Category Archives: eroticism

Rapture (2002) – Susan Minot

Rapture (2002) – Susan Minot
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Excerpt

It was amazing how much things could change between two people. That you could feel a person was your eternal mate one day and three months later bump into him in the flower district and hardly know what to say. It was after she’d fallen in love with him after they’d not been able to see each other on a friendly basis, so it was disorienting to see his figure standing there on the sidewalk, purporting to be like anyone else’s.

Review:

The concept of the tale drawn out through reflection during an extremely contained frame story has been done before. Well before Nicholson Baker’s Mezzanine shoe-horned a novel into a character’s ascending an escalator on his way to buy shoe laces, Wright Morris’ Field of Vision thrust a novel’s worth of thoughts into the minds of a few spectators watching a bullfight. One might even blame Laurence Sterne, whose “autobiography” of Tristram Shandy is perpetually delayed through digression, for begetting this trend of seeking plotless prose through cutesy narrative frames. Eventually someone will manage to cast an entire picaresque into a stifled yawn. It’s all just a question of scale. —http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2004/12/which-just-happens-to-mimic-ms.html [Sept 2006]

Review:

Kay and Benjamin meet for lunch a year after their affair has ended. The relationship Benjamin was in at the time (with his fiancée, Vanessa) has also finished, but he still sees her from time to time. In fact, he is due to see Vanessa after lunch, though he doesn’t tell Kay that. Kay finds that, far from wearing off, her love for Benjamin is stronger than ever. She doesn’t tell him that. Both tell themselves they had no idea this was going to happen: they never for a moment thought they would end up in bed after a couple of innocent tomato sandwiches in her apartment. —http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/generalfiction/0,6121,780108,00.html [Sept 2006]

Interview:

Perhaps fellow Maine resident Stephen King imparted some dark psychic influence on Minot’s soul. “Yes, ‘Rapture’ is a horror story,” Minot says. “It definitely is. Many love affairs are.” She then gives a healthy horselaugh. “They can be as devastating as death and war.” —http://archive.salon.com/sex/feature/2002/02/25/minot/index1.html [Sept 2006]

Biography:

Susan Minot (b. December 7, 1956) is an American prize-winning novelist and short story author.

Born in Manchester, Massachusetts, Minot is the author of the novel, Monkeys (1986), which won the Prix Femina in 1988. She has also won the O. Henry Prize and the Pushcart Prize for her writing. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Minot [Sept 2006]

See also: American literature – fellatio in literature

Ralph Ginzburg (1929 – 2006)

Via rare erotica comes Ralph Ginzburg, an icon in the history of American erotica and American censorship:

Collection of Eros magazine
Image sourced here.

1972 mug shot of Ginzburg
Image sourced here.

It’s agreed by all observers that what really sealed Ginzburg’s fate was a photo-spread in the fourth, final issue of EROS: “Black & White in Color: A Photographic Tone Poem” by Ralph M. Hattersley, Jr., a respected photographer and professor who wrote over a dozen instructional photography books. (Hattersley passed away in 2000.) The photos are extraordinarily tame by today’s standards – there’s no sex, and the only “naughty bits” on display are the woman’s breasts and both booties in one sideview shot. But showing a black man and a white woman, in the nude, embracing, kissing, obviously getting ready to do the deed – well, it was just too shocking in the early 1960s. Ginzburg was made to pay. —rare erotica

Playboy’s ’25 sexiest novels ever written’ (2006)

1. Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, by John Cleland [Read the complete novel online]
2. Lady Chatterley’s Lover, by D.H. Lawrence [Read the complete novel online]
3. Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller
4. The Story of O, by Pauline Reage
5. Crash, by J.G. Ballard
6. Interview with the Vampire, by Anne Rice
7. Portnoy’s Complaint, by Philip Roth
8. The Magus, by John Fowles
9. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami
10. Endless Love, by Scott Spencer
11. Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
12. Carrie’s Story, by Molly Weatherfield aka Pam Rosenthal
13. Fear of Flying, by Erica Jong
14. Peyton Place, by Grace Metalious
15. Story of the Eye, by Georges Bataille
16. The End of Alice, by A.M. Homes
17. Vox, by Nicholson Baker
18. Rapture, by Susan Minot
19. Singular Pleaures, by Harry Mathews
20. In The Cut, By Susanna Moore
21. Brass, by Helen Walsh
22. Candy, by Terry Southern
23. Forever, by Judy Blume
24. An American Dream, by Norman Mailer
25. The Carpetbaggers, by Harold Robbins

Via http://www.playboy.com/sex/features/25novels The list is compiled by longtime Playboy contributor Jim Petersen. See Susie Bright’s post.

Closing the loop: PCL Linkdump have picked up rather nicely on this post here.

See also: erotic fiction

Nine and a Half Weeks (1978) – Elizabeth McNeill

Nine and a Half Weeks: A Memoir of a Love Affair (1978) – Elizabeth McNeill
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First sentence:
“The first time we were in bed together he held my hands pinned down above my head. I liked it. I liked him. He was moody in a way that struck me as romantic; he was funny, bright, interesting to talk to; and he gave me pleasure.”

Last sentence:
“I slept with another man and discovered, my hands lying awkwardly on the sheet at either side of me, that I had forgotten what to do with them. I’m responsible and an adult again, full time. What remains is that my sensation thermostat has been thrown out of whack: it’s been years and sometimes I wonder whether my body will ever again register above lukewarm.”

Nine and a Half Weeks is a true story so unusual, so passionate, and so extreme in its psychology and sexuality that it will take your breath away.

Elizabeth McNeill was an executive for a large corporation when she began an affair with a man she met casually. Their sexual excitement depended on a pattern of domination and humiliation, and as their relationship progressed they played out ever more dangerous and elaborate variations on that pattern of sadomasochism. By the end, Elizabeth had relinquished all control over her body — and her mind.

With a cool detachment that makes the experiences and sensations she describes all the more frightening in their intensity, Elizabeth McNeill deftly unfolds her story and invites you into the mesmerizing and dangerous world of Nine and a Half Weeks — a world you won’t soon forget.

About the Author
Elizabeth McNeill is a pseudonym. At the time of the book’s writing and original publication, McNeill lived in New York, where she worked as an executive for a large corporation.

Blog entry by One Life, Take Two – Wikipedia entry for the film – Everything2 entry

See also: 1978 – s&m fiction – American literature

Flesh & Blood: Sex and Violence in Recent French Cinema (2004) – James Quandt

The critic truffle-snuffing for trends might call it the New French Extremity, this recent tendency to the willfully transgressive by directors like François Ozon, Gaspar Noé, Catherine Breillat, Philippe Grandrieux—and now, alas, Dumont. Bava as much as Bataille, Salò no less than Sade seem the determinants of a cinema suddenly determined to break every taboo, to wade in rivers of viscera and spumes of sperm, to fill each frame with flesh, nubile or gnarled, and subject it to all manner of penetration, mutilation, and defilement. Images and subjects once the provenance of splatter films, exploitation flicks, and porn—gang rapes, bashings and slashings and blindings, hard-ons and vulvas, cannibalism, sadomasochism and incest, fucking and fisting, sluices of cum and gore—proliferate in the high-art environs of a national cinema whose provocations have historically been formal, political, or philosophical (Godard, Clouzot, Debord) or, at their most immoderate (Franju, Buñuel, Walerian Borowczyk, Andrzej Zulawski), at least assimilable as emanations of an artistic movement (Surrealism mostly). Does a kind of irredentist spirit of incitement and confrontation, reviving the hallowed Gallic traditions of the film maudit, of épater les bourgeois and amour fou, account for the shock tactics employed in recent French cinema? Or do they bespeak a cultural crisis, forcing French filmmakers to respond to the death of the ineluctable (French identity, language, ideology, aesthetic forms) with desperate measures? –James Quandt, Flesh & Blood: Sex and Violence in Recent French Cinema (2004) via artforum

James Quandt is a Canadian film critic associated with the Cinematheque of Ontario. He is a connoisseur of French director Robert Bresson.

Digression: I recently viewed Bresson’s Pickpocket and Au hasard Balthazar and although I really wanted to, I could not get into them. The reason I viewed these films is that a number of people who’s opinions/films I respect (Austrian director Michael Haneke, American director Paul Schrader, film critic Girish Shambu and American writer Dennis Cooper) are self-proclaimed fans of Bresson. There is no accounting for taste and I only do appreciative criticism, but a reason for my not really liking Bresson is that the two films I’ve seen lack a certain sensationalism that I appreciate in the films of – for example – Haneke. To conclude this post, I’d like to quote French film critic Ado Kyrou:

They can keep their Bressons and their Cocteaus. The cinematic, modern marvelous is popular, and the best and most exciting films are, beginning with Méliès and Fantômas, the films shown in local fleapits, films which seem to have no place in the history of cinema.

Fassbinder and Ozon

Water Drops On Burning Rocks (2000) – François Ozon
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French director François Ozon directed this film based on Fassbinder’s play. Ozon’s work is very reminiscent of Fassbinder’s. Incidentally Ozon and Fassbinder share an appraisal of the work of American director Douglas Sirk.

Most memorable line (I paraphrase) “and you know how difficult it is for me to find pleasure,” said reproachfully by the older man (pictured right) to his submissive young male partner (pictured left).

Rating: Psychological realism 8/10, feelgood factor 3/10, oddity value 7/10. Recommended.

Digression: In the back of the photograph, you can see American actress Anna Thomson (one more picture here, who was the lead in one of the more interesting American productions of the 2000s: Fast Food Fast Women (2000).

Ian McEwan (1948 – )

I’m still reading 1001 Books and when one arrives in the 1970s one finds Ian McEwan and he looks just like my kind of writer. I knew of the film The Cement Garden (starring Charlotte Gainsbourg, the daughter of Serge Gainsbourg) but did not know it was written by Mc Ewan. I’ll probably start by seeing the filmed version of The Comfort of Strangers (Christopher Walken, Helen Mirren) directed by Paul Schrader who is also a purveyor of dark culture and who likes Bresson (so do Michael Haneke, Girish Shambu and Dennis Cooper). Below are some pointers to Ian Mc Ewan, definitely an artist of the grotesque.

The Cement Garden (1978) – Ian McEwan
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In The Cement Garden, the father of four children dies. His death is followed by the death of the children’s mother. In order to avoid being taken into custody, the children hide their mother’s death from the outside world by encasing her corpse in cement in their basement. Two of the siblings, a teenage boy and girl, descend into an incestuous relationship, while the younger son starts to experiment with transvestism. [Sept 2006]

The Comfort of Strangers (1981) – Ian McEwan
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A story of sexual predation and entrapment set in Venice (like Daphne du Maurier’s Don’t Look Now) featuring Colin and Mary (an innocent couple that reminds of Bitter Moon’s innocent couple) and Robert and the invalid Caroline (the evil couple). Caroline’s invalidity is the result of Robert’s sadistic sexual violence. The theme of male dominance and brutality toward women is re-examined when it is revealed that the object of Robert’s desire is Colin.

The Comfort of Strangers (1990) – Paul Schrader
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Like many of Paul Schrader’s films, The Comfort of Strangers is a mournful examination of decaying innocence and sexual transgression.

Based on a creepy Ian McEwan novel, this Paul Schrader film stars Natasha Richardson and Rupert Everett as a married couple who find their marriage sliding into a morass of tedium. To reignite it, they visit Venice, where they fall under the spell of an urbane older couple, played by Christopher Walken (in one of his most chillingly insinuating roles) and Helen Mirren (who seems to be more his crippled acolyte than his wife). British reserve forces the younger couple to be polite to these strange birds, but increased exposure to them through coincidental meetings gradually pulls them into their deadly orbit. Adapted by Harold Pinter, it’s a slightly arid but still goose-fleshy film in which nothing is what it seems to be and, what’s worse, nothing familiar looks familiar anymore. –Marshall Fine for Amazon.com

Ian McEwan CBE, (born June 21, 1948), is a British novelist (sometimes nicknamed “Ian Macabre” because of the nature of his early work).–http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian McEwan

See also: 1948 – British literature – macabre