Michel Perkins introduced his unique survey of modern erotic literature with George Bataille’s incisive quote: “Man goes contantly in fear of himself. His erotic urges terrify him.”(Perkins 1992). What serious novelist would deny themselves such a challenge as a topic? Yet most contemporary literary writers do, either by refusing to write about the sexual lives of their characters at all, or by representing those urges in spectacularly unerotic ways.
As one literary critic observed, “By the early 1990s, a peculiarly British form of disapproval had grown out of the notion that sex and serious literature made for uncomfortable bedfellows.”(Akbar 2010).
In his interview with the Washington Post’s Carole Burns, Martin Amis has famously said: “Good sex is impossible to write about” because ” you lose the universal and succumb to the particular.”(Post 2003). I find this an almost impenetrable statement. Either he means that no good literature ever deals with ‘the particular’ – which is a patently untrue statement. Or he means that ‘good sex’ is somehow less universal than bad sex. One has to wonder whether he’s simply coming up with badly formed excuses for his own limitations, or he has personally suffered a very bad sex life.
Howard Jacobson, in responding to critics who complained that his novel, ‘The Act of Love,’ did not arouse them, he said that it wasn’t his intention to do so (Akbar 2010). But, in fact, there are certain portions of Jacobson’s book that would indeed be extremely arousing to any fetishist turned on by humiliation and/or domination (Jacobson 2010).
It’s not that literary novelists aren’t writing about sex. According to James Wood, “Houellebecq has become famous both for the pornographic fervor of his writing and for the theorizing he likes to do around his sex scenes” but his are not, it could be argued, representations of naturalistic eroticism (Woods 2012). Quite the opposite: they are perhaps an extreme example of how many contemporary literary writers have resigned themselves to writing about sex.
There is a sense that sex can only be written about ‘authentically’ when it is represented devoid of emotion or even self-reflection on the part of the characters. It must be portrayed with dispassion, mechanistically else it devolve into “erotica, with its cheapening effect of sexual arousal” (Akbar 2010).
It is ironic, then, that this studied avoidance of emotional, ethereal or passionate sex scenes has in fact led to literary sex scenes that are either totally absent or hyperpornographic: lacking depth, humanity or context. The artificial and mannered decision to ensure that the reader’s experience is not cheapened by sexual arousal has, in fact, led to acclimatizing them to sexually fetishistic extremes: depersonalization, humiliation and extreme emotional disengagement. Very much in the same way that the Victorian sublimation of sex led so unsurprisingly to erotic strategies that now dominate the world of kink, such as erotic power relationships and sexualized corporal punishment.
It’s all very well for Amis, Jacobson and Houllebecq to publically rue the commercialization and trivialization of sex within our culture, because this is an undeniable social reality (Attwood 2009), but why do they insist not only on representing it, but also perpetuating it?
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Akbar, A. (2010). “Bad sex please, we’re British: Can fictive sex ever have artistic merit? .” The Independent. Retrieved Jan 28, 2012, from http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/bad-sex-please-were-british-can-fictive-sex-ever-have-artistic-merit-2137741.html.
Attwood, F. (2009). Mainstreaming Sex: The Sexualisation of Western Culture. London, I B Tauris & Co Ltd.
Jacobson, H. (2010). The Act of Love. London, Vintage.
Perkins, M. (1992). The Secret Record. New York, Rinoceros.
Burns, Carole. (2003). “Off the Page: Martin Amis.” Off the Page. Retrieved Jan 28, 2012, from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36420-2003Oct29.html.
Woods, J. (2012) Off the Map: Michel Houellebecq’s naked nomads. The New Yorker 78
I just can’t get over the idea – truth? – that writers aren’t taking Amis’s words as a challenge. Someone tells me I can’t do something, I want to do it even more. There definitely needs to be a shift. One of the most important human experiences is being overlooked in one of the most important forms of self-expression, social commentary, and art. It’s not okay.
Excellent piece here, RG.
I can’t think of all the sex scenes I’ve come across in ‘serious’ novels (and, for some reason, mostly in books written by men), that are composed as some sort of personal desolation, as if the act itself were completely empty and without satisfaction, ever. Joyless, formless, the pair bond, the attraction, the expression of physicality, affection, emotion – completely absent. I do not believe this sort of writing necessarily reflects the reality of the writer (or reality, period), but, as you say, some fetishistic extreme, an intellectual sensibility that almost doesn’t want to be associated with the sticky, messy reality of an honest orgasm.
Desire is so often filtered through objectification: the romance novel, pornography – neither of which the *serious* author wants to be associated with (the former being, historically speaking, written for the ‘lesser’ entertainment of women, the latter being crude, unspeakable filth). Unless the writer has a point to make, sex, in the serious novel is pointless. Why write about it unless you are seeking to arouse or lead astray? After all, we don’t look to the likes of Martin Amis to teach us about sexuality (or much else, for that matter).
Another male author who does write with a certain amount of abandon, riffing on sex in all its sticky conundrums and joyful, playful wonder is Tom Robbins; he even manages a few fine philosophical touches without entering the realm of personal annihilation someone like Houellebecq frequently explores.
There is no real comparison to be made here except what *is* a healthy concept of sex (written or otherwise)? The intellectualized version with all its fear and finality (sex and death always go hand in hand), or something that strips the fear and darkness away, reminds us that pleasure should bring a smile, a laugh, a release of whatever toxic build-up we’ve been holding onto for so long – or is that just fantasy? How many literary relationships are ever explored in full (or real ones, for that matter)?
There’s a loneliness to all of this, that’s what stays – the lonely character, the lonely writer – and we all know you can’t have sex by yourself. There’s another word for that, with all its childhood nightmare associations, all the shame and humiliation and bad jokes. It all gets wrapped up in that adult psyche, somewhere, meant to be unraveled later.
Sorry to ramble, hope something made sense.
Wow, wonderful comment. Please don’t apologize for the ramble!
Quite honestly, I just think that this affected refusal of sentimentality ends up looking a lot like the very thing they are apparently so desperate to avoid. The truth is, sometimes life IS sentimental. Sex has it’s place in the serious novel. It shouldn’t be avoided. But it helps if you base it on the merest vestige of reality.
I think, too often, writers avoid sexual description for fear of being relegated to the romance or erotic fiction stacks. It really does seem, if you want to make it to the bestseller list (and make a living writing), you have to give into the pressure to create writing that is sexually tame or vapid so as not to offend. That way you sell to a wider audience. It’s sad, though. Real literature shoul be able to do both…tell an excellent story AND be honest about human desires. Some of my favorites, that are also well-known classics – so have been accepted by a wide audience: D.H. Lawrence’s “The Rainbow”, Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer”, Gustave Flaubert’s “Madame Bovary”. Some contemporary authors have managed to do it as well – Ron Hansen’s “Mariette in Ecstasy”, Michael Faber’s “The Crimson Petal and the White”, and DM Thomas’s “The White Hotel”. I’m sure there are hundreds of other good books that handle sexuality honestly – and I’d love to hear other people’s suggestions (for my own selfish reasons). Maybe what annoys people is the random, gratuitous sex scene…I’m not a fan of the those, either.
“The cheapening effect of sexual arousal”… I’m stuck on that bizarre notion. The implication of such a phrase is that it’s somehow easy to arouse a reader, and furthermore, that the emotional impact of sexual arousal is somehow less worthy to be portrayed in literature than, say, the emotions of grief, anger, or shame (all of which, of course, may be components of eroticism).
Anyone who has attempted to write “serious” erotica – and by that I mean erotic fiction that pushes beyond the cliches to some sort of original vision – knows how difficult it can be to simultaneously arouse and make a point. Meanwhile, the notion that sexual feelings are somehow less valid and important than other emotions completely ignores the impact sex has on our lives and our psyches.
The members of my family who know I write erotica sometimes ask why I don’t write something “serious”. Personally, I can’t think of anything more serious than sex. And to be honest, there’s nothing that interests me more.
Hello Lisabet!
Honestly, this is why I started with the Bataille quote. Because I think he said something incredibly true. For all its repression, the Church recognized the power of erotic passion for all its intensity: they variously tried to sublimate it and re-channel that energy into religious ecstasy. Science sought to medicalize it. To deconstruct it by quantification. But nothing has taken the essential power out of sex as much as its trivialization by the media and its commodification by the marketplace.
I think it’s been a marvelous project in misdirection. Because, if you look at mainstream representations of sex in the later half of the 20th century, it’s all tits and ass. All Benny Hill gropes. All sparkly pasties on the nipples. And this is not sex. But it’s close enough to pass for it and perpetuate the message that sex is indeed cheap and ultimately trivial.