Maybe. Yeah, I'm pretty sure.)
Okay, so I was thinking about that because I saw a book in the bookstore yesterday. I saw a book in the bookstore yesterday, and Vim is angry. Oh yes.
This thing was a misfire for me. Wherever it needed me to be in order to meet it properly, I wasn't there. All I saw was a book, described as a (literary) "erotic novel" and with a cover to match, which was...polite. Yes, it was polite, and not even deliberately so. No, this politeness was (imho) unintentional, the result of smallness of vision and an inner flame the size of a penlight. Its erotic scenes, which were actually few, did not rise to the level of a Harlequin historical. It had neither the drive nor clarity of purpose of such an animal. Nor the insight which is supposed to be the province of literature. Plus, it was negative, fearful of what it touched. In a sour rather than a holy way.
I was left thinking: why did this author write this book? I felt no joy or urgency in it. Not even a simple thrill at crashing through convention. It didn't crash through convention, it shored convention up. I walked away not just disappointed but feeling tricked. Vim was angry. Very angry.
#
I am mindful that these things are what I saw in the book. Literature is largely subjective. As perfume critics Turin and Sanchez remind us, we all smell the same stuff--but we interpret it very differently. So I don't want to say this was a bad book. It might not be. I will say, however, that it was the wrong book for me. I felt angry at it on behalf of all written erotica everywhere.
I needed an antidote. Maybe you do too. For whatever reason. Maybe you need an antidote today.
So if you're over twenty-one, and the place where you live has a sense of humor about this kind of thing, may I suggest reading Allen Ginsberg's Please Master. Valiant and unashamed, the nakedness of the mind, this is the real thing. This is eros. Aphrodite. Tremble in the face of the goddess.
Comments (4)
Perhaps because I have the attention span of a bunny, generally literary erotica in book form has been... meh... for me. There are exceptions, but 'tis the web for me for erotica, where the words tend to be more pithy.
I like bestsexbloggers.com or some of the people on this list: http://www.betweenmysheets.com/index.php/top-100-sex-bloggers-of-2008
Posted by Kim | September 12, 2008 2:10 PM
Posted on September 12, 2008 14:10
Kim--have you tried reading "Fanny Hill"? It's one of my favorites. I'll have to blog about it, actually...
Thanks for the link. Sounds interesting.
Posted by Savannah | September 12, 2008 2:25 PM
Posted on September 12, 2008 14:25
Hey Savannah -- Haven't read it, will now :) Thank you.
I suppose I don't actually have the attention span of a bunny. I was an English major in college and taught high school English for two years.
What's more the case is that I'm an impatient reader. Often, erotica (both the stuff they sell in Toys in Babeland and mainstream romance novel p0rn) trips over itself -- it's like the writer thinks, "gosh, I feel awkward," and starts to try to explain the scene they create. We don't have to hear all the details of what you did to get to the sexy scenes; we don't have to hear three hundred times how sensitive so-and-so's breasts were; and we don't need to read every thought to cross a character's mind when the point isn't to explain character, but to evoke mood.
Okay, rant over :)
Posted by Kim | September 14, 2008 10:32 PM
Posted on September 14, 2008 22:32
Yeah, lack of full commitment is deadly. I think that's exactly the problem--trying to justify something that needs no justification. Eros has meaning and significance in its own right. It doesn't need to be shored up by other things, it needs to be given time and space to speak its own truths.
Posted by Savannah | September 15, 2008 6:19 AM
Posted on September 15, 2008 06:19