The Bad Sex Award: Article

[polynices]

From today's Guardian:

Last weekend Martin Amis told a literary festival audience that it's "impossible" for a novelist to write about real, as opposed to pornographic, sex anyway. "Sex is irreducibly personal, therefore not universal," he later tells me.

The full article is here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/oct/16/sex-disappearing-from-novels

- polynices

 

[Stella_Omega]

That article is a pretty good description of the controversy surrounding explicit sex in literature, thanks for linking to it!

This spoke to me and my reasons for concentrating on erotica;

Plenty of writers take the opposite view, arguing that it is in the act of having sex that characters reveal themselves most fully...

(Colm Toibin) says that for gay writers, in particular, finding a way of writing directly about sexual experiences was essential, and the novels of Edmund White and Alan Hollinghurst were "terribly important for gay people, the simple problem is that we had no images of ourselves".

 

[Handley_Page]

That article is a pretty good description of the controversy surrounding explicit sex in literature, thanks for linking to it!

This spoke to me and my reasons for concentrating on erotica;

Plenty of writers take the opposite view, arguing that it is in the act of having sex that characters reveal themselves most fully...

(Colm Toibin) says that for gay writers, in particular, finding a way of writing directly about sexual experiences was essential, and the novels of Edmund White and Alan Hollinghurst were "terribly important for gay people, the simple problem is that we had no images of ourselves".

I think I'll shut up this time. . . . .

 

[Verdad]

Intriguing quote. I’m loath to call anything in writing impossible, but I believe Amis is onto something. Will try to find the time to read the whole article later.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I think I'll shut up this time. . . . .

I'm curious as to what you wanted to say.

And a little apprehensive, since you felt the need to announce you weren't going to say it.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Really, I think Amis' quote is a bunch of crap. Sex is too personal? Why does anyone write except to communicate the personal? What about murder, suicide, despair, love? Those aren't personal?

I think what we have here is really the literati's fear of being caught in the act of pornography. It's the old literature vs. pornography thing again, illumination vs. titillation, and I think it shows the inherent silliness of trying to intellectualize sex.

These people aren't writing sex scenes because they can't. You can't intellectualize the sexual experience. You can analyze it, but you can't draw intellectual meaning from it. It's an emotional experience and not an intellectual one.

 

[wet_special]

Really, I think Amis' quote is a bunch of crap. Sex is too personal? Why does anyone write except to communicate the personal? What about murder, suicide, despair, love? Those aren't personal?

Well said. Thanks for grabbing this hot air balloon and pulling it back down to earth. Sex too personal? Hah! If you're elitist enough to take that tack, then you already at risk of being deficient in your own description of the problem. Sex is mechanical. Making love, now that is personal. But basically there's a thousand ways to write ANYTHING, which brings me back to the good doctor's point.

 

[amicus]

From today's Guardian:

Last weekend Martin Amis told a literary festival audience that it's "impossible" for a novelist to write about real, as opposed to pornographic, sex anyway. "Sex is irreducibly personal, therefore not universal," he later tells me.

The full article is here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/oct/16/sex-disappearing-from-novels

- polynices

~~~

Hello, polynices, welcome and thank you for the link and the thread.

I recall, long ago, engaged in writing my very first story, when the logical progression of events led to a sex scene; I realized I didn't have a clue as to how to portray, in a literary manner, the necessary components to create a readable few pages.

But...that was long ago and with that said:

Let's not talk about sex – why passion is waning in British books

"In good sex the individual personality kind of gets lost, people transcend themselves in a way. In bad sex people become hyper-aware of their bodies, the isolation of their bodies, of shame and humiliation. It's really in the same way that unhappiness is easier to describe than happiness. Good sex and happiness are not a story, the story occurs when things go wrong."

There is some truth in that paragraph, insomuch that the content of most literature concentrates on what goes wrong. However, the 'theme' or author's message, is usually directed at how to resolve a dilemma and in doing so, there must be a goal, real or imagined, of the nature of things going right.

"I tend to think what is explicit is often ineffective, that you can do more by hints and implication. As with describing anything, the trick is to get the reader doing the work. The space between the lines, that's where the reading experience takes place. If you can make your reader's imagination work, that is much more powerful than saying, he put his hand here and she put her hand there.... QUOTE]

I would personally agree with the above... with the caveat that the line between suggested and explicit, is a moveable feast which often requires experiment and adjustment of the ingredients to reach a toothsome brew.


Tony Blair follows his instincts

Cherie was an incredible strength during those months. She knew her own life was about to change and for her it was equally frightening, in some ways even more so [...]

However, that night she cradled me in her arms and soothed me; told me what I needed to be told; strengthened me; made me feel that what I was about to do was right. I had no doubt that I had to go for it, but I needed the reassurance and, above all, the emotional ballast.

In many ways, I am very emotionally self-sufficient; in some ways, too much so. I make emotional commitment because it comes naturally to me. But I fear it also; fear the loss of control and the fact that the consequences of caring can be painful; fear the dependence; perhaps fear learning the lesson, from love that goes wrong, that human nature is frail and unreliable after all.

On that night of 12 May 1994, I needed that love Cherie gave me, selfishly. I devoured it to give me strength, I was an animal following my instinct, knowing I would need every ounce of emotional power and resilience to cope with what lay ahead. I was exhilarated, afraid and determined, in roughly equal quantities.

Assuning the above is an excerpt from Tony Blairs writing, I find that a very revealing and deeply psychological confession that is seldom written about or discussed.

The sex act is an affirmation of life. Although I can anecdotally speak only from the male point of view, I can imagine the corresponding female acceptance and giving, to also be an affirmation or a re-affirmation of life itself and the fundamental values of life.

To briefly address Dr. Mabeuse's concept that sex is emotional, not intellectual, I would remind the good doctor that emotions are derived from previously made value judgments and reflect the mental or intellectual sense of morality of the individual. There is no 'mind/body' conflict in a healthy person.

Amicus

 

[bronzeage]

From today's Guardian:

Last weekend Martin Amis told a literary festival audience that it's "impossible" for a novelist to write about real, as opposed to pornographic, sex anyway. "Sex is irreducibly personal, therefore not universal," he later tells me.

The full article is here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/oct/16/sex-disappearing-from-novels

- polynices

If this were true, restaurant critics would be out of work. Can any man or woman tell me how something will taste in mouth?

The idea of an indescribable experience is silly. If it can be remembered, it can be described. If it were universal, why would anyone bother?

 

[dr_mabeuse]

~~~

To briefly address Dr. Mabeuse's concept that sex is emotional, not intellectual, I would remind the good doctor that emotions are derived from previously made value judgments and reflect the mental or intellectual sense of morality of the individual. There is no 'mind/body' conflict in a healthy person.

Amicus

Yes indeed, Amicus. I think all of us could attest to the rationality of love and sexual desire. I still remember developing the values that allowed me to enjoy kissing, based on the rational evaluation that licking the inside of another person's mouth was a virtuous act.

I had more trouble with oral sex, because the intellectual value that allowed to me to enjoy coital orgasm and ejaculation--the value of continuing my genetic line--didn't really apply when ejaculating into another person's mouth. However, I soon discovered the syllogism:

Everyone needs to eat food.
My semen is food.
Therefore, Everyone needs to eat my semen.

Which served nicely, and I was suddenly able to get aroused by acts of oral sex.

The intellectual basis of emotion is also why infants, who are incapable of making value judgments, have no emotions, and so are not really human. Therefore, until they reach the age of rational thought at about 9 or 10, simple economic considerations suggest that they'd be more efficiently raised in herds in large, barn-like structures equipped with feeding troughs. When they finally reach the level of intellectual development necessary to make the value judgments that would lead to their emotional perception of, "Hey! This sucks!", we could then let them out.

 

[Stella_Omega]

*laughs*

Well said, Doc.

 

[sr71plt]

These people aren't writing sex scenes because they can't.

That's a little harsh. They don't write them (if they don't. Maybe, like me, they write lots of them under pen names) because they don't sell to the mainstream and they might tarnish the marketable image of the author.

A good writer can write sex as well as they can write anything else they personally experience or have a talent researching or imagining.

As for sex being too personal to write, I'll agree with Dr. M. here. What is it that good writers are writing about that isn't personal? Personal description in erotica doesn't have to meet the arousal of the reader on every point of description--it just needs to set the reader off on his/her own pleasant imaginings.

 

[amicus]

Originally Posted by amicus
~~~

To briefly address Dr. Mabeuse's concept that sex is emotional, not intellectual, I would remind the good doctor that emotions are derived from previously made value judgments and reflect the mental or intellectual sense of morality of the individual. There is no 'mind/body' conflict in a healthy person.

Amicus

Yes indeed, Amicus. I think all of us could attest to the rationality of love and sexual desire. I still remember developing the values that allowed me to enjoy kissing, based on the rational evaluation that licking the inside of another person's mouth was a virtuous act.

I had more trouble with oral sex, because the intellectual value that allowed to me to enjoy coital orgasm and ejaculation--the value of continuing my genetic line--didn't really apply when ejaculating into another person's mouth. However, I soon discovered the syllogism:

Everyone needs to eat food.
My semen is food.
Therefore, Everyone needs to eat my semen.

Which served nicely, and I was suddenly able to get aroused by acts of oral sex.

The intellectual basis of emotion is also why infants, who are incapable of making value judgments, have no emotions, and so are not really human. Therefore, until they reach the age of rational thought at about 9 or 10, simple economic considerations suggest that they'd be more efficiently raised in herds in large, barn-like structures equipped with feeding troughs. When they finally reach the level of intellectual development necessary to make the value judgments that would lead to their emotional perception of, "Hey! This sucks!", we could then let them out.

~~~

It is always amusing to read the rantings of an over-educated, anally myopic self centered narcissist who likes to play with his privates.

Kissing and hugging and fondling begins at day one of a new life and progresses through experience after experience until an emotional response becomes automatic as that new life matures.

Even the Harry Potter creator, realized that her on screen characters would grow, year by year in each film, passing into that 'awkward' stage of adolescence where boys and girls become shy and withdrawn.

It is that kind of navel contemplation that leads to such dystopic views of life that the Huxley Brothers and George Orwell created when they wrote of 'herding people into barnlike structures' or a verisimilitude.

Mab scratches his pancake and pours syrup down his back as he contemplates his navel, forgetting that hetereosexual intercourse has a fundamental purpose and all else is icing on the cake. Mab prefers only the icing and writes without a clue as to the underlying order of things.

I had hoped that someone might view the clarity of Blair's descriptions and address the triumphant male act of making love as an essential ingredient in a successful and pleasured human life.

Ho hum...

Amicus

 

[Stella_Omega]

[

I had hoped that someone might view the clarity of Blair's descriptions and address the triumphant male act of making love as an essential ingredient in a successful and pleasured human life.

I think you should write a book about it, Ami.

You can title it; "Chicken Soup for the Randian Soul."

You'll sell millions of copies. or anyway, you can give them away.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Originally Posted by amicus
~~~

To briefly address Dr. Mabeuse's concept that sex is emotional, not intellectual, I would remind the good doctor that emotions are derived from previously made value judgments and reflect the mental or intellectual sense of morality of the individual. There is no 'mind/body' conflict in a healthy person.

Amicus



~~~

It is always amusing to read the rantings of an over-educated, anally myopic self centered narcissist who likes to play with his privates.

Kissing and hugging and fondling begins at day one of a new life and progresses through experience after experience until an emotional response becomes automatic as that new life matures.

Even the Harry Potter creator, realized that her on screen characters would grow, year by year in each film, passing into that 'awkward' stage of adolescence where boys and girls become shy and withdrawn.

It is that kind of navel contemplation that leads to such dystopic views of life that the Huxley Brothers and George Orwell created when they wrote of 'herding people into barnlike structures' or a verisimilitude.

Mab scratches his pancake and pours syrup down his back as he contemplates his navel, forgetting that hetereosexual intercourse has a fundamental purpose and all else is icing on the cake. Mab prefers only the icing and writes without a clue as to the underlying order of things.

I had hoped that someone might view the clarity of Blair's descriptions and address the triumphant male act of making love as an essential ingredient in a successful and pleasured human life.

Ho hum...

Amicus

Blair's excerpt has nothing to do with your asinine comment that sexual pleasure is derived from intellectual value judgments, nor do your dimwit attempts at pre-adolescent character assassination do anything more than make quite clear your natural and preferred level of debate.

Apparently you're not even aware that by even mentioning the biological imperative of sex, you're already conceding that the sexual drive is of a biological nature and therefore not a product of rational value judgments.

As usual, you mistake your intellectual highchair for a throne.

 

[bronzeage]

...

I had hoped that someone might view the clarity of Blair's descriptions and address the triumphant male act of making love as an essential ingredient in a successful and pleasured human life.

Ho hum...

Amicus

Is that where the man cums first and pumps his fists in the air, yelling, "I win, I win"?

Lay off the sterno.

 

[Verdad]

Ha, fun article. I don’t know either if I’d be so harsh to those writers, Doc. They sound like they’ve come to the decision to leave out explicit sex after wrestling with the problem of banality, and that problem does arise in a story that’s not primarily intended to arouse. Maybe more interesting than a yes or no to Amis’ statement would be writers’ answers as to how they deal with sex when they don’t aim for a pornographic effect and the problems, if any, they encounter.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Ha, fun article. I don’t know either if I’d be so harsh to those writers, Doc. They sound like they’ve come to the decision to leave out explicit sex after wrestling with the problem of banality, and that problem does arise in a story that’s not primarily intended to arouse. Maybe more interesting than a yes or no to Amis’ statement would be writers’ answers as to how they deal with sex when they don’t aim for a pornographic effect and the problems, if any, they encounter.

If you took eating, say, as a comparable experience, how much detail would you incorporate? Most novels are about something. Plot points that happen during a meal generally don't involve the taste and texture of the food, or even what the menu is. You might have your characters talk, or think, or notice something, or get shot at, during the meal, and never go into detail about the meal itself.

Unless the novel is about sensory experiences. Then you would be talking about a lot of other things as well, dwelling on color, texture, temperature, sounds...

And you'd become notorious for your decadent writing, and Amis would pillory you for your purposeless prose.

 

[sr71plt]

Ha, fun article. I don’t know either if I’d be so harsh to those writers, Doc. They sound like they’ve come to the decision to leave out explicit sex after wrestling with the problem of banality,

Guess I'd be somewhere between you, then. I think they have come to their decisions based on marketability and their pocketbooks. Again I think they can joyfully write dirty (most of them)--and that many do on the side. They just write differently for different markets. I certainly do.

Decades ago, in the Jackie Collins era, you could have the argument from the other direction--whether or not a fiction writer could successfully sell a manuscript without at least one sex scene in it. (And now, it seems, you need to have someone gay at least run through one of the threads.)

(And speaking of writing differently to different audiences and responding to how I'd write about sex without pornographic intent, I'll point to my next story posting here, probably on Friday, "Saving Sadie," in the Mature category. An active writer can write to the market.)

 

[amicus]

Really, I think Amis' quote is a bunch of crap. Sex is too personal? Why does anyone write except to communicate the personal? What about murder, suicide, despair, love? Those aren't personal?

I think what we have here is really the literati's fear of being caught in the act of pornography. It's the old literature vs. pornography thing again, illumination vs. titillation, and I think it shows the inherent silliness of trying to intellectualize sex.

These people aren't writing sex scenes because they can't. You can't intellectualize the sexual experience. You can analyze it, but you can't draw intellectual meaning from it. It's an emotional experience and not an intellectual one.

~~~

Essentially, in the above, and later remarks by Mab, there lurks an undefined and unwritten premise shared by many who think or believe as Mab portrays.

That premise, loosely described, is the disassociation between thought and action, the old mind/body dichotomy that occupied formal Philosophers for decades. It has been stubbornly reborn in modern secular humanism to establish the unpinings for an ammoral, or agnostic concept of human ethics and morals.

In other words, Mab can gargle a mouthful of human (or dog) semen, without making a judgment as to the morality of the act.

With the figurative death of God and thus the fading of absolute moral pronouncements with an all powerful deity creating both life and the Ten moral commandments on how one should live and pursue that life, Mab & his intellectual cohorts function by rejecting all morality and conclude that all experiences are subjective, personal and above ethical and moral judgment by others or society in general.

There is a great pleasure in writing about human experiences, as each human is individually unique and valuable by the mere rite of existence.

Human sexuality is a marvelous and mystifying aspect of existence; but to state that it is only an "emotional' experience and not an intellectual one", is to miss entirely the beauty and the joy of sex and limit it only to the mechancal description of the act.

The unforgiveable crime I have committed on this forum is to repeatedly state that one is responsible for ones' actions. That statement challenges every secular humanist tenet that dismisses the moral in favor of the pragmatic.

It is the iconization of the Hippie proclamation: "If it feels good, do it!"

Rand accurately described the malady as 'moral bankruptcy'.

Amicus

 

[Stella_Omega]

He comes to an EROTICA site to preach puritanism.

And wax rhapsodic about young girls, but that's different, somehow.

 

[sr71plt]

He comes to an EROTICA site to preach puritanism.

And wax rhapsodic about young girls, but that's different, somehow.

Well, you know about amicus and underage girls . . .

 

[Stella_Omega]

Well, you know about amicus and underage girls . . .

Wish I didn't.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Ha, fun article. I don’t know either if I’d be so harsh to those writers, Doc. They sound like they’ve come to the decision to leave out explicit sex after wrestling with the problem of banality, and that problem does arise in a story that’s not primarily intended to arouse. Maybe more interesting than a yes or no to Amis’ statement would be writers’ answers as to how they deal with sex when they don’t aim for a pornographic effect and the problems, if any, they encounter.

Well, the human mind seems so constructed that, when it comes to sex, the merest description of physical detail is enough to arouse us and thereby earn the sobriquet of "pornographic," and this is kind of weird. We don't object when a novel's chase scenes make us feel excitement, or when a horror scenes make us feel fear and revulsion, or when a character's triumph makes us feel joy. So why should we be so outraged when a sex scene makes us feel arousal?

My guess is that most "serious" authors know how easy it is to sexually arouse a reader, and so they avoid it as mere gratuitousness. Anyone who can write a physical description of sex can write porn, but it takes some skill to elicit other emotions, and these authors don't want to be accused of pandering, as SR says. But of course, that presupposes that they only purpose of a sex scene is to arouse, which is ridiculous. And that's what bothers me so much about Amis' statement. He seems to believe that sex is only about the physical act, which is just mind-boggling from a writer of his ability.

Banality is not the fault of the world we live in. It's the fault of uncreative or unperceptive authors who are unable to see sex as anything more than pornography. To my mind, it's hard to think of anything people do that's deeper and more revelatory and laden with meaning than their sexual behavior. Sex is identity and psychology and power and love and image and communication and everything else to the extent that you can't even be fully human without dealing with it. Even if you deal with it by denying it, you're still dealing with it. How can you dismiss all that by saying it doesn't matter, or that portrayals of it have to be banal?

To be specific on your question, though, if you're writing a novel in which a sex scene is going to be gratuitous, then it's going to be gratuitous and there's no way around that. It probably doesn't belong. But that doesn't mean sex as a legitimate subject is finished or exhausted. If I want to write a sex scene and avoid arousing people, I'll just avoid graphic detail and concentrate on the characters' emotional or internal experiences. I'll write about the sexuality rather than the sex. Avoiding graphic detail will probably cause most people to say it's not really a sex scene, but as I said, inclusion of any description is going to automatically get you branded as pornographic, so you can't win.

But overall, I tend to agree with SR. I think most writers who can write have tried their hand at writing sex but would die before admitting it. I imagine they came up short too, and quickly abandoned it. How else would Amis know that he couldn't do a decent sex scene unless he'd tried it, at least conceptually?

 

[Xelebes]

Is that where the man cums first and pumps his fists in the air, yelling, "I win, I win"?

Lay off the sterno.

More like fistpump and screaming "Yeah!" with the farcical oompa-loompa face.