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Just Say No or, What We Talk About When We Talk About Sex (In Fiction): Revisited

December 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Lying in bed, thinking about geometry.

Like: how my arm next to her ass makes a right angle, or how her legs in either direction form an isosceles triangle (or is it scalene?), scaling the perimeter from her belly button to below is heaven, or how the distance from my rectangle to her Pi is infinity; or: A cup plus B-cup equals See. Proof: if her panties come off, then I will be pleased. Two shapes under the sheets are congruent to each other. She turns 180 degrees. I check my work. Pass/fail, graded on the curves. Obtuse, an open book exam, I ask for extra credit.

***

Writing about sex is like engaging in sex: it’s hard. (Or, it should be.)

It’s that time of year again: the annual “Bad Sex in Fiction Award” conducted by the Literary Review (London). (This year’s winner: David Guterson; story and runner-ups here). Last year I noted that Laura Miller at Salon made much or at least some ado about nuttin’ (sorry) while discussing this dubious honor that gets distributed with snark aforethought. My .02: She takes exception to the glee with which these awards are doled out, the entire affair a combination of prurience and the Puritanical impulse that has ever afflicted our upper classes. Her position asserts that we are a bunch of snobs when it comes to the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup proposition of combining sex and literature. I think she is (wisely? cynically?) using the occasion of the Bad Sex award to make a larger point about what we talk about when we talk about sex (in fiction): she’s all for it. She does, however, utilize a bit of a Straw Man to complain about the Literary Review’s annual endeavor, suggesting that more self-aware readers have –or should have– no qualms about moments of lust (and the moments those moments lead to) in literature.

I think the issue is not so much the fact that these scenes exist, but that they are invariably so uninspired or unintentionally ridiculous. Or, readers are most likely not saying not to include sex in novels, but that writers should do everyone a favor and not include scenes that make a mockery of the act so many people hold sacred –at least in theory. After all, the mostly unspoken calculus that occurs under cover of intimacy compels relationships and builds or destroys marriages, even families. Indeed, for more members of our species than we may care to admit, the act (the thought of it, the desire for it, the lack of it) influences almost every waking moment. So, perhaps readers are merely admonishing those who would kiss and tell: proceed warily if you must. Is that too much to ask?

Let’s face it: convincing sex scenes happen seldom enough in real life. How –or why– do we expect them to occur in literature? Especially when most writers (the honest ones would admit) are not exactly Lotharios, unless you count the cliched rite of passage, so often rendered, involving the professorial seduction of the over-achieving undergrad. (And those scenes, even though the authors don’t realize it, are less erotic than confessional, and more than a little embarrassing for all involved).

So how do you do it? Sex scenes, that is.

Anyone who has a passing acquaintance with the act, much less the art, of seduction and surrender understands that successful sex is like almost any human endeavor: you don’t need to talk about it if you can do it –whatever it is. Or, the people who speak (and write) the loudest are probably not the people you want beneath you or on top of you, and they certainly are not the ones you should be paying to be your creative tour guide.

Show, don’t tell. That is the sacrosanct rule for any type of written endeavor. And except for the masters (in art; in life) who actually did it and are speaking from experience, the rule should always apply. The exception can –and should– be made for the ones who are able to put it plainly because their prose is essentially a declaration: I did it, this is how I did it, and if you hope to do it you might imitate this depiction. Put another way, I learned more from Milan Kundera and his understated field notes than I did from our more celebrated purveyors of purple-prosed literary porn like Updike and Roth (both of whom have been celebrated and savaged for the arrested sexual development they so gratuitously struggle with in the cringe-inducing excerpts from their oeuvres).

Besides, experts have informed me that this is what the Internet is for. Forget books and even movies. If music and conversation (that old fashioned and unforced chemistry called charm), and a competently cooked meal can’t get you to the Promised Land, you may as well cast a line into the weird, wild web. And, if you are irretrievably old school, seek salvation in one of those books with Fabio on the cover.

***

Take off all your clothes, I say.

No, she laughs.

So: sober, there are no easy excuses. Excuses make it easier, and the easier it is, the easier it is to make excuses. Conversation can kill everything: access, intimacy (which is ironic), and mostly it can provide a good enough excuse. Stuck between a rock and a not-hard-enough place.

“Be careful,” I say as she gets down on the carpet to entertain my dog’s playful overtures. “He’s a lady-killer.”

“Like his daddy?” she asks, making it too easy, or not easy enough, depending on how it all undresses.

“Hardly,” I say, reaching for the bottle of wine that is equal parts incriminating and inspiring. Mostly, and most importantly, it is empty.

“You two make a cute couple,” I say, equal parts innocent, honest, and envious.

“Why don’t you join us?”

Put on all your clothes, I do not say.

“Are you drunk,” she says.

“Never,” I lie.

“Am I drunk?” she asks.

“Not enough,” I sigh.

“What did you say?” she whispers.

“Nothing,” I lie.

Take off all your clothes, she laughs.

Okay, I say.

***

You ask: What happened next?

See for yourself, I say.

If you can, that is.

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Just Say No or, What We Talk About When We Talk About Sex (In Fiction)

December 6, 2010 By 2 Comments

Lying in bed, thinking about geometry.

Like: how my arm next to her ass makes a right angle, or how her legs in either direction form an isosceles triangle (or is it scalene?), scaling the perimeter from her belly button to below is heaven, or how the distance from my rectangle to her Pi is infinity; or: A cup plus B-cup equals See. Proof: if her panties come off, then I will be pleased. Two shapes under the sheets are congruent to each other. She turns 180 degrees. I check my work. Pass/fail, graded on the curves. Obtuse, an open book exam, I ask for extra credit.

                                        ***

Writing about sex is like engaging in sex: it’s hard. (Or, it should be.)

Laura Miller, over on Salon.com, has an article about the annual “Bad Sex in Fiction Award” conducted by the Literary Review (London). She takes exception to the glee with which these awards are doled out, the entire affair a combination of prurience and the Puritanical impulse that has ever afflicted our upper classes. Her position asserts that we are a bunch of snobs when it comes to the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup proposition of combining sex and literature. I think she is (wisely? cynically?) using the occasion of the Bad Sex award to make a larger point about what we talk about when we talk about sex (in fiction): she’s all for it. She does, however, utilize a bit of a Straw Man to complain about the Literary Review’s annual endeavor, suggesting that more self-aware readers have –or should have– no qualms about moments of lust (and the moments those moments lead to) in literature.

I think the issue is not so much the fact that these scenes exist, but that they are invariably so uninspired or unintentionally ridiculous. Or, readers are most likely not saying not to include sex in novels, but that writers should do everyone a favor and not include scenes that make a mockery of the act so many people hold sacred –at least in theory. After all, the mostly unspoken calculus that occurs under cover of intimacy compels relationships and builds or destroys marriages, even families. Indeed, for more members of our species than we may care to admit, the act (the thought of it, the desire for it, the lack of it) influences almost every waking moment. So, perhaps readers are merely admonishing those who would kiss and tell: proceed warily if you must. Is that too much to ask?

Let’s face it: convincing sex scenes happen seldom enough in real life. How –or why– do we expect them to occur in literature? Especially when most writers (the honest ones would admit) are not exactly Lotharios, unless you count the cliched rite of passage, so often rendered, involving the professorial seduction of the over-achieving undergrad. (And those scenes, even though the authors don’t realize it, are less erotic than confessional, and more than a little embarrassing for all involved).

So how do you do it? Sex scenes, that is.

Anyone who has a passing acquaintance with the act, much less the art, of seduction and surrender understands that successful sex is like almost any human endeavor: you don’t need to talk about it if you can do it –whatever it is. Or, the people who speak (and write) the loudest are probably not the people you want beneath you or on top of you, and they certainly are not the ones you should be paying to be your creative tour guide.

Show, don’t tell. That is the sacrosanct rule for any type of written endeavor. And except for the masters (in art; in life) who actually did it and are speaking from experience, the rule should always apply. The exception can –and should– be made for the ones who are able to put it plainly because their prose is essentially a declaration: I did it, this is how I did it, and if you hope to do it you might imitate this depiction. Put another way, I learned more from Milan Kundera and his understated field notes than I did from our more celebrated purveyors of purple-prosed literary porn like Updike and Roth (both of whom have been celebrated and savaged for the arrested sexual development they so gratuitously struggle with in the cringe-inducing excerpts from their oeuvres).

Besides, experts have informed me that this is what the Internet is for. Forget books and even movies. If music and conversation (that old fashioned and unforced chemistry called charm), and a competently cooked meal can’t get you to the Promised Land, you may as well cast a line into the weird, wild web. And, if you are irretrievably old school, seek salvation in one of those books with Fabio on the cover.

***

Take off all your clothes, I say.

No, she laughs.

So: sober, there are no easy excuses. Excuses make it easier, and the easier it is, the easier it is to make excuses. Conversation can kill everything: access, intimacy (which is ironic), and mostly it can provide a good enough excuse. Stuck between a rock and a not-hard-enough place.

“Be careful,” I say as she gets down on the carpet to entertain my dog’s playful overtures. “He’s a lady-killer.”

“Like his daddy?” she asks, making it too easy, or not easy enough, depending on how it all undresses.

“Hardly,” I say, reaching for the bottle of wine that is equal parts incriminating and inspiring. Mostly, and most importantly, it is empty.

“You two make a cute couple,” I say, equal parts innocent, honest, and envious.

“Why don’t you join us?”

Put on all your clothes, I do not say.

“Are you drunk,” she says.

“Never,” I lie.

“Am I drunk?” she asks.

“Not enough,” I sigh.

“What did you say?” she whispers.

“Nothing,” I lie.

Take off all your clothes, she laughs.

Okay, I say.

***

You ask: What happened next?

See for yourself, I say.

If you can, that is.

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Richard Cohen, Charles Krauthammer, Salon.com and Me

November 24, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Richard Cohen: Still Clownish After All These Years

Props to Salon.com for doing some heavy lifting in the service of exposing hackery this week, courtesy of their amusing –and recommended– “Hack Thirty” feature. In a mild upset, they have decreed the scarcely readable Richard Cohen the hackiest of the bunch. Hard to argue with: on style points alone and the odious mix of shamelessness and opportunism that is his trademark, Cohen is tough to top. Of course, given the chance, I would be unable to elevate anyone above the ceaselessly reliable and cretinous Charles Krauthammer.

But since I’ve been doing my part to expose Cohen’s clownishness for more than five years, I figured I’d celebrate his anointment. If you care to see the pieces dedicated to the ultimate Washington insider, you can check them out here, here and here. Having been a long-time (but as of 6/19/09, former) subscriber to The Washington Post, I’ve suffered through more than my fair share of Cohen columns.

In the open letter after his ridiculous Colbert article, one of my main issues was how supine and craven the MSM had been all throughout the Bush years. That Cohen, after being converted by the chicken-hawks in ’03, finally used his prominent media space to defend Bush was thoroughly intolerable. It makes me fairly nauseous re-reading this, all these years later:

For instance, you inexplicably call Colbert a bully for the ostensible impunity with which he lambasted Bush, to his face. This begs the immediate question: doesn’t it take a little more courage, not to mention perspicacity, to say in person, as a comedian, the very things well-paid writers like you were not able, or willing, to say in the safety of Op-Ed pages for the past several years? More to the point, how often has this president put himself in the position to be ridiculed, much less forced to answer simple questions from reporters?

Not only is it abundantly documented how obsessively Bush avoids unpleasant or uncomfortable intrusions upon his eggshell sensibilities, but one of the primary (and painfully apparent) goals of his protectors and paid apologists has been to shield him from being accountable, or even (seemingly) aware of any facts that run counter to the fantasies he and his cronies have conjured up in the safety of their well-fortified situation rooms. This is a man seemingly allergic to introspection, comforted by cliché and available for fabricated words of encouragement after the dust and danger have cleared. Indeed, the only people being bullied are the citizens (be they reporters or democrats or non-Kool-Aid drinking members of the GOP) who dare to question or critique the president or his policies. Maybe you’ve forgotten about the carefully screened audiences Bush spoke to and took the occasional, scripted questions from on the campaign trail (and his entire tenure has, under the shameless machinations of Karl Rove, been one ceaseless campaign), or the folks who were tossed out of these same spectacles for having anti-Bush stickers on their cars.

The hits, of course, kept coming. In one of the other pieces, I tried to succinctly articulate –after stating the obvious: that Cohen is a clown– why people like him (and Broder and Friedman) are so dangerous to a functioning democracy that should be able to count on it’s columnists:

When it suits him, when it’s convenient, Cohen could perhaps be described as left-leaning. But between his stances (on war, on Israel, apparently on torture) he is as effective –and insufferable– a mouthpiece as any neo-con crackpot. Indeed, he is even more effective (and harmful) because he is ostensibly writing as a “liberal” in an ostensibly “liberal” paper (Washington Post). Of course, this canard is easy to deconstruct, but in the shorthand illogic of our times, he is, by default, a liberal by virtue of even being a member of the MSM.

It was certainly courageous of Cohen to have his mea culpa on Iraq about three (four?) years after the fact. And, to me, he really jumped the shark during the Colbert incident (which prompted this open letter). Compared to the True Believers on the Right, Cohen’s clownishness is more innocuous than not; but considering he is regarded as a steward of progressive thinking (I threw up in my mouth just typing that), he is quite dangerous indeed. Watching a Washington, D.C. insider carry water for the worst administration in history is its own special sort of torture.

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Camille Paglia Needs an Enema

April 8, 2009 By 1 Comment

I have a confession to make.

I read Camille Paglia.

Of course, being a grad student in the early ’90s, it was impossible to avoid Paglia in the Cultural Studies circles. Most of us regarded Paglia’s work the way one later considers a case of chicken pox: it’s something you suffer through and appreciate never again having to endure. With chicken pox, you can’t contract the virus a second time, even if you tried. With Paglia, all you need do is avert your eyes if you stumble upon something she has written. And I certainly have not purchased, much less read, anything she has printed since my Feminist Literature seminar in ’93.

However, as an avid reader of Salon.com, I can’t help but notice she (somehow, inexplicably) remains a contributor to the site, weighing in once a month with her invariably repetitious, insipid pronouncements. And like the tortured narrator unable to overcome his perverse compulsions in the Edgar Allen Poe story, I am incapable of resisting. Each time I click on that link I know I am, to quote Poe’s narrator, “committing…a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it–if such a thing were possible–even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God.”

But here’s the thing: despite the platitudes, the incessant self-referencing aggrandizement, the myopic appraisals of modern society, the deliriously cockeyed political discourse, the ravenous appetite for Cliche, I return. Once a month some folks see the moon and turn into werewolves; others are drawn inexorably toward salon.com. Not to worry, there will be no defense of Paglia’s prose or even an ironic attempt to pass this off as an awkward case of slumming, kind of the way Patrick Bateman cleverly tries to rehabilitate Phil Collins and Huey Lewis in American Psycho. No, I read the monthly articles for one simple reason: they are a delivery device for the letters. Each time out, one suffers through (with several laugh-out-loud moments guaranteed) the relatively short piece and is rewarded with pages upon pages of responses which are amusing, vitriolic and often unassailably accurate. And the really hilarious ones come from those who try to defend Camille. Check it out some time.

Give Paglia credit for this much: she seems to comprehend what is at stake and subsequently lowers the bar each month. Each time you think, “Wow, did she really just defend Rush Limbaugh while invoking, for the tenth time in a row, Vamps and Tramps?” Or, “no way she just raved about Sarah Palin while bashing, for the tenth time in a row, the feminist establishment?” But she did. Yes, she did. This month’s installment is another beauty, wherein Paglia (shockingly) defends Limbaugh (and not just the man himself or the clownish concept of his fame, but Limbaugh’s disgusting deployment of the “Barack the Magic Negro” song), and she reiterates her bizarre and inexplicable lionization of the laughable Sarah Palin.

Month in, month out, the pattern is predictable: Paglia remains a solipsistic hyena who believes she is shaking things up by obsessing about the worst tendencies of liberals and holding them up as the standard. She then doubles down by being audacious enough to rationalize some of the more insidious aspects of the right wing which she valorizes as salt of the earth Americana. In other words, she manages to embrace cliches, not comprehend the cliches she espouses, and in the process manages to be something worse than a caricature.

The result? A ceaselessly chattering champion of intellectual refuse like Rush Limbaugh, Madonna and The Titanic who is myopic enough to think she’s operating outside the system. It amounts to speaking loudly from inside a comfortable box and Paglia continues to make a career out of it. Not unlike Fox News, she thinks her view is balanced because…she says it is balanced. Unlike Fox News, one wonders if she really does believe the shit she shovels onto the screen.

Not much has changed since 1991, when the inimitable Molly Ivins bludgeoned Paglia with this hysterically funny demolition. The piece was an instant classic: it is worth reading, and retaining. Any part of it is quotable, but here is the spot where Ivins sticks in the stiletto:

What we have here, fellow citizens, is a crassly egocentric, raving twit. The Norman Podhoretz of our gender. That this woman is actually taken seriously as a thinker in New York intellectual circles is a clear sign of decadence, decay, and hopeless pinheadedness. Has no one in the nation’s intellectual capital the background and ability to see through a web of categorical assertions?

I concur. So do many other people. (Read the letters!) So why would Salon keep such a polarizing blowhard employed? Um, I am not an expert in the business side of these types of matters, but I suspect it is precisely because…she is a polarizing blowhard. She opens her mouth (figuratively speaking) and that stuff comes out (figuratively speaking) and it draws the flies (figuratively speaking). That is good business.

In sum, Camille Paglia is so full of shit she needs an enema. And yet, while our world would not be less full, it would be less funny without her. Rave on, say I.

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The Intellectual Super Bowl: Frank Rich, still undefeated

February 1, 2009 By Leave a Comment

MVP! MVP! MVP!

If, like me, you were unable to get through a day this past fall without visiting at least a half dozen (often more) blogs, sites and newspapers (Glenn Greenwald @ Salon? Check! Andrew Sullivan @ Daily Dish? Check! The usually accurate analysis at The Nation and Mother Jones? Check. AlterNet and truthout? Yup. The fantastic critical mash-up of all-things progressive at topplebush.com? Hells yeah. Always keeping an eye out for The Hitch because, even when he’s off his liquid meds, he’s always good reading: he writes better on his worst day than 99.9% of humans can accomplish on their best. And, of course, when he’s on, he’s on. And even as a site like The Huffington Post becomes fonder of itself–and its ankle-deep celebrity commentaries–than good writing, it, like its cousin Daily Kos does more good than ill, it just requires some screening to separate the insight from the onanism). You get the picture.

But if I were to single out the one writer whose work, week in and week out, is not only invaluable but imperative, I would without the slightest hesitation give the nod to NYT’s Frank Rich. Rich has been around for a while, and written brilliantly about the arts, culture and politics. It’s for the latter that he has been my go-to guy for the last several years. I am confident I could revisit any single piece (he is featured each Sunday in NYT’s Op-Ed section) from this time period and pull out several quotes to illustrate his trenchant take on the mess America has been making. It’s not a simple matter of  exemplary intellect and writing (though these things offer their own manifold rewards), it’s that his inerrant eye holds up, months and years later. Rich warrants repeated reading, period. In this regard, his oeuvre is very like art, and that is just about the highest praise I could offer. Here’s a taste, from today’s column (check it, here):

What are Americans still buying? Big Macs, Campbell’s soup, Hershey’s chocolate and Spam—the four food groups of the apocalypse.

Also from today, he eschews the shooting fish in a barrel target practice that was, let’s face it, so simple (if maddeningly obligatory) during the clown-prince Bush’s recent reign, and hones in on the bigger, messier picture:

The crisis is at least as grave as the one that confronted us — and, for a time, united us — after 9/11. Which is why the antics among Republicans on Capitol Hill seem so surreal. These are the same politicians who only yesterday smeared the patriotism of any dissenters from Bush’s “war on terror.” Where is their own patriotism now that economic terror is inflicting far more harm on their constituents than Saddam Hussein’s nonexistent W.M.D.?

Here’s the thing: Rich ties in seemingly all the threads (speaking of today’s effort and his work in general); he does not take just one topic–no matter how large or pressing–and put that in his sights, though that would be entirely suitable and satisfactory. Rather, he really does summarize the lay of the land, moving from mark to mark, seamlessly weaving a tapestry of analysis. This, of course, is much harder than it looks. Hence, this explains why his contributions are so crucial.

I hope we get to a place (sooner and not later) where his input is not so welcome, and necessary. But I don’t expect that to happen, so long may he run.

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