Sex and a Great Novel...Possible?

[ms.read]

Just pondering ,in, what little free time that I have....

I am a longtime fan of Literotica...and I've dabbled in writing a bit of smut...(you can see my submissions if you like...)

also... I have written some stories outside of the Lit realm, doing NaNoWriMo...

Now, I am wondering, can the sexual element be inserted into a novel to make it a great novel? Or,

Can the sexual element be the in the forefront of the novel and still be a great novel?

Or will it just be a great pile of smut?

 

[lovecraft68]

Just pondering ,in, what little free time that I have....

I am a longtime fan of Literotica...and I've dabbled in writing a bit of smut...(you can see my submissions if you like...)

also... I have written some stories outside of the Lit realm, doing NaNoWriMo...

Now, I am wondering, can the sexual element be inserted into a novel to make it a great novel? Or,

Can the sexual element be the in the forefront of the novel and still be a great novel?

Or will it just be a great pile of smut?

Hopefully it can, I've spent parts of the past two years on for lack of a better term a "hardcore soap opera" it features several pretty hardcore encounters mixed in with several plot lines.

The recent success of Shades of Grey (The twilight treatment of BDSM) shows that it's possible. The bored housewives are definitely looking for some more hardcore sex in their main stream erotica.

 

[lance gt]

I currently writing a mainstream historical piece that features many different sexual situations. Sex was as much a part of normal life back then, so it became an intregal part of the story, as much as a character is.

Romance novels always skirt around the scene and don't get into the details of it. Everything else in a novel is explict in content, so sex should be as well. People like to be shocked by the reality of it, the same as the rest of the story. Less imagination and more in your face writing is what readers want.

 

[ms.read]

Hmm...

Can Sex be the theme of the story? (and Still be a great story?)

Or is sex only a facilitator to move the story along?

For me as a writer, the more explicit the better.

Romance novels can be good...in the fact that they may focus on the emotional connections between the two main characters...but they lack "the spark" of the arousal that this writer is trying to ignite in the reader.

On the other hand, I don't want to write just a "stroke story"

 

[SamScribble]

I guess it depends on how you define 'great' and what you mean by 'theme'. Off the top of my head, I can think of at least two serious novels - Philip Roth's Sabbath's Theater and John Fowles' Mantissa - in which sex (and quite explicit sex) is part of the central theme. And I'm sure there are many others.

 

[sr71plt]

If it flows with the storyline, I don't see why not. If it's "inserted," maybe not.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Richard Adams, of Watership Down fame, wrote a rather decent erotic novel called "Maia"

 

[colddiesel]

The BBC did a dramatisation of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park about 12 years ago. Fanny Price is normally regarded as the most prudish,prosying and boring of Austens heroines, however, the scriptwriters recast her character to stress her repressed longing for sex. Mary Crawford was cast as "slut" who bedded Fanny's hoped for lover. It was in my view a brilliant adaptation which in reality departed very little from Austen's original book.

My basic point is, that if you can sex up Mansfield Park, you can do it to almost any story - with the right skill.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Sex is the theme of a whole slew of great novels: D.H. Lawrence, Lawrence Durrell, Henry Miller, Erica Jong, Phillip Roth (as Sam mentioned. Roth's Portnoy's complaint is all about sex, albeit masturbation)... But few of these have anything we'd recognize as hot, explicit sex.

The question is, can you write a great novel with explicit sex. Explicit sex is something most 'literary' authors seem to avoid, and I'm not sure why. Maybe because they're bad at it. I've seen some truly awful sex scenes written by some otherwise great authors. But why they should be bad at it is a mystery to me. They seem embarrassed by it.

Sex is such a huge part of our lives you'd think more good authors would be working away in it. Sex is about needs and wants and power and even identity. It's how we see ourselves and how we see others and how we love. These are all serious literary themes that have been approached from all sorts of angles, except the most direct one. And despite most authors' pornophobia, there's no reason a graphic sex scene can't be beautiful and meaningful while still being hot and arousing.

The main thing, the thing that separates 'literature' from just writing is that literature provides insight and meaning. Most porn just paints pictures. Any kind of serious sexual literature would have to go beyond the physical, down to the roots of sexual desire and motivation.

My opinion anyhow.

 

[sr71plt]

I think it's more the publishers than the authors who wet-blanket graphic sex scenes. They are discouraged in the "literary fiction" genre, whatever that is.

 

[Ironiclaconic]

Mabeuse nails it. Sex is arguably the most important driver of human behavior yet it gets treated shyly by almost every mainstream author. I think there are a lot of reasons: snobbery, business factors, need to be taken seriously, etc.

But I see the walls coming down. The Internet and self publishing just make it a matter of time before there is a breakthrough erotic novel. My guess is that 50 years from now erotic fiction is just another fiction genre with high crossover appeal, and movie treatments. Art always needs to blaze new ground and sex is just too rich of a subject.

 

[sr71plt]

Wasn't Lady Chatterly's Lover the "breakthrough" erotic novel? (Although many others too will pop up as candidates, probably.)

Again, I don't think it's the authors. I think it's the publishers' perception of the audience and of some sort of notion of theirs where graphic sex fits in high-brow literature.

The A-list movies haven't moved all that far in this direction yet either. Would that be because screenwriters are prudish?

 

[Stella_Omega]

Lady Chatterley's Lover is about politics, really. Oh-- and subterranean bells, swinging ponderously.

I think the problem with literary writers and their crap erotic scenes is the part of that same old Madonna/whore dichotomy-- Nice Writers Don't.

Even the ones that pride themselves on Not Being Nice-- they can face all sorts of nasty places in the human psyche, but sex? They don't go there.

 

[3113]

Gravity's Rainbow

Sex is the theme of a whole slew of great novels: D.H. Lawrence, Lawrence Durrell, Henry Miller, Erica Jong, Phillip Roth (as Sam mentioned. Roth's Portnoy's complaint is all about sex, albeit masturbation)... But few of these have anything we'd recognize as hot, explicit sex.

Thank you, Dr. M.! We might argue whether these are "great novels" or whether or not we like how they portray sex, women, etc. but when i saw the question these are what popped right to mind.

"...can the sexual element be inserted into a novel to make it a great novel?"

Duh. Yes. Been there, done that. In fact, if we consider all of literature rather than just the novel, we can go all the way back to Lysistrata, writte in 411 BC. That play alone shows that great literature and sex (eroticism) can go hand-in-hand. It can be done and has been done.

Edited to add: The *GREATEST* example I ever read of the sexual element inserted into a novel to make it a great novel: Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. He didn't just insert sex to add important nuances and layers to his complex work, he inserted some truly kinky and grotesque BDSM. Enough that the 1973 novel was overturned for the Pulitzer's award for best novel in 1974 because eleven of the judges couldn't deal with the graphic kink factor.

It won many other awards, however, and was listed as one of the 100 great English-Language novels from 1923-2005 by Time Magazine. Some consider it the greatest American novel ever written. But the message would (IMHO) be that it takes a very good writer to elevate a novel with sex rather than just leaving the reader feeling like the writer added sex to a novel--good or bad.

 

[3113]

Richard Adams, of Watership Down fame, wrote a rather decent erotic novel called "Maia"

I wouldn't call that a great novel. Heck, even the sex didn't save that poor excuse of a story from being a bad and dull fantasy novel all around.

 

[ms.read]

Sex is the theme of a whole slew of great novels: D.H. Lawrence, Lawrence Durrell, Henry Miller, Erica Jong, Phillip Roth (as Sam mentioned. Roth's Portnoy's complaint is all about sex, albeit masturbation)... But few of these have anything we'd recognize as hot, explicit sex.

The question is, can you write a great novel with explicit sex. Explicit sex is something most 'literary' authors seem to avoid, and I'm not sure why. Maybe because they're bad at it. I've seen some truly awful sex scenes written by some otherwise great authors. But why they should be bad at it is a mystery to me. They seem embarrassed by it.

Sex is such a huge part of our lives you'd think more good authors would be working away in it. Sex is about needs and wants and power and even identity. It's how we see ourselves and how we see others and how we love. These are all serious literary themes that have been approached from all sorts of angles, except the most direct one. And despite most authors' pornophobia, there's no reason a graphic sex scene can't be beautiful and meaningful while still being hot and arousing.

The main thing, the thing that separates 'literature' from just writing is that literature provides insight and meaning. Most porn just paints pictures. Any kind of serious sexual literature would have to go beyond the physical, down to the roots of sexual desire and motivation.

My opinion anyhow.

The parts in bold are the things I want to express in my novel. I have to agree, that most writers don't go there. But I have seen an author,Jacqueline Carey, go there With explicitness in her debut Novel, Kushiel's dart. But as the trilogy continues with the second and third book, the sex scenes dry up quicker than water in the desert.

Mabeuse nails it. Sex is arguably the most important driver of human behavior yet it gets treated shyly by almost every mainstream author. I think there are a lot of reasons: snobbery, business factors, need to be taken seriously, etc.

But I see the walls coming down. The Internet and self publishing just make it a matter of time before there is a breakthrough erotic novel. My guess is that 50 years from now erotic fiction is just another fiction genre with high crossover appeal, and movie treatments. Art always needs to blaze new ground and sex is just too rich of a subject.

I want to break the glass ceiling. And I think that there are some writers here that are just as talented (if not more so) that can do this too.

Lady Chatterley's Lover is about politics, really. Oh-- and subterranean bells, swinging ponderously.

I think the problem with literary writers and their crap erotic scenes is the part of that same old Madonna/whore dichotomy-- Nice Writers Don't.

Even the ones that pride themselves on Not Being Nice-- they can face all sorts of nasty places in the human psyche, but sex? They don't go there.

I totally agree with you Stella!

 

[BONNIEBREA]

This is an interesting question, Ms., and it goes to a lot of what I see is wrong with erotica. Leave all the other descriptors aside (smut, porn, etc.) that people usually contrast with the term 'erotica'. I find that there is a tremendous difference between erotica and erotic literature.

Perhaps what you're reacting to is what is so common in erotica - so much of it consists of just simple and shallow narratives that are focused on a particular sexual orientation or practice or fetish. I think that's a shame because I think erotica is capable of, and appropriate to, literary expression. But what you see being edited and published (at least through the conventional erotica publishing channels) is just themed erotic narrative, rather than literary writing.

I've put my writing energies into erotic writing that has a literary base: real plots and characters and literary themes. It's essentially un-publishable through conventional channels simply because the approach is literary rather than the narrowly focused narratives that are all erotica editors and publishers know (the fact that the continuing premise for my stories is unique is also a big strike against it - erotica editors and publishers are not people who can handle original ideas).

Anyway, I don't know where you've been looking for erotic writing. If it's through the conventional publishers then I'm not surprised you're not finding work that is satisfying as literature or anything more than just shallow narrative.

 

[ms.read]

This is an interesting question, Ms., and it goes to a lot of what I see is wrong with erotica. Leave all the other descriptors aside (smut, porn, etc.) that people usually contrast with the term 'erotica'. I find that there is a tremendous difference between erotica and erotic literature.

Perhaps what you're reacting to is what is so common in erotica - so much of it consists of just simple and shallow narratives that are focused on a particular sexual orientation or practice or fetish. I think that's a shame because I think erotica is capable of, and appropriate to, literary expression. But what you see being edited and published (at least through the conventional erotica publishing channels) is just themed erotic narrative, rather than literary writing.

I've put my writing energies into erotic writing that has a literary base: real plots and characters and literary themes. It's essentially un-publishable through conventional channels simply because the approach is literary rather than the narrowly focused narratives that are all erotica editors and publishers know (the fact that the continuing premise for my stories is unique is also a big strike against it - erotica editors and publishers are not people who can handle original ideas).

Anyway, I don't know where you've been looking for erotic writing. If it's through the conventional publishers then I'm not surprised you're not finding work that is satisfying as literature or anything more than just shallow narrative.

Maybe My expectations are too high, as of yet to find Well written erotica with a good plot to go with it or at least some other emotions other than lust throughout the story. I used to be able to get some quality stuff in Border's (a mainstream conventional bookstore chain.) there was a series called wet, aqua erotica 2, which were great little short stories published in waterproofed pages. Very hot stuff, but it also made you think a bit. I like that. There are authors here on lit that have the same quality. Instead of looking for it somewhere else though, I am going write it myself and see if that gets me anywhere. I am planning on writing something for the earth day contest....

 

[sr71plt]

I think you need to read more. It's out there.