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Wednesday, September 12, 2007

A Tasty Morsel


I thought it might be time for another online read, so here is A is for Average. It's a short story by Lynne Marshall and it should open up as a pdf document.

There are two aspects of this short story which caught my attention. The first is that it's told in the first person, which seems appropriate given that the heroine's special feature is her voice.

The second is that, as in Mary Stewart's Madam, Will You Talk, discussed by Eric here, there's a scene set in a restaurant during which the hero provides the heroine with food and, despite the fact that they barely touch, it's as much a sex scene as it is a food scene.

Bon appétit!


The picture is Rubens' Venus, Cupid, Baccchus and Ceres, from the Web Gallery of Art, which also gives further details about the painting. Jonathan Jones has written that
Profusion is not only a style with Rubens - it is a philosophy of life. He expresses it in two highly unusual paintings, on the theme of the "Venus frigida" (cold Venus). This obscure iconography derives from the Roman dramatist Terence: Sine Cerere et Libero friget Venus - "Without Ceres and Bacchus Venus is cold".

Ceres is the goddess of the fruits of the earth, Bacchus the god of wine. Without good food and wine, Rubens suggests, no one ever had really good sex.

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