Sex scenes in literature. SEX S-E-X SEX

luka

Well-known member
can it be done? Has there ever been a good one? Have you written one? Craner used to post erotica on his blog.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
I used to be a connoisseur of French fin de siecle literary pornography, but I'm not that person anymore.
 

you

Well-known member
Alfriede Jelinek's 'sex' scenes in The Piano Teacher and Lust are good. Full of tension, unfairness, cruelty and disappointment.
 

empty mirror

remember the jackalope
as a teenager, i enjoyed Nicholson Baker's Vox and Fermata. Both are probably extremely dated right now. The first is about phone sex, which... doesn't happen anymore, does it? In the latter, the narrator sexualizes the keyhole of the trunk of a car (carboot?) - that's kind of not a thing anymore with keyless entry.
 

Wanda

Member
^ yes!

and Story of O


and Delta of Venus

Delta of Venus looks fabulous! Have to add Venus in Furs.

Other favorites include Fanny Hill, The Sleeping Beauty Trilogy (sorry not sorry), and Crash :)

Also, Tampa and The White Hotel.

And can't forget 120 Days....
 

Wanda

Member
as a teenager, i enjoyed Nicholson Baker's Vox and Fermata. Both are probably extremely dated right now. The first is about phone sex, which... doesn't happen anymore, does it? In the latter, the narrator sexualizes the keyhole of the trunk of a car (carboot?) - that's kind of not a thing anymore with keyless entry.

On the slip side, keyless entry has resulted in quite...sturdy, rounded remotes.
 

you

Well-known member
On the slip side, keyless entry has resulted in quite...sturdy, rounded remotes.

Isn't there a general poverty of tactility?... as Berardi would say 'smooth hairless generation'? I seem to remember, somewhat dimly, as if recalling the distracting content from a pop-up advert, Air talking about the obvious heteronormative sexual allegory of analogue hardware. Jacks and plugs etc. But such technologies are fading... the absence of the analogue jack on the new iPhone being a case in point.

The technology of yesteryear really lent itself well to sexual metaphor (albeit from a hetero macho paradigm). Of course, penetration is not necessary for sex, but today it is difficult to find contemporary props for such allusions. It must be hard to make a wifi spot erotic, or pose a metaphor through touchscreen. I think this part of why writing sex well today is so difficult, because other than graphic descriptors the metaphorical options are inevitably dated and cliched now. People touch things less. Paper coffee cups, wireless charging, keyless entry.. are these part of the same symptomatic continuum as Celibacy Syndrome or Hikikomori?

I think this is why ASMR (youtube it) is so telling.. because, although highly fetishized and based largely on tertiary service interaction, it panders to a virtual experience of tactility... evoked through the sensual surrogates of high-definition audio and visuals.

Take the London Tube, that subterranean morass of literary cliches - most peoples' engagement with that is one of swiftly swiped hygienic a-tactility (the Oyster card) as opposed to the suck'n'shoot protocol of the ticket turnstile.
 
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