Is sex overrated in books?

[cacian]

in other words is it literature exploiting pornography under a new pretext to write a story?
explicit sex versus intricate text.
please discuss

[PeterL]

I have read very little that was explicit about sex, because I find pornography boring, but there are people with poor imaginations who might find it interesting. I feel sorry for any authors who would think they had to use explicit sex to sell books. Implicit sex and vaguely described sexual activity are much more interesting, consider the Flashman series as an example where implication was used to great effect.

[Pompey Bum]

I'm not sure there's a whole lot of explicit sex in mainstream writing these days (or maybe I just read tame books). The kids read G to PG fantasies and the LitNutters usually manage Man Booker-ish grown up (as opposed to "adult") stuff. To be honest, Man Booker has become so politically correct that it's hard to take seriously anymore. But I guess that's beside the point.

Or maybe not. It seems to me that pioneers in "explic-lit" like Phillip Roth and Erica Jong were involved in a generational power struggle to defy the conventions of their parents' time. But kiddies today--the same ones who can't get much past bodice-ripping sword and sorcery--seek their power by "calling out" (aka shaming) others; and what better way to gain the upper hand on the generation that conceived them than to condemn their parents as sexual offenders? Like so much pee sea, it's really about domination. Um, I mean empowerment. Sorry--"toxic speech."

Peter: I appreciate your comments, but I have to say I don't remember Flashman being particularly--subtle?

[YesNo]

As a male, I don't find erotic romance interesting unless there is a lot of humor in it--and then it is best to make it into a movie. As a book, it is too wordy. It is possible that females like it more. They may have better imaginations.

[Red Terror]

I read D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterly's Lover and I didn't like it. There was some interesting parts to it like the whole love-triangle setup, which was derived from Ovid's Metamorphoses's story of Venus, Vulcan and Mars --- that was imaginative.

[Pompey Bum]

There was supposed to have been a British Lord who gave a (generally favorable) opinion of Lady Chatterly's Lover during its obscenity trial. "I have read it," he is supposed to have said. "I would have no objection to my wife reading it. I would have no objection to my daughter reading it. I would object, however, to my gamekeeper reading it."

Politically speaking, that just about says it all.

[Danik 2016]

I think in the classics of the 19th Century the enphasis was usually more on romance then on sex. That changed in the last century with the sexual liberation. Not only was sexuality discussed and depicted more openly, it sometimes was included in books and films for comercial reasons.

[Ecurb]

Sex is overrated in real life. That's a hangover from the past, when sex was legitimately the most important human activity. Sex led (almost inevitably, eventually) to children and to families. To the extent that reproduction and family life are important, sex was important. Since (in my opinion) reproduction and families are where we transitory humans leave a less ephemeral mark on the universe, sex was imbued with romance, with commitment, and as an expression of that eternal love that could (and often did) spring from it in the form of children.

Modern birth control (and acceptance of non-reproductive sex) has diminished the actual importance of sex, but (whether as a cultural remnant or as a biologically hard-wired instinct) we still freight sex with an emotional, physical and personal significance. Pornography recapitulates the notion of sex as an end in itself, divorced from children, romance, and eternity.

[Danik 2016]

Hasn´t It more to do with the fascination of the forbidden? Sex was for a long time and still is in certain quarters a forbidden subject.

[Pompey Bum]

Sex is overrated in real life. That's a hangover from the past, when sex was legitimately the most important human activity. Sex led (almost inevitably, eventually) to children and to families. To the extent that reproduction and family life are important, sex was important. Since (in my opinion) reproduction and families are where we transitory humans leave a less ephemeral mark on the universe, sex was imbued with romance, with commitment, and as an expression of that eternal love that could (and often did) spring from it in the form of children.

Modern birth control (and acceptance of non-reproductive sex) has diminished the actual importance of sex, but (whether as a cultural remnant or as a biologically hard-wired instinct) we still freight sex with an emotional, physical and personal significance. Pornography recapitulates the notion of sex as an end in itself, divorced from children, romance, and eternity.


I disagree. Sex as Ecurb is describes it was the lot of the poor during the European Middle Ages, which in the beginning almost everyone. But the High Middle Ages brought a more expansive courtly culture of elites who advanced the idea of romantic love as opposed to matrimonial duty. Courtly love often took the form of dalliance which was more or less heavy petting between without (much) fluid exchange. Dalliance was meant to prevent pregnancies and spare maidenheads, which were so important in the cash-your-daughter-in market that maidens actually rode horses sideways.

My point is that (contra Ecurbum) it was the avoidance of reproduction that marked the development of romantic love in the West. Children were not as common among elites (the more you had the more civil wars there were), and a Knights "less ephemeral" accomplishments focused more on sanctioned forms of killing (and building churches, of course).

The idea of the poor as breeders and the elites as lovers has had a colorful history since then. The religious divide on birth control fed into the Catholic Church's earlier courtiship of the poor during the Counter-Reformation (they had been itching to switch sides since Luther's betrayal in the German Peasants War). But then as now, birth control did not make sex less meaningful. Sex without children had long been for those who could afford romantic love.

Let me add that pornography has nothing to do with it. Pornography is a wank. By that I mean it is a way of snookering the instinctive mind into thinking that you are actually reproducing (as is masturbation--pornography' handmaiden as it were). There were plenty of erotic texts in antiquity--long before modern methods of birth control. It turns out that the instinctive mind has never been all that bright.

[PeterL]

Peter: I appreciate your comments, but I have to say I don't remember Flashman being particularly--subtle?

Fraser never gave a stroke by stroke description; it was more a matter of "and Flashman led her off." Maybe that isn't subtle, but it is not openly erotic, at least not to me. In one of the novels he was in South Africa, and the daughter of that slave-trader, Charity, suggested something naughty by whispering in his ear. Fraser did not state what she whispered, and did not describe what they did. Leaving it up to the reader is easier for the author and more interesting to me.

[Pompey Bum]

No doubt my memory is embellishing, but I seem to remember graphic accounts of slipping Victorian ladies out of their garments by the "udders." But Flashman was always over the top so it never seemed particularly pornographic to me. Just funny, nasty stuff, not to be taken too seriously.

[Ecurb]

But then as now, birth control did not make sex less meaningful. Sex without children had long been for those who could afford romantic love.

.

Well, if children are "meaningful", then, clearly sex without children is, in some ways at least, less meaningful (if not less romantic) than reproductive sex. In addition, fidelity and virginity were culturally valued in the past, I think, more than they are today. Perhaps this involves changing mores for which birth control and reproduction are irrelevant, but I don't think so. Even modern, sexually active singles who no longer believe in abstinence can see that getting pregnant (or impregnating someone else) is life-changing and shirking one's parental responsibilities wicked.

Romantic love (whether medieval or ancient) differs from sex, although, as Lancelot found out, it can be difficult to keep them separated. Modern, casual sex is not necessarily romantic. Lancelot's love was almost perfect, because, since he loved his Queen, it seemed impossible that his love should become sexual. That gave his love a disinterested purity. However, perfection is denied mere humans. The intensity of Lancelot's love overcame his knightly virtue.

[Pompey Bum]

Even modern, sexually active singles who no longer believe in abstinence can see that getting pregnant (or impregnating someone else) is life-changing and shirking one's parental responsibilities wicked.

Your view of youth is charmingly optimistic.

[Ecurb]

Your view of youth is charmingly optimistic.

OK, fair enough. I sometimes repeat the banal and obvious. Nonetheless, the point is simply that "fornication" is no longer considered a sin (or even a secular transgression) by most people (including me). For the Christian, it's a sin in and of itself. For most modern Americans it is still morally significant, but the "sins" involved are those of honesty, honor, and charity, rather than the Biblical admonition against "fornication".

[Pompey Bum]

I don't know, Ecurb. An awful lot of sexually active singles are going to go for an abortion if the lady gets pregnant. That's hardly consistent with the notion that "shirking one's parental responsibilities [is] wicked." But it is consistent with an emphasis on the couple's romantic experience independent of their having children. This does not mean that their sexual activities are "imbued with romance" because "reproduction and families are where we transitory humans leave a less ephemeral mark on the universe." In fact, it means quite the opposite. Dalliance has become a little messier, that's all.

[Ecurb]

Abortions might be "consistent with an emphasis on the couple's romantic experience independent of their having children." But they do not constitute proof (or even good evidence). "Romantic" and "sexual" are not necessarily one in the same; indeed, if someone thinks he is going to have sex with only one person in his entire life, his first sexual encounter is (I think) likely to be more romantic than his first-time sex with his 37th partner. Not always. But usually.

Promiscuity is "consistent with" a romantic outlook; so is monogamy. Indeed some old fashioned types (maybe even you and I, Pompey) think monogamy is MORE romantic than promiscuity. "I love none but you," is one essence of romance. Orthodoxy (Chesterton insisted) is more romantic than heresy or agnosticism.

[Pompey Bum]

Look, I'm not interested in going back and forth with you on this, Ecurb. It is only the overall western notion of romance that is derived from courtly love with its emphasis on a couple's dalliance rather than on their having children. Of course you get different results if romance means something different to you personally. But in that case you should have acknowledged the subjectivity of your original position: sex is overrated in real life.

Thanks for the talk.

[Ecurb]

From "Orthodoxy" by GK Chesterton (I like the last sentence):


This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad. It was the equilibrium of a man behind madly rushing horses, seeming to stoop this way and to sway that, yet in every attitude having the grace of statuary and the accuracy of arithmetic. The Church in its early days went fierce and fast with any warhorse; yet it is utterly unhistoric to say that she merely went mad along one idea, like a vulgar fanaticism. She swerved to left and right, so as exactly to avoid enormous obstacles. She left on one hand the huge bulk of Arianism, buttressed by all the worldly powers to make Christianity too worldly. The next instant she was swerving to avoid an orientalism, which would have made it too unworldly. The orthodox Church never took the tame course or accepted the conventions; the orthodox Church was never respectable. It would have been easier to have accepted the earthly power of the Arians. It would have been easy, in the Calvinistic seventeenth century, to fall into the bottomless pit of predestination. It is easy to be a madman: it is easy to be a heretic. It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one's own. It is always easy to be a modernist; as it is easy to be a snob. To have fallen into any of those open traps of error and exaggeration which fashion after fashion and sect after sect set along the historic path of Christendom—that would indeed have been simple. It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands. To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect.

[cacian]

Abortions might be "consistent with an emphasis on the couple's romantic experience independent of their having children." But they do not constitute proof (or even good evidence). "Romantic" and "sexual" are not necessarily one in the same; indeed, if someone thinks he is going to have sex with only one person in his entire life, his first sexual encounter is (I think) likely to be more romantic than his first-time sex with his 37th partner. Not always. But usually.

Promiscuity is "consistent with" a romantic outlook; so is monogamy. Indeed some old fashioned types (maybe even you and I, Pompey) think monogamy is MORE romantic than promiscuity. "I love none but you," is one essence of romance. Orthodoxy (Chesterton insisted) is more romantic than heresy or agnosticism.

I think romance and monogamy is a hard graf because promiscuity is easily had or the easiest option for many.
sex plays a big part in promiscuity but hardly not as much in romance and monogamy because love which is a feeling is usually more then sufficient to keep romance and monogamy going
sex however hugely compensate for the lack of feeling which one is usually unable to obtain for one reason or another hence promiscuous or polyamorous relationships
they rely on sex only to give them that feeling of belonging when in fact it is obvious they do not.
because is an act and a feeling is a fact.

[desiresjab]

Overrated, I dunno. I wrote a trilogy that turned out to have a lot of romance and sex in it. When I started writing I had no idea this would happen. The characters evolved that way.

If the characters are young, it is pretty natural for them to have a strong interest in sex, that is how I remember youth, so the young characters I write about often have strong interests in sex and sexual exploration. By young I mean legal age, of course.

If the characters themselves are not interesting, then them having sex will be a bore, as well.

To the old, sex is overrated, to the young it is not. It is easy to eschew now, but once upon a time we thirsted for love and conquest, and young men still blow themselves up, hoping for the swarm of succulent virgins that awaits.

Overused, I have no doubt. But used right, I do not think it is overrated.

[Pompey Bum]

young men still blow themselves up

I didn't know where you were going with that till I got to the last word. :)

[desiresjab]

I didn't know where you were going with that till I got to the last word. :)

Others are blowing up actual-size pleasure dolls.

[YesNo]

I think romance and monogamy is a hard graf because promiscuity is easily had or the easiest option for many.
sex plays a big part in promiscuity but hardly not as much in romance and monogamy because love which is a feeling is usually more then sufficient to keep romance and monogamy going
sex however hugely compensate for the lack of feeling which one is usually unable to obtain for one reason or another hence promiscuous or polyamorous relationships
they rely on sex only to give them that feeling of belonging when in fact it is obvious they do not.
because is an act and a feeling is a fact.

I agree that romance, monogamy, love and belonging go together. Sex and promiscuity are more primitive both culturally and biologically.

Biologically we are a pair-bonding species. That means we tend toward monogamy although we have enough free will to reject it. The biological tendency is two fold. There is pleasure in the sex act which encourages us to come together. Even non-pair-bonding species have that or there would be no reproduction. There is also pain in leaving because we know who the other person was that we had a sexual encounter with.

That biologically based pleasure and pain is what makes pair-bonding a form of progress biologically. Offspring are better cared for and protected. All of this allows culture to flourish. It especially lets spirituality flourish which allows us to experience an enlightenment or a better seeing of what reality is all about. This is why I think promiscuous sex is considered to be a "sin" in many traditional religions. Promiscuous sex is a biological devolution that blinds us to reality.

[desiresjab]

Ah, promiscuous sex, Yes/No, that is a different matter. That is no longer sex in books. Just like in books, it is only wrong if it is done wrong, as far as legal promiscuity goes.

Long ago, an experienced succubus recognized me as an undeveloped incubus, and took me under her wing, becoming my tutor. After only a few years I attained the second highest rank of master incubus emeritus. There are secrets of the flesh and heights of pleasure that few of those reading this, alack, will ever attain or even imagine correctly, that I learned fully in every foamy detail, sir, during my decades as a jack of all delights, easing the burdens of lonely women and arousing them to a thrashing madness that an incubus takes workman-like pride in.

Of course I had all the enhancements nature might see fit to endow a natural born incubus with. Anyway, this is not an autobiography. I just wanted to mention that done right, promiscuous sex is quite healthy. And experimental pinnacle sex in the hands of an accomplished succubus or incubus is a heavenly experience. Of course, being an incubus, I cannot be knocked out from overload of pleasure, as my capacity is unending, though I have knocked cold many a fine nymph and housewife who were not succubae, driving them as high as they could go, until they fell back to the earth from the stratosphere, limp and soggy with man-dew.

Incubi have a low capacity for sex in books, but unlimited capacity for the real thing. My incubus glare made snaring mortal nymphs that much easier.

[sandy14]

It depends upon the book.

Lawrence uses sex in Lady Chatterley's Lover to define what the new "Adam" and Eve" should do, which also contains prohibitions on women "beaking" themselves. It is part of the theme of the novel, and since sex is part of the human experience, it can be used to illustrate humanity.

In Trocchi's Young Adam, an existentialist novel which influenced by Sartre, but his publisher insisted he added pornographic content to boost sales. Trocchi, rather obligingly did so, so at the end of every third paragraph there is a sex scene.

So sex scenes can be used as part of the themes of a book - to show the characters' relationships, or comment upon society or it can be used to boost sales because many people find sexy bits entertaining - and why not?

[Pompey Bum]

Long ago, an experienced succubus recognized me as an undeveloped incubus, and took me under her wing, becoming my tutor. After only a few years I attained the second highest rank of master incubus emeritus.

So does that make Bruce Jenner a crosstown bus?

[Pompey Bum]

It depends upon the book.

Lawrence uses sex in Lady Chatterley's Lover to define what the new "Adam" and Eve" should do, which also contains prohibitions on women "beaking" themselves. It is part of the theme of the novel, and since sex is part of the human experience, it can be used to illustrate humanity.

Thank you, Sandy, for returning us to our neglected topic. My only problem with Lady Chatterly's Lover is that you have to forge through all the boring sex scenes before getting to the really juicy bits about gamekeeping.

[desiresjab]

So does that make Bruce Jenner a crosstown bus?

I don't know, kid. As an incubus all women are attractive to me, even a four hundred pounder covered in oily pimples, because I see straight through to the lonely heart. I fix hearts through love trauma. A woman whom an incubus has just worked over cannot think of anyone or anything but incubus wand for weeks. Even her blues are forgotten. The downside is that women have tracked me all over the world for another dose of the prized man dew. Just a dropper full, they plead. Okay, I am not a heartless beast. I have left myself drained like a crazed rooster more than once for their sakes.

Jenner is not a woman, no matter what he does, so would not be attractive to me. If you were in that family you might change your sex too.

[Pompey Bum]

Never mind. :)

[ennison]

Actual size? Pleasure dolls? Really!And Really ? No sex is not overrated. But there are a lot of underrated relationships that most writers steer clear of. I don't mean Platonic relationships. I mean real lasting warm relationships where sex is always a possibility but never occurs. Why should it? There are as many good relationships like that as there are loveless sex-filled bonk-a-minute-destined-for-the-inamicable-end relationships.