Thursday, May 8, 2008
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
IN SEXO VERITAS?
When writers tackle sex in their writings, it instantly becomes a hot (no pun intended) conversation topic amongst the mere mortals that we are!
The reader is either enthralled…or enraged. It is almost as if books about sex (novels, poems, or essays) have the ultimate capacity to raise our adrenalin level!
Now, what the reader is often prone to forget, is that a sex book has to be put in context: in which year was it written? Are the events and scenes related older than the writing date or contemporary? Is the author mainly a trash writer or is he an accomplished novelist, someone who can also write about different subjects? Are the lexical fields used by the author understandable or does the reader need a dictionary (in case of extreme slang and/or obscenity)? What is the point of the book? Is there a hidden message? Is it an accurate depiction of a society at a given time?
Let’s con
sider some famous and/or infamous American and French examples. Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint, for instance is a genuine masterpiece: it brings together a comedy of manners about the Jewish American Experience and the psychoanalysis of the turbulent male adolescent mind. For all mothers out there, this would be the best gift you could buy for your sons: who knows, they might even start to like reading!
The reader is either enthralled…or enraged. It is almost as if books about sex (novels, poems, or essays) have the ultimate capacity to raise our adrenalin level!
Now, what the reader is often prone to forget, is that a sex book has to be put in context: in which year was it written? Are the events and scenes related older than the writing date or contemporary? Is the author mainly a trash writer or is he an accomplished novelist, someone who can also write about different subjects? Are the lexical fields used by the author understandable or does the reader need a dictionary (in case of extreme slang and/or obscenity)? What is the point of the book? Is there a hidden message? Is it an accurate depiction of a society at a given time?
Let’s con
sider some famous and/or infamous American and French examples. Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint, for instance is a genuine masterpiece: it brings together a comedy of manners about the Jewish American Experience and the psychoanalysis of the turbulent male adolescent mind. For all mothers out there, this would be the best gift you could buy for your sons: who knows, they might even start to like reading!Another scandalous and talented writer is Henry Miller. Sexus relates the author
’s life in the 1920s (and not, like a lot of readers wrongly assume, in the 1960s!). Of course there are pages full of very graphic details of his many sexual encounters. But out of 506 pages, it may be only 40% of it, the other 60% being dedicated to the making of a writer. The joy I felt from reading this book when I was 18 is nothing compared to the epiphany of reading it a second time in my 40s and finally understanding what a simple sentence such as: “To write (…) must be an act devoid of will” really means. To all struggling or acclaimed artists, be them writers, painters, musicians, you name it, this sentence rings so true. To dismiss Miller’s oeuvre or to consider it solely as “pornographic” is regrettable. If one does so, then what about the French Michel Houellebecq or his female counterpart Catherine Millet? Les particules élémentaires, Extension du domaine de la lutte, Plateforme, et La possibilité d’une île (to be easily renamed as « La possibilité du Nul » as far as I am concerned) by Houellebecq or the even more graphic La vie sexue
lle de Catherine M. by ArtPress Editor Catherine Millet cannot pretend to more than what they are: realistic, mechanical graphic descriptions of sexual orgies. There is no philosophical message here: even if Houellebecq likes to pose as a modern Pic de la Mirandole, he is in truth a libidinous middle-aged “man”, unable to raise it if not for the use of extremely obscene language… At least Catherine Millet does not pretend to a higher status than that of sexual explorer! We are far from Miller’s beautifully written pages, or from Roth’s insanely comical sentences.
Houellebecq and Millet depict their truth as to the state of the (or their) French wo
rld (s) and sex. About a year ago I managed to find an American writer, Walter Mosley, whose latest book was intriguingly similar to that of both Millet and Houellebecq. Set in New York in our 21st century, Killing Johnny Fry: A Sexistential Novel is one man’s response to his girlfriend’s infidelity. What is truly unsettling in this book is that its parallel sexual universe could well be a vision of what lies ahead for the generations to come. The sex games mentioned remind the reader of both The Satyricon and The Decameron. What redeems Mosley is not only his reputation as a masterful writer: he has indeed written many other books, not at all on the same subject, but also the fact that his choice of lexical field elevates him above the likes of Houellebecq.
Visionaries are prophets indeed, but the essayist and investigative Washington Post writer Laura Sess
ions Stepp is stating the hard facts for us soon-to-be middle-aged parents. Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both, her essay on the subject, could be almost considered as the answer to Sexus and the prelude to Killing Johnny Fry. Not any more a male-based fantasy à la Houellebecq or à la Mosley, not a biographical account à la Miller, but an essay about the new female-in-action, a copycat of centuries of male chauvinism revers
ed!
How pale seems Lady Chatterley’s Lover!
’s life in the 1920s (and not, like a lot of readers wrongly assume, in the 1960s!). Of course there are pages full of very graphic details of his many sexual encounters. But out of 506 pages, it may be only 40% of it, the other 60% being dedicated to the making of a writer. The joy I felt from reading this book when I was 18 is nothing compared to the epiphany of reading it a second time in my 40s and finally understanding what a simple sentence such as: “To write (…) must be an act devoid of will” really means. To all struggling or acclaimed artists, be them writers, painters, musicians, you name it, this sentence rings so true. To dismiss Miller’s oeuvre or to consider it solely as “pornographic” is regrettable. If one does so, then what about the French Michel Houellebecq or his female counterpart Catherine Millet? Les particules élémentaires, Extension du domaine de la lutte, Plateforme, et La possibilité d’une île (to be easily renamed as « La possibilité du Nul » as far as I am concerned) by Houellebecq or the even more graphic La vie sexue
lle de Catherine M. by ArtPress Editor Catherine Millet cannot pretend to more than what they are: realistic, mechanical graphic descriptions of sexual orgies. There is no philosophical message here: even if Houellebecq likes to pose as a modern Pic de la Mirandole, he is in truth a libidinous middle-aged “man”, unable to raise it if not for the use of extremely obscene language… At least Catherine Millet does not pretend to a higher status than that of sexual explorer! We are far from Miller’s beautifully written pages, or from Roth’s insanely comical sentences.Houellebecq and Millet depict their truth as to the state of the (or their) French wo
rld (s) and sex. About a year ago I managed to find an American writer, Walter Mosley, whose latest book was intriguingly similar to that of both Millet and Houellebecq. Set in New York in our 21st century, Killing Johnny Fry: A Sexistential Novel is one man’s response to his girlfriend’s infidelity. What is truly unsettling in this book is that its parallel sexual universe could well be a vision of what lies ahead for the generations to come. The sex games mentioned remind the reader of both The Satyricon and The Decameron. What redeems Mosley is not only his reputation as a masterful writer: he has indeed written many other books, not at all on the same subject, but also the fact that his choice of lexical field elevates him above the likes of Houellebecq.Visionaries are prophets indeed, but the essayist and investigative Washington Post writer Laura Sess
ions Stepp is stating the hard facts for us soon-to-be middle-aged parents. Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both, her essay on the subject, could be almost considered as the answer to Sexus and the prelude to Killing Johnny Fry. Not any more a male-based fantasy à la Houellebecq or à la Mosley, not a biographical account à la Miller, but an essay about the new female-in-action, a copycat of centuries of male chauvinism revers
ed!How pale seems Lady Chatterley’s Lover!
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