I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard people say that they don’t want to watch or read anything they couldn’t watch or read with their children. I dunno. I’m not really into the same things as my kids. We overlap on our love of The Simpsons, Chowder and The Regular Show (Have you watched that yet? Hilarious.) I still get a kick out of reading Go, Dog. Go! , Olivia and pretty much anything by Roald Dahl. But I can’t stand Phineas and Ferb or the dreaded Barbie Movies my girls beg to watch, which I let them watch because I’ve got stuff to do, even though I feel horrified the whole time as I can’t ignore the gender issues that are packed into each and every samey movie — always a smart and brave but super nice and beautiful, Barbie (also klutzy — Manic Dream Pixie Barbie — it’s her only adorable flaw), an evil older woman, and a Ken as featureless as his famous anatomy. Barbie, through her resiliency and smarts, always saves the day-these are modern-times, she doesn’t need Ken to save her! But she can’t really be happy until she marries Ken. Yet, she always worries — can a man with no discernible personality really like a gorgeous, smart, competent girl like her? The answer is yes. Every time. Anyways, I don’t like most of the stuff my kids are into and my children have no interest in politics, feminism, weird documentaries or French movies. My four-year-old is illiterate — she can’t even read.
Given our interest in different things, I don’t feel much pressure to model my reading or watching after my children. And, since I pretty much like tackling any topic through reading, it should be no surprise that I like reading about sex. Like many Mormon girls, I married young (barely 20) and a virgin. So my hands-on experience with sex is pretty limited. I don’t regret this, nor do I feel like I’ve missed out, but sex is a huge part of human existence and I’m naturally curious about what it’s like for other people, and, of course, how it’s the same or different from my own experience.
I’ve found that most Mormons are surprisingly open to reading and giving how-to sex manuals. What Mormon woman of a certain age didn’t receive The Act of Marriage at her bridal shower? (They probably give something different these days, but I’ve been married for awhile now.) My copy was a second-hand job with a picture of a blonde who looked like she had been photographed through a dreamy Virgin Suicides filter. I also remember that it was pretty vague and not terribly helpful. Much more helpful was The Guide to Getting it On, which my husband and I were too embarrassed to buy, but read cover to cover during one of our marathon browsing sessions at Borders shortly after we married (Oh, the good old days before children when we could spend four hours at a bookstore! At least we wouldn’t be embarrassed to buy that book anymore.)
Despite the pleasing openness to how-tos, I’ve found most of my Mormon friends squeamish when it comes to reading about sex in fiction. To be fair, this might be partly due to the paucity of good sex. Writing about sex is notoriously difficult; we are constantly bombarded by sexual imagery and information, but we live in a moment that is more pornographic than erotic. My first experience with literary sex came at the courtesy of the Kalamazoo Public Library, where I huddled between the stacks wide-eyed and transfixed by Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. I was 15. At 16 and 17, I read a lot of sexy Milan Kundera. I would like to say that I got what was going on in those books, but, honestly, other than intense curiosity and being a little aroused, most of it went completely over my head, kind of the way my kids don’t catch all the jokes or innuendos in The Simpsons.
As a grown-up reader, I want to read books that confront the physical realities of sex, but I also want to explore the emotional dimensions of desire and how complex and varied sex is. To that end, I can only think of a handful of books that have really shed any light on the subject for me. Anais Nin and Erica Jong’s famous Fear of Flying were disappointments. (Speaking of Nin, she is really the only author I’ve read that could be classed as a writer of erotica. In theory, I’m not against it, but I generally find discussions of sex much more compelling in the context of broader themes and real life, but, you know, to each his/her own.) I quite like the sex scene at the end of Cold Mountain and I think A.S. Byatt is a genius at describing the embarrassing and awkward moments that can come with sex. I also like the humor and warmth of Zadie Smith’s sex writing. I recently read Haruki Murakami’s gorgeous mood piece South of the Border, West of the Sun, which I loved for lots of reasons, but especially because it has one of the best sex scenes I’ve ever read. It was very frank, but I didn’t find it crass or clinical — it was very erotic, but almost seemed strangely innocent. I still don’t quite understand how he did it.
Do you have any rules about reading about sex? Is it anything goes or do you try to censor wisely? And, if you are like me and you don’t do much censoring, what writers treat the subject with sensitivity and insight?
One LDS book group I used to belong to decided to read “Girl with Pearl Earring.” One of the particularly naive & sweet women in the group came to our discussion with blushing cheeks and confessed that when she read the “scene” in the alleyway (involving a hand up a skirt), she called out in shock to her husband, “Honey, I’m reading smut!” Then I was shocked … ’cause that scene didn’t even cause me to blink an eye. I do have a line, I’m sure, where I feel most comfortable. I don’t have any desire to read hard-core anything, though I can’t think of anything particularly hard-core at the moment. I can recall reading “The Thorn Birds” as an elementary school or early junior high school student and feeling like I’d stumbled onto something I wasn’t supposed to see. I’m sure that made me want to keep reading! :)
I recently suggested to Brent that Kennedy (age 14) might like to read “The Thorn Birds.” I read it when I was about that age and remember really liking it. I guess there’s a lot of sex in it . . . ??? That’s not what I remember about it . . .
But I *DO* remember reading plenty o’ sex in the Clan of the Cave Bear books. Wowza, that was an education for my 14 year old self. My dad read them (at least the first of the trilogy) and passed it along to me . . .so I guess he thought it was okay. ?? I should ask him about that now . . . whether he thought much about it or just didn’t worry about it.
Ah, Clan of the Cave Bear and Go Ask Alice — I was introduced to both around the age of 12 or 13 along with (likely the same that Matt mentioned) dog-eared passages in V.C. Andrews’ Flowers in the Attic .
I read The Clan of the Cave Bear too, and the second one, whatever that was called. I think Auel wrote 5 or 6 in total. I first I thought, “Cool… Cavemen, Sex… What’s not to like?” But before long it became apparent that it was nothing more than a romance novel.
HAH! I had a similar experience when I suggested that book in our RS book club. Churchy book clubs are tough- ours was also partly a literacy promotion thing since I live in an inner city, so we often tried to keep things at 8th grade level. Funny, but 8th graders think about sex a lot…..
“Do you have any rules about reading about sex? Is it anything goes or do you try to censor wisely?”
No. While I felt some degree of shame and guilt viewing erotic or pornographic images as a youth/young-adult, the same could not be said about sexual-themed, even pornographic writing.
I remember being in 5th or 6th grade and reading somebody’s copy of Go Ask Alice and feeling like I’d crossed some forbidden, but very exciting, line. At one point in her “journal,” Alice begins an entry with: “Another day, another blow job.” This blew my mind. They were just black letters on a page, but assembled together they somehow created the image of the sexual act, like staring at one of those 3D eye puzzles that eventually form an image if you stare long enough. (To this day when I hear the word “blow job” I think of that line from Go Ask Alice.)
I also remember friends (mostly girls) reading books by V.C. Andrews (i.e. Flowers in the Attic, etc.) that contained a lot of frank, sexual content. I don’t think I ever read one of her novels all the way through, but I remember reading several well-dog-eared passages from friends books.
During college, and on and off as an adult, I’ve tried reading erotica. I’ve read some Anais Nin. I’ve read some of Anne Rice’s erotica (written under the pen name A. N. Roquelaure). I’ve read some cheesy “anonymous” stuff, which is basically long-form Penthouse Letters. None of it did much for me — it either seemed aimed at women, or was poorly written.
But I do like good literature with sexuality sprinkled throughout. I remember reading (and liking) Vox by Nicholson Baker in one night. Vox is essentially one long episode of phone sex between two people on a pay-per minute phone line. It’s all dialogue, no description.
Philip Roth’s novels, almost without exception, have well-written and graphic sex scenes. Roth writes about libido, desire, (and over the past 20 years the loss of libidio/desire and the associated debilitating psychological and physical effects) as well as any male writer. Roth is sometimes charged with being a misogynist, and some of his characters certainly are, but that doesn’t change the fact that his sexual writing is so honest, bare, and human. As such, it always elicits an emotional reaction from me — whether excitement or pity.
John Irving, Norman Mailer, and Larry McMurtry are other writers who sometimes write sexual situations into their novels in a frank and either honest or titillating way. Same with Milan Kundera and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
I have Zadie Smith on my bookshelf, but have never read her. Must move up my queue.
A couple great links:
First, Philip Roth talks about writing sex scenes in a recent novel, The Humbling. What is interesting is the way the female interviewer and Philip Roth seem to totally disagree about the motives of the female character:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSgIdwWp7Ac
Second, a great article in the New York Times by Katie Roiphe (“The Naked and the Conflicted”) that compares the sexual writing of the Boomer Generation (Philip Roth, Norman Mailer, John Updike, and Saul Bellow) to the sexual writing of Generation X (Dave Eggers, David Foster Wallace, Michael Chabon, Jonathan Franzen, and Jonathan Safran Foer). I totally agree with her conclusions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/books/review/Roiphe-t.html?pagewanted=1
Roiphe perfectly sums up Roth’s sexual writing here:
“Roth’s explicit passages walk a fine, difficult line between darkness, humor and lust, and somehow the male hero emerges from all the comic clauses breathless, glorified. There is in these scenes rage, revenge and some garden-variety sexism, but they are – in their force, in their gale winds, in their intelligence – charismatic, a celebration of the virility of their bookish, yet oddly irresistible, protagonists. As the best scenes spool forward, they are maddening, beautiful, eloquent and repugnant all at once. One does not have to like Roth, or Zuckerman, or Portnoy, to admire the intensely narrated spectacle of their sexual adventures. Part of the suspense of a Roth passage, the tautness, the brilliance, the bravado in the sentences themselves, the high-wire performance of his prose, is how infuriating and ugly and vain he can be without losing his readers (and then every now and then he actually goes ahead and loses them).”
Matt, I’ve read Roiphe’s article and I’m still thinking about it. This is tricky for me because I like Roth and find a lot of his sex writing very compelling, although I often find him sexist at times. I’m not so sold on Updike and Mailer. I’m also not sure I buy the dichotomy that Roiphe sets up — self-conscious, puritanical navel gazers or sexist, but exuberant and beautifully written passages from now old men.
I don’t see it as a dichotomy, but two different, but compelling points of view. Roiphe might be suggesting there is some optimal middle ground between the dirty old men and the sensitive young men, but such a ground, if it existed, would be just another point of view.
I find it interesting, and a little troubling, that writers of our generation don’t write as much about sex; or when the do, with as much panache. When they do, the form is more confessional, more 12-step, more self-conscious. There are likely many reasons for this, some of which Roiphe mentions. But to me, the ubiquity of sex (whether on the internet, network television, etc.) is the primary culprit. It makes sex much less interesting and much more available. It also puts sex in a parentheses — you put sex over here, and art over here — no reason for the two to meet. Roth, Mailer, Updike, etc. came of age when sex just wasn’t discussed, let alone seen in public. It fueled their imagination. Today’s writers have likely seen everything before their imagination even has time to conceive of it.
The middle ground does exist — it is found in the writing of women.)
First of all, I totally agree with your assessment of why writers or our generation don’t write as much about sex. Our culture is so oversaturated with sex, I think there is both boredom, but also a sense that sex isn’t going to be a transcendent experience — the epiphany — that it is in the fiction of Roth’s generation. I think that is a shame for both sex and writing.
However, I’m not sure if Franzen and Foster-Wallace are the natural heirs of Roth, Mailer and Updike. They are all great writers and white males, but stylistically, I think that Foster-Wallace has a more direct connection to Nabokov and (maybe Pynchon) whereas Franzen — in his scope and realism — is more like a Victorian novelist. Chabon might be a more natural heir to Roth (in fact, Wonder Boys illustrates Roiphe’s assertions — Grady is a philanderer and pothead, but his work is bloated, has lost its relevance, James a sensitive young man, but he produces this brilliant work). Although, I thought the sex was pretty good in Kavalier and Clay , if not as explicit. Part of me thinks — maybe good sex writing isn’t being done by white males, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t being written by women and men from other cultures/races.
On the other hand, it is interesting to explore the dilemma of male privilege and sexual politics in our generation and this is where I find Roiphe very convincing. As you noted, there are two compelling points of view, both influenced by the moment in which they find themselves.
Very interesting subject, and not one I’ve given much (or any) thought to. I don’t censor, but haven’t really ever felt the need to. I enjoy reading, but not to the extent that there’s ALWAYS something I’m in the middle of. I go through periods of reading, and then I don’t for a while. And typically I enjoy an easy read, something that catches my attention and provides the much-needed escapism, but that doesn’t require too much thought (or silence). So I don’t think I’m often in the same audience as the rest of you. My books rarely tend to have sex in them, and if they do it’s brief. Sex in any art form is so confused in our society, and literature is no exception.
I don’t really censor what I read, but I give myself permission to put a book down if it is stupid, or boring. Sex scenes in books don’t really bother me, and neither does violence.
We had a woman come to our city book club when we read Dickens “Christmas Carol.” She said she only read scrupulously clean books. She didn’t come back.
Love this, Heidi. Had to do a double take at this line “a second-hand job” :-)
M2theh- A Christmas Carol???? You can read my post on it in the 12 Lunches archive. I suppose Victorian England was a bit dirty- but really. Is this part of the “art music and literature must be uplifting” concept? I find that nauseating. Did these people not take high school literature classes?
I can’t tell you how many RS and SS lessons and discussions with my in-laws I’ve sat through where that notion was put forward by people who don’t understand art. Art isn’t all “If” poems and oil paintings of eagles taking flight. Art is about the human experience. Life is R-rated.
But I grew up with nudes and paintings of purse-snatchings on the walls so I’m biased and a bit snobby.
As for reading about sex, I’m surprised none of you Gen Xers have mentioned Judy Blume’s Forever. We passed that one around the playground in middle school plenty.
Yes to Judy Blume. Of course… :)
Pun was intended.)
And, yes, of course, to Judy Blume and Forever
I can’t think of any books I’ve read with compelling sex in them. That’s odd, now that I think of it. All the ones I can think of struck me as really fake at the time I read them. The Godfather (a rag I would totally not read now, but in highschool it seemed good). Zorba the Greek talked about it, but never in a way that seemed attractive or interesting to me. The women were so shortchanged in that book that they may as well not have been human. Sort of a Louisiana-bestiality-law-domestic-animal type sex book, lol. The one philosophical commentary Zorba made about women was that they didn’t want to be free, so that made them not people, or something like that.
There was dream sex in The Last Temptation of Christ, the dream of being a normal guy and going on in his carpentry profession, marrying Mary Magdalene, etc. Interesting but not compelling. Oh, gosh, now I’m starting to worry that something is wrong with me. I read The Joy of Sex and More Joy of Sex just doing research to learn about human sexuality, also The Hite Report on female sexuality and the other one on male sexuality. She made men seem so crude and selfish that I remember shutting the second book in the middle and thinking if that’s what men are really like, I don’t want a husband. But I knew it wasn’t accurate. It was so full of axe-grinding you could hear the wheel turning.
I think sex is a great subject, and I don’t at all mind reading about it, so long as it’s real and not fakey and embarrassingly unrealistic. But I can’t think of any good book I’ve read that had sex in it that was compelling and good. That’s sad!
I remember realizing one day that I’d never once had a dream in which I had my own child, or was pregnant, or anything of the sort. A few times I’ve dreamed I had a real husband, but never a child, unless it was someone else’s baby I was looking after. That upset me. Now I’m upset at not having read any books with good sex in them, or not remembering them if I did. It makes me afraid there could be something wrong with me.