Excellent -- a thread like this you want to start in the gutter so as to keep it from going downhill.
I saw the question over at Jack's and couldn't think of an answer at all -- nothing came to mind as a faithful representation of sexuality.
His writing mostly features female protagonists, but Alan Warner writes very convincingly about sex and sexuality. Even though he's writing from the point of view of young women, his writing in The Sopranos and Morvern Callar reminded me of the same period -- being a teenager in the late 80s.
http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth02A14P105712626399
This is actually a tougher question than I thought it would be. I'm having a hard time coming up with anything.
Movies? Lone Star. For the male half of the question, I mean.
re: 3
And that's The Sopranos a novel about a Scottish schoolgirl choir from Oban on a weekend trip to Edinburgh and has nothing at all to do with the TV show of the same name.
I can't think of a book in particular, but for me it would be a very chatty, very verbal, not necessarily super engaged stream of conciousness.
Of course I've had the whole range of emotional engagement, I'm not saying that I'm always planning grocery lists and staring at the ceiling.
I'm just saying that a very intimate connection for me still involves a bit of, "Hey look at the cat! Look at the ceiling! Look at the grocery list!"
Most portrayals of sex are unrealistically single-minded, compared to my experience.
It occurred to me that I can think of a number of novels [including the Warner books above] that are really good on 'early sexuality' -- teens, early twenties -- but can't think of much that's struck a chord as capturing something of the reality for more mature sexuality.
"Hey look at the cat! Look at the ceiling! Look at the grocery list!"
That would drive me insane in a partner. "Focus damnit, I'm trying to get my freak on."
One of the canonical answers is Molly Bloom's inner monologue in the last chapter of Ulysses.
To be fair, it's more like, "Hey look at the cat! Look at your penis! Look at the grocery list!"
See, I'm freaky. See.
The first chapter of Tristram Shandy?
My sexuality and heebie's sound not dissimilar.
There was a poem in a literary magazine that I always liked, but I can't find the zine any more. But I'd guess poetry would be a better place to find this than novels.
11 already covered the only answer I could come up with.
It's funny, I'm trying to think of literary fiction written by women, and I'm just not coming up with anything with a lot of vivid sexuality in it.
And B. is right on in re: poetry. Adrienne Rich leaps to mind; obv., she's a lesbian, but I don't think that constrains the resonance of her work much (see, esp. Twenty-One Love Poems. I also like Louise Glück's The Wild Iris as a work with some surprisingly erotic stuff.
Maybe this is a niche that needs to be filled.
So to speak.
I can think of a fair bit of 'transgressive' sex in fiction by women -- the Kathy Ackers and Katherine Dunns of the literary world.
Mine has a little more of a tendency to go "look at the cat! look at your penis! how about that pun I made earlier! look at those socks on the floor! look at my tits! hey, whoa fire green wool blank micron snifter dint wood motive rayon scansion extract plosive whoa hey."
I tried to find an answer in this anthology of Erotic Stories by Women, but very little of it resonated with me.
Back at my place, ac recommended Erica Jong and Edna O'Brien, which I have yet to pick up.
Oh yeah, Jong. Also, Lisa Alther, Kinflicks which is from the same period.
Also a hypothesis: perhaps the reason men "think of sex all the time," and this seems odd to women, has something to do with men, and not women, being surrounded by art and advertising that panders to their sexual fantasies.
All I've read of Jong's was Fear of Flying, but it didn't speak much to me -- the sexual element is more referred to than communicated.
Great, so if we've confessed it your explanation is we've been pornified? No questions asked?
I'm not sure about that, B. Most times advertisers try to pander to my sexual fantasies, they get it sadly, jarringly wrong.
24: what's wrong with Molly Bloom?
I've heard women complain that Joyce gets it wrong, but it seemed to me that they were objecting to exactly the sort of semi-engaged free-associating that 8 and 22 seem to describe.
try aphra behn's poem "disappointment"
Anaïs Nin? Not the erotica (which is fun enough, but not exactly convincing in the way J-Mo describes), the diaries.
Okay, B., I'll bite. Why's your vote no on Molly Bloom? It certainly doesn't speak to my sexual consciousness, but that may be because I don't have the kind of stream-of-consciousness association described in heebie's and rtfs's comments; it's more like a conscious tapping-in to the particular instincts and thoughts that get me off. But I can certainly see how Molly Bloom's soliloquy might ring true for some people.
red fox tail shrub
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fish basket marble
This may get me horribly flamed, but I liked The Crmson Petal and the White by Michel Faber.
I'm sure it does not cover the "sympathetic" requirement of the question, but Elfriede Jelinek wrote a 250 page work, "Lust"
Speaking of Elfiede Jelinek, there's also The Piano Teacher.
40:
"The Piano Teacher" deals with rape and abuse. I'm sure that is even less within the meaning of the question that "Lust" would be.
There are all sorts of interesting things written about sex, but even the best has to be woefully inadequate to describe it. Words on a page cannot even describe the feeling, much less the taste and smell of it; the sounds your lover makes, from a gasp or a moan to the sound of her voice telling you that she loves you in a way that you know is true. Indeed, the only reason phone sex--which is of course just words--can work is not the words themselves, it how they are said.
I like to watch, but ultimately, sex is not a spectator sport, much less something that adequately can be described.
So all you young people need to put down your books and get out there and experience it.
I don't have anything in mind that's explicitly or particularly focused on sexuality, but there have been some good sexual scenes that seemed to resonate somehow. Some of them have been written by men--and honestly, the ones written from the male point of view are probably more memorable to me, b/c that's what I'm more curious about. With that said Love Medicine, Snow Falling on Cedars, In the Skin of a Lion, An Equal Music, & Jhumpa Lahiri's story Sexy, come to mind. There are also a few Anne Sexton poems, but I'll have to find the titles later.
Hmm. I should read more novels written by women. In fact, I should just read more novels. Sigh. Less Unfogged?
32: Yes--also, "To the Fair Clorinda."
I find Molly passive and flat, as a character. Does nothing for me.
29: Chill out, defensive guy. I said "something to do with," and I wasn't talking about porn. But it's not like 90% of the ads out there don't have attractive women in them, and 90% of the television/movies aren't basically from the pov of men. Even if a lot of it is just wrong, you're still getting your id poked at a hell of a lot of the time you're awake.
So all you young people need to put down your books and get out there and experience it.
Oh, okay. I thought the books were a substitute, but now that I know I'll rearrange my schedule. . .
just kidding Idealist, it just charms me when older, well-laid people just command one to find experience. Like we wouldn't otherwise try.
I tend to avoid movies/books/etc. that actually depict sex, and when I find myself experiencing one, I reflexively avoid the sex parts. There are a couple movies that accurately depict feelings of lust and obsession that I've had, although the only one I can remember now is "Celebrity" (Kenneth Branagh's feeling for Winona Ryder).
In #16 B may be referring to this poem which is by one of my favorite poets. But not being a woman my experiences may be different from hers.
re: 45
I'm sorry, my suggestion that you put down your books was meant to be a joking one. I understand that (a) people are trying and (b) it is a fraught subject. Failed humor. My bad.
Well-laid people gang oft agley.
22: If we wait long enough, RedFTS will write the fiction for us.
I went agley once, and was sore for a week.
47:
no no, I was just kidding too. It just amuses me b/c you're obviously experienced and successful--it's a charming form of benevolent good will. No apologies at all.
Didn't think you were talking about porn proper, but in the sense that the things you are talking about are often said to be pornified.
I'm miffed because I go out of my way to avoid these images, which don't evoke feelings remotely like my everyday ones anyway.
re: 50
Obviously, ye wurnae sleekit enouch.
Oooooh, another vote against Molly Bloom! Reads very fake-y to me.
The thing I notice about male depictions of women is that the women are so often deeply, deeply "feminine" in their hearts and souls, in a way that seems very false to me. Maybe I'm really insufficient as a woman, but, for example, Paul Auster's female characters just don't ring true on any level.
(There are, of course, separate kinds of wishful thinking engaged in by women writers.)
Samuel Delaney writes very convincingly about female sexuality. I remember reading part of the unfinishable Dhalgren and thinking that it was very plausible.
And in Klute, where Jane Fonda's charcter checks her watch while having sex? I have checked my watch in just that manner, in a dull relationship in my youth before I had any judgement. That seems to express so much about the duty/performance part of female sexuality.
What do people think of the portrayal of sexual feelings in Mary Gaitskill? I know most of what she writes about is abuse, or at least dysfunctional, but it also strikes me as psychologically real.
There is a moment in Two Girls Fat and Thin, where one of the protagonist describes how her mind immediately flies off to irrelevant topics after orgasm. She hasn't been making any grocery lists up until then, but right after orgasm, its like she forgets where she is.
re: 54
I heartily recommend the Warner, particularly The Sopranos which, to my eyes, has none of those faults.
rfts sounds pretty hot.
The cover illustration of the edition of The Piano Teacher I got is pretty awesome.
Here's a vote against Molly Bloom.
Me too.
And in Klute, where Jane Fonda's charcter checks her watch while having sex?
The best part of Mystery Train is the male japanese tourist being very careful of his hair during sex.
I find the narrator of Norman Rush's Mating to be particularly credible, and sympathetic, too, though I've encountered people who find her downright monstrous -- which is really bizarre to me. While there's not a whole lot of direct depiction of her experience of sex in the moment, there, certainly her sex life and sexuality are pretty well fleshed out.
One factor that probably really distinguishes people's experience of sex is how verbal they are. I know most of my inner life is made up of words, but I have also learned that this is not true of everyone, or even most people. A Joycean inner monologue really won't capture how things feel for a lot of people.
re: 61
I can see that. I'm a very verbal person with an active verbal inner life, but sexual experiences aren't remotely verbal for me and there's no inner monologue.
This question IS surprisingly hard. I feel like I've read some convincing evocations of gay male sexuality, and yet I can't actually think of a particular example.
I remember thinking that I'd been given a sense of female sensuality from the little bit of Anais Nin I read, and found Durrell's Justine quite erotic in a feminine, and also weirdly diffuse way. I felt like I was being shown how it feels to walk around as a very horny woman, but doing other things besides having sex.
Too much text here to translate, which is a shame, but there is a good treatment here of the problems men have in dealing with erotic literature by women. There are also many references to highly acclaimed german language novels and stories by women about sexuality.
Anais Nin's whole schtick is a performance of femaleness which I for one find totally unconvincing.
So what went wrong with the link?
here
Oh, I like a lot of Nin. But I'm not sure if "hot" and "a realistic depiction of what it feels like to be a woman" are the same thing.
67: Yeah, isn't the whole underlying premise of erotic/pornographic material that it's not realistic? Whether that's because everyone is implausibly physically perfect or whether it's because all anxiety about correct performance of gender has been smoothed away, that always seems to me what's going on--with everything from Playboy to slash fiction.
Writing in a realistic manner about female sexuality might be all sexy sometimes, but that's probably not going to be the main effect.
I don't know: don't you think it should be possible to depict a pleasurable experience of sexuality realistically, rather than as erotica/porn? The result might not itself be hot, but it should be possible to do it recognizably. All of the realistic depictions of sexuality I'm coming up with are unpleasurable, not in that they're unpleasant to read, but that they depict unpleasant experiences -- things like Fear of Flying.
Possible, but probably not popular.
I mean, most sex isn't "sexy", and that's part of why people are so often so unhappy about sex. "Sexy" is beautiful people single-mindedly having sex with either no awkwardness or awkwardness that's "hot"/for faux-verisimilitude.
It seems to me that we-as-a-society elevate sex--a fun activity with a lot of good qualities--into this mystical, central, world-organizing thing and then we're unhappy and confused when sex can't bear the weight of the concepts we put onto it.
A surprisingly high proportion of the letters to Penthouseare written by women, who just happen to pick up a copy out of idle curiosity.
I always understood that letters to Penthouse were more "written" by "women"...in fact, I dimly recall reading an essay by someone who "wrote" them.
61: One of the nice parts about sex is that my inner monologue shuts up for the duration.
71: And its amazing how many of them are bisexual, too.
I'll delurk for a question like this. I can't think of any books that strike me as particularly right, but the all-time best (mainstreamish) movie sex scene is in Better Than Chocolate. Perhaps unsurprisingly, queer cinema gets it right.
Any other women sometimes have rather vivid hallucinations during orgasm?
Not vivid, but irrelevant non-erotic images sometimes. Mimi Smartypants had a post on the same thing - the one I remember her mentioning was the Canadian flag.
Do any women here continue to have orgasms long after coitus has ended (sort of orgasm aftershocks). I had one girlfriend who did this in a very dramatic way. We'd be well into cuddling and then another orgasm would come. Then GF maintained that this was actually common for women, although I have seen it in no one before or since.
77: Um, fabric patterns. Clothing designs. Perfect, simple ones. Design stuff generally, in fact.
You might want to change the email address if you really want pseudonymity, De Staël.
79: Yup. I'm also very ticklish and don't want to be touched.
77 & 80: no. Weird.
79: sort of. Aftershocks, sure, but rarely rising to that level and usually just a short time.
For me, the best orgasm hallucinations are when I get to fly over a wide landscape, although I've certainly also had persistant image hallucinations like the Canadian flag (though not that) and pattern hallucinations.
79.--Yes, but rarely.
81: Well, I knew I would do something wrong and not really achieve anonymity, so the comic pseudonym was more for effect than anything else. As you may have gathered from other posts, I don't always get how the series of tubes really works.
And it's not as if there was anything terribly embarrassing about the comment, anyway.
84: I hallucinate landscapes a lot when I'm falling asleep, regardless of any sexual activity. Usually coastlines, sometimes forests.
I see a Canadian flag, then a troop of mounties riding towards the rockies to the strains of a brass band playing the national anthem.
perhaps the reason men "think of sex all the time," and this seems odd to women, has something to do with men, and not women, being surrounded by art and advertising that panders to their sexual fantasies.
I think we think of it all the time, so advertisers try and exploit this. Might be a bit of a feedback loop involved though.
The stream of consciousness v. images thing may be less gender specific than just differences in how our minds work. I'm very verbal. I remember being astonished to learn that one of my sisters, when she reads a book, actually has a mental image of the characters and the story--like a movie but vaguer. I don't do that at all--part of why I read quicker--and I found it really odd that it would vary that much. I mean, it's not like I have no memory or imagination for images but my brain seems to process information in the form of words.
92- I am your sister. I wish I could make myself *not* do this, because I read very slowly as a consequence. I do the same thing reading, say, comments here -- if the comment has narrative content I'll picture it, and if it's lacks narrative content I'll mentally picture the author at his or her computer, typing it. I even do the same thing with something as boring as legal contracts -- I always have in my mind an image of some lawyer slumped over his desk, drafting the provisions.
Hallucination is an overstatement for what I'm talking about, although Dolley seems to experience something vivider. I just sometimes have mental images during orgasm that don't seem to have anything to do with either sex or anything else I was thinking about.
Then, Cala, you've never really had sex.
94: see, I feel like I'm missing out on the fun. (But not when it comes to legal contracts!)
Good lord, hallucinations? Maybe I need to tattoo "Bringer of Visions" on my penis.
79: Yes. It seems to me to be one of the great benefits of having given birth, since i didn't have this before.
I was surprised to learn from your sex threads last summer just how many women reported profound changes in sex drive and sensation after giving birth. Sometimes temporary, and some reported no changes, but others were different women.
What was remarkable about my former GF was the length of the delay and the strength of the aftershock. The aftershock was as generally as strong as the initial orgasm. Once it woke me up.
I can say I've never hallucinated.
You're really going to enjoy college, Cala.
Say, while we're talking about sex and all, there's some fascinating insight into conservative sexuality available at Pandagon on the "our blog has been crashed by spammers" page that you'll get--lots of excerpts from her hate mail after the Donohue thing. And by "fascinating" I mean so hackneyed and cliched that I would have thought it'd strike the hackiest hack as mere stereotype, but apparently it's how some real people really write.
Ulysses is not a naturalist novel, and Molly Bloom is not intended as a representation of any sort of human being. It is all as abstract as Kandinsky or Pollock, and it is interesting how many people have misread the work. OTOH, Ulysses is an accurate depiction of Joyce's sexuality, although only in what is not said
Just saw a long interview with Jane Birkin Sunday Night: "J'Taime" ...nuff said. There is also that web site that has video of people's faces during orgasm.
I consider the Ruy Lopez:Schliemann Defense an accurate depiction of my sexuality.
96: That definition will come in handy in the pre-wedding ritualized lying to the priest.
Heh. Not only have I had aftershocks, I've used just that word to describe them.
They'd really give you a hard time about premarital sex when you were in the process of preparing to get married? Heathen isn't so bad, some days.
No, we just lie. My cousin last year: yes, we're living together and bought a condo together but no, we're not having sex. Mmmkay.
And then if you get a divorce you can get an annullment on grounds that your lying showed you weren't ready for marriage!
(obviously, this is directed entirely at the Catholic church and not at all at Cala & fiance).
It's a step up from having accidentally married your third cousin without noticing as grounds for an annulment, not to snipe at any Republican candidates for President.
I missed that story. Was that your celebrated ex-mayor?
I'm going to second the vote for Dhalgren made by Frowner, though I'm speaking as a male. I don't experience sex in that way all the time, or even much of the time, but it's spot-on for a certain sort of experience.
112, 113: Yeah, his first wife. "Third cousin" is from memory, but the annulment was on the ground of consanguinity. (This really isn't a valid criticism of him, of course -- valid criticisms should focus on the fact that he's a bad, bad person, rather than how he managed being able to remarry in the church.)
Huh. Google says second cousin. Not that there's anything wrong with that -- the first-cousin taboo, even, is pretty recent.
No time to defend this really but when I was reading Look at Me by Jennifer Egan, I remember being impressed at how vividly Egan communicated sexual arousal and longing in the characters -- I think specifically in the main character. Also: some really fantastic descriptions of sexual acts (perverted and otherwise) in Pynchon's Against the Day.
I thought valid criticisms would focus on his combover.
We'll get an annulment on the grounds that he's Canadian.
This really isn't a valid criticism of him, of course -- valid criticisms should focus on the fact that he's a bad, bad person, rather than how he managed being able to remarry in the church.
Not wanting him anywhere near the White House seems to be one of those over-determined sorts of things.
Giuliani married his cousin? Might that be Liza Mae Giuliani down by the hog farm? She sure was a purty little thing, but she warn't good enough for him no more when he up and went to the city.
We'll get an annulment on the grounds that he's Canadian
valid in the Church of B
I think Nicholson Baker gave it a good go.
In Vox? Not, from my point of view, successful as either realism or erotica.
Everybody just likes Dahlgren because of the instructions on how women can pee standing up.
My CD collection expresses my sexuality. Sorry, I am having a hard time taking this thread seriously.
I've been told that Nicholson Baker's novel about watching a baby breathe is a very accurate evocation of the emotions involved in watching a baby breathe. Not sure about his novel about walking down the hall, or his novel about having an erotic conversation.
Relate to Cala's "no internal monologue" and "Any other women sometimes have rather vivid hallucinations during orgasm?":
I'm male but I very often hear random voices as i come. I think i've mentioned this before.
I've never really thought of myself as particularly verbally oriented, although i think a lot of that is that I'm quit introverted; nothing exits my mouth unless it's carfully crafted. And i often think about things w/o any words. ' And i've never been too moved by words: Music is the most important thing to me, but i rarely listen to the lyrics unless they're distractingly bad. And novels/poetry rarely interests me. I also don't get off on erotic very much.
ANd whats all this about guys explaining the emotions of sex? To me sex is just the simplest thing in life; its just being able to have pleasure w/o all the distracting words and ideas and categories and emotions that clutter the fuck most of life. Its simpler and thats the good part. There's a bit of beauty, but mostly just awesome tingly tension.
Any woman masturbates anywhere, I want to know about it. No woman is anything but beautiful when she is masturbating ... One time I drove all night back from college my sophomore year, and I shared the ride with this girl who was on my hall in the dorm who had a car, and it started to rain this mysterious warm rain - no, but I really did share a ride with her, totally uneventful, but just this past year, ten years later, we had a sort of reunion of the people who'd been on that hall that year, because it had been kind of a funny nice group, and this same woman sat next to me at dinner and told me in a low voice at one point that on that all-night trip, at six in the morning, while I was driving, and she was supposed to be fast asleep, that she'd made herself 'comfortable' in the back seat, just as we were going past the big GE plant in Syracuse. I said, Thank you, thank you, thank you for telling me. Ten fucking years that secret orgasm of hers was accumulating interest.
OK, it's more meta-erotica, but the spatiality of it rings true.
79: Yes, my wife routinely has impressive orgasmic aftershocks after decoupling, when I'm doing nothing more intimate than rubbing her hips or thighs. Not usually more than a minute or two after intercourse stops, and I can't recall any of them waking me up, though.
Is it particularly hard to find imaginative writing that describes the mechanics of the male experience accurately? I'm trying to think of examples of this that stand out for me, but I'm drawing a blank. I guess I don't tend to notice sex scenes in novels very much unless they're really awful.
Or unless they get at the psychology of sex in an interesting way, I do notice that. Fowles' The Magus was pretty memorable for this, as is most of James Baldwin's writing. And there's a piece of wartime existentialist writing that's teasing the tip of my brain (one of these young amoral anti-hero pieces set in Paris), but I can't remember the title or the author right now.
125: Er, I don't get the impression that anyone is taking this thread super-seriously.
Although I think it's a reasonable topic for light conversation.
We could all just say that literary realism is dead and the subject is non-unified and then we could turn off the lights and go home, but as I understand it that won't even get you a PhD these days.
Actually, Delaney has more-or-less the same anecdote about the peeing standing up in his to-me-at-least enjoyable memoir, The Motion of Light in Water.
129: See, he's so demanding. "You must tell me if you are masturbating! I must know!"
No woman is anything but beautiful when she is masturbating
Do people actually think that rings true? I mean, I'm a young straight woman who loves teh sex with teh dudes, but there are a lot of images of men masturbating that I would not classify as "beautiful."
Not to me. I'm a bit of a prude, though.
134: He doesn't really think that. He's trying to prove how sensitive he is by being moved by the sexuality of EveryWoman.
Yeah, what didn't ring true for me is that lines like that got anything other than uncontrollable giggling as a response. Both characters in the book were presented as articulate and fairly bright -- there's no way they could have made it through that conversation without cracking up at the amount of bullshit they were producing.
Actually one of the better descriptions of male sexuality (minus the ephebophilic homosexuality) is in Plato's Republic
"All boys in the bloom of youth pique the interest of a lover of boys and arouse him and all seem worthy of his care and pleasure? Or isn't that the way you behave to fine and beautiful boys. You praise the snub-nosed one as cute, a hook-nosed one you say is regal, one in between is well proportioned, dark ones look manly, and pale ones are children of the gods."
The question mark should move from the first to the second sentence.
134: There you go with that gaze thing.
We were asked for something phenomenological, weren't we? In The Fermata (which loses its way somewhat) there's a scene where the narrator (Strine?) has an encounter with a woman he's picked up on the highway. They get it together, Pyramus and Thisbe style, while remaining on separate sides of a motel room connecting door which is ajar, but chained.
It's a commonplace, but you can't know what your partner is experiencing during sex. I had a girlfriend (quite a while back) who, a few months into our relationship, just came right out and said that she - consistently - had elaborate fantasies during sex. Rustic barns, bales of hay, suits of armour; that sort of thing. This was (and still is) very hard to comprehend.
My feeling is that sexual experience is poly-facetted; almost a hall of mirrors. You superimpose your own experience on what you imagine your partner experiences. So maybe sexual experience resists dramatisation.
No one said Baker wasn't funny; that's just my presentation. Most of his output is absurd. OK, enough from me on this, I think. May have to deploy the pseud soon.
140: I think I would be pretty much astonished if my fiancee told me she has any sort of fantasy during sex. It would certainly make me wonder whether I was supposed to respond by catering to it, or what.
On the flipside, it would be great to hear that from somebody after the relationship had already ended.
poly-facetted
Aren't you the one who was complaining about people putting extra T's in things?
A different former GF of mine confessed to having elaborate fantasies during sex, all of which were *extremely* violent, including one about cutting my throat.
It put a different spin on things.
Only in the name, man. It's a low bar.
134: You hardly ever hear of women furtively jilling off to bestiality porn in their parents' basement.
144: If this kind of thing gets out, you really aren't going to get elected.
136: Well, it worked for me. How different is that than the claim that most men don't care so much what women weigh/look like, if sex is in the offing?
The new Jane Smiley novel is supposed to be quite good and quite sexual. Given that it's Jane Smiley, I would wager that the does a fair job of describing a woman's experience during sex.
That said, I've never read anything that came close. Didn't Judy Blume (of all people) write a novel that was quite sexual?
I am speaking, of course, of Blubber. Don't we all need a good flensing from time to time? (But seriously, I think she did but that it got dismissed because she's Judy frickin' Blume.)
connexion increases estimated beauty
sexual availability=connexion
construct into premise-premise-conclusion as you wish.
Am I the only feminist in the world who dislikes Jane Smiley? (And, fwiw, Margaret Atwood.)
Its not. Nor is the Plato quote, really. The thing I like about the Plato is the way any physical feature at all can be fixated on as beautiful once you are aroused. The translation I used above (Grube and Reeve) implies that these are mostly just lines men use to seduce the object of their desire. I prefer the versions of the passage that make it sound like anything genuinely seems beautiful to the aroused man.
152: I like her, but I can see why you mightn't -- she's got a sort of Garrison Kellior vibe going on.
152: I don't like Jane Smiley...in fact, I wasn't aware that she was considered a feminist author.
I like Margaret Atwood, though, particularly Lady Oracle and The Edible Woman. She's not, you know, profound or anything...I like Robertson Davies, too, and feel much the same way about him.
Funny, I was going to mention Atwood until I really thought about her and realized that while I can appreciate her writing, I dread reading it. As for feminists and Smiley, no idea, though I do have a weakness for writers who write about their college towns - hello, Richard Russo. Hola, Senor Chabon. Perhaps I just enjoy reading about drunken hookups and dive bars. That's just me.
I did recently read a short by Miranda July which involved, among other things, a botched sexual encounter. She managed to mix the heated anticipation of an imminent and much-needed lay with matter-of-fact preparation required beforehand (I speak of getting the bedroom ready as well as hygiene). When it didn't happen, she was disappointed, but in a way that was more like missing the bus; another would be along shortly and only THEN would she get her ticket out.
Come to think of it, I wouldn't have characterized her as such either. I mean, I'd expect from Smiley's writing that she's reasonably personally feminist, but she's not strongly focused on feminist issues.
realized that while I can appreciate her writing, I dread reading it.
Yeah, kind of. Sometimes Atwood's writing falls flat for me, but the bits that seem effective are unpleasantly harrowing. Cats Eye bothered me.
You unfoggers very often get onto tangents about specific things, instead of just enjoying your own cleverness. This is unlike almost any other society i've encountered.
We pride ourselves on being scatterbrained.
159: Read The Edible Woman. It's funny! Her post-Cat's Eye stuff gets kind of formulaic-harrowing-chick-lit, I think--but I still like, for example, the parts of The Robber Bride that deal with the new-agey hippie woman as an adult, and the parts about the military historian.
160: But that's precisely what I like! All my most useful, happy conversations are tangent-y. And besides, aren't we posting in the odd five minutes taken from work? I know I've been actually working for most of the day...
And besides, aren't we posting in the odd five minutes taken from work? I know I've been actually working for most of the day...
Oh, Frowner.
I think we've all been shamed into silence.
Work now....
Oh yeah, Gaitskill. Would like to hear from more women about her.
Kafka's "Before the Law", if short stories are allowed.
165: That wasn't what I meant...I had just assumed that many of you were wage slaves like me, making the daily toil more palatable with a little ribald conversation. But if that's not the case, hey, you could always adopt me. I'd love to inherit, say, a chateau on the Loire or something.
And besides, I thought you Unfoggers were well past shame. Shameless, I'm sayin'
It's not that we aren't wage slaves, it's that I think many of us are getting less work done in the interstices of commenting than you sound like you are. On that, I can be shamed.
It's not so much the rural fetish as it is the, ahem, shrillness. A Thousand Acres was just clumsy and annoying.
But now that I look her up, I realize I've also been holding her responsible, all these years, for Fay Weldon's Life and Loves of a She-Devil, which isn't Smiley's fault. Maybe I've been too harsh.
I didn't like A Thousand Acres. Liked Moo, though. And something called Separate Keys, or Duplicate Keys?
Weldon's certainly awfully weird, and I wouldn't want to sign on to her version of anything without close examination, but I enjoy reading her -- the silly stuff she pulls hits my sense of humor squarely.
I too am going to have to revise my opinion of Jane Smiley since I realized she didn't write "The Marshmallow Masquerade", "The Banana Split Affair", "The Jelly Bean Scheme", "Apple Pie Adventure", and "Pink Lemonade Charade". And I may have misjudged Adam Kotsko by giving him credit for writing "Life and Loves of a She-Devil". All of this will hopefully be forgiven.
I found A Thousand Acres tremendously irritating, and haven't been able to bring myself to read any other Smiley since. Unfair, perhaps. I haven't read much Weldon, either, but quite liked Darcy's Utopia.
I guess it's more about mastubation than sex, but the scene in Lolita where Humbert Humbert first gets off is spot-on. Lolita and him are on a couch with her feet on his lap...she doesn't know that he's excited (or maybe she does)...something about a "bubble of hot poison" rising in his loins...the anxiety he feels at the possibility that she'll get up before he climaxes...then the relief he feels when he realizes that he's passed the point of no return...er...I've got to go now.
I mean, I'm a young straight woman who loves teh sex with teh dudes, but there are a lot of images of men masturbating that I would not classify as "beautiful."
Sounds like someone's been riding the subway.
I remember an early Nancy Thayer book -- I think it was Bodies and Souls -- about a married woman falling in love with her (female) professor, and thinking how true the first kiss, and the later sex scenes, were. Which is funny, because I was about 11. Still, it's the first thing that came to mind when I read JM's original post, and I haven't thought of any additional books/scenes since then.
It's a measure of the poverty of fiction generally, or of my reading experience specifically, that some of the truest descriptions of sex I've seen have been here (!).
105: Risky and aggressive? Making a sacrifice for the chance at an open file?
The Chess Opening Analogy is a Genius Move, though.
I'd characterize my own style as some variant of the Reti opening. Somewhat confusing. Eschews immediate contact. Lots of mind-games, and action-at-a-distance.
Thanks, everyone, for the reading suggestions. I'm going to try to follow up on them.
Has Where the Wild Things Are been mentioned yet?
One part reality. One part fantasy. Brought back to reality by smell.
I tend to think there aren't any good sex scenes in literature, if what we mean by good is depicting the thing, done well, in a convincing way. There are good sex scenes that are trying to tell you something in addition to the sex. Probably to do with the non-verbal thing mentioned above.
As far as movies, I dunno, the scenes in Being John Malkovich.
Are both 177 and 179 completely nonsensical?
I've been thinking about this all weekend after I read jackmormon's post: Anne Sexton always pierces me at my hunger mark, Frank O'Hara's "I don't know what D.H. Lawrence is driving at", "A Woman in Heat Wiping Herself" by Sharon Olds, Virginia Hamiliton Adair's "Peeling an Orange". I've found that both men and women can write poetry that speaks to me sexually. In a way, I am glad that these words are hidden and do not readily come to mind.
I found A Thousand Acres tremendously irritating, and haven't been able to bring myself to read any other Smiley since.
Likewise. It didn't help that after reading ATA, I came across one of her essays (this one, as it happens; God bless the internets) where she refers to herself as an intellectual, "intellectual" being rather like "hip" in my opinion.
Good work, SB. You've dismissed an author's work for almost but not quite entirely superficial reasons.
They're both common prefixes of "popotamus".
184.--That's very sweet indeed. I recognize that.
Quick, how many names for body parts which are three letters in length can you think of?
197: It was all the discussion of Ariel on my brain. . .
I realize that didn't make any sense, but I've got that song in my head.
pee and pus are parts of the body while they're in it. don't be annoying.
also, poo.
pee and pus are parts of the body
But they aren't body parts.
It's really important to me that I get a good grade, teo. I mean really important. I'm sure we can work something out.
More Sexton: Us, and Song for a Lady.
Sharon Olds' Sex Without Love
And some sweet other poems that are more about love.
Grace Paley's Here and Brenda Hillman's Sister Shirt.
211: Made sense to me!
orb, cod.
Made sense to me!
Oh, good.
orb, cod.
Now you're just being silly.
Now you're just being silly.
So if we ever meet you won't mind if I poke you in the orb and rip off your codpiece?
And with that, I'm off to bed. 'Night, all.
What about the sex scene in the first part of Atonement? That's the most emotionally accurate I've ever read, from my perspective.
Wow, 234 ending the thread is just awkward, isn't it? Like when you say something faintly embarrassing a bit too loud during a lull in conversation?
Bad news for heebie-geebie and rfts: "The pleasures are a hindrance to thought, and the more so the more one delights in them, e.g. in sexual pleasure; for no one could think of anything while absorbed in this." (Nic. Eth. 1152b17–19)
Guess you've been doing it wrong.
Yes, because Aristotle was and remains the preëminent authority on female sexuality.
Any philosophers, or just that one?