tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post2234899645799500255..comments2024-03-26T01:10:13.720+00:00Comments on Teach Me Tonight: Lydia Joyce - The Veil of Night (2: The Food of Love)E. M. Selingerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00426524354823232002noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-71358761509410903312007-05-29T11:07:00.000+01:002007-05-29T11:07:00.000+01:00Thanks for those essays, Angel, I liked them.I thi...Thanks for those essays, Angel, I liked them.<BR/><BR/><I>I think trying to write about flesh, bone, blood and sweat --all of it-- honestly is more of a highwire act than using santized key phrases to represent complex passions. And when the earthy descriptions go wrong, they go *really* wrong.</I><BR/><BR/>I think you're right. It must be difficult to get the balance right between realism and what will disgust a reader. I know that some readers don't even like heroes with mustaches or beards, and that can put them off a novel, so if there are 'squicks' even at that level, then realism about sexual organs, body hair, sweat etc must be even more likely to put some people off, even if it's done in a way which conveys the characters' emotions and appreciation of each other.<BR/><BR/><I>the idea of loving people as lovers, so vulnerable and beautiful</I><BR/><BR/>That's what I really liked about the concept of this type of writing. It's not that it focuses on the repellent in order to create disgust: it accepts the mundane, the physical in all its variety and reveals it to be beautiful in its own way. That seems really quite subversive in the age of airbrushing and the beauty myth. There was a post about this at <A HREF="http://lustbites.blogspot.com/2007/03/sexy-v-beautiful.html" REL="nofollow">Lustbites, by Nikki Magennis</A>:<BR/><BR/><I>Sexy is about revealing our real self, gloriously flawed. It’s not about struggling to erase all the signs that show one is human in the pursuit of a mathematically perfect ideal. [...] No one can stay beautiful and make love. [...] when I’m writing, I look for the things that are ‘wrong’ about a character. All the ugliness that makes a character (or a person) unique and fascinating and memorable, also makes them real enough to fall in love with.</I><BR/><BR/>Jenny Crusie's dealt with this issue in <I>Anyone But You</I>, where the heroine compares her body to the images she sees of the 'perfect' bodies and it makes her so insecure she refuses to take her padded bra off, lest the hero see her less-than-pneumatic breasts.<BR/><BR/>As Max, the gynecologist brother of the hero says,<BR/><BR/><I>Forty is when they start rethinking plastic surgery [...]. They look at magazines and see all those damn seventeen-year-old anorexics in push-up bras, or they go to the movies and see actresses with tummy tucks and enough silicone to start a new valley, and then they look at their own perfectly good bodies and decide their sex lives are over. [...] And if you tell them their bodies are normal and attractive, they think you're being nice. [...] Sometimes, I swear to God, I'd like to set fire to the fashion industry. They're screwing with my women's heads."</I> (2006: 158)<BR/><BR/>Crusie, Jennifer, 2006. <I>Anyone But You</I> (Richmond, Surrey: Harlequin Mills & Boon).<BR/><BR/><I>Please pardon the misspellings!</I><BR/><BR/>I didn't even notice them! I've probably made some of my own. But then again, we don't have to be perfect, do we ;-)Laura Vivancohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00906661869372622821noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-9476396324286002002007-05-29T01:18:00.000+01:002007-05-29T01:18:00.000+01:00Ah. Please pardon the misspellings!Also, thank you...Ah. Please pardon the misspellings!<BR/><BR/>Also, thank you for bringing this book to my attention. I've added it to my TBR pile and am happily awaiting the opportunity to devour it! ;)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30203557.post-69550463482092243552007-05-29T01:11:00.000+01:002007-05-29T01:11:00.000+01:00I like the more earthy descriptions, myself. But I...I like the more earthy descriptions, myself. But I think trying to write about flesh, bone, blood and sweat --all of it-- honestly is more of a highwire act than using santized key phrases to represent complex passions. And when the earthy descriptions go wrong, they go *really* wrong. The balance between the erotic and the disgusting can be delicate. And it's different for everyone, so I can see how writers might rather use the key phrases, instead of taking the risk. <BR/><BR/>I've been corrupted, though. When I was about thirteen or fourteen, sexual curiosity got ahold of me. Like lots of kids my age, I went to the Internet. I found an erotic website with the most amazing pictures and read two essays there. The pictures were good as far as they went, but the essays formed the foundation for my preferred sexual aesthetic.<BR/><BR/>Even back then, I wanted to be a writer. So the first essay I looked at was "<A HREF="http://www.nerve.com/dispatches/almond/howto/" REL="nofollow">How to Write Sex Scenes: The 12-Step Guide</A>" by Steve Almond.<BR/><BR/>". . sometimes sex is funny. . . . Don't be afraid to portray these comic aspects. If one of your characters, in a dire moment of passion, hits a note that sounds eerily like Celine Dion, duly note this. If another can't stay hard, allow him to use a ponytail holder for an improvised cock ring. And later on, if his daughter comes home and demands to know where her ponytail holder is, well, so be it."<BR/><BR/>"Do not allow real people to talk in porn clichés. . . Most of the time, real people say all kinds of weird, funny things during sex, such as, "I think I'm losing circulation" and "I've got a cramp in my foot" and "Oh, sorry!" and "Did you come already? Goddamn it!"<BR/><BR/>"It is your job, as an author, to direct us. . . to the more inimitable secrets of the naked body. Give us the indentations on small of a woman's back, or the minute trembling of a man's underlip."<BR/><BR/>". .steer clear of announcing orgasms at all. Rarely, in my experience, do men or women announce their orgasms. They simply have them. Their bodies are taken up by sensation and tossed about in various ways. Describe the tossing."<BR/><BR/>"Real sex is compelling to read about because the participants are so utterly vulnerable. We are all, when the time comes to get naked, terribly excited and frightened and hopeful and doubtful, usually at the same time. You mustn't abandon them in their time of need. You mustn't make of them naked playthings with rubbery parts. You must love them, wholly and without shame, as they go about their human business. Because we've already got a name for sex without the emotional content: it's called pornography."<BR/><BR/>I can't begin to tell you how moving I found hairtie cockrings, sweet pussyfarts, foot cramps and circulation issues, being "taken up by sensation and tossed about," and the idea of loving people as lovers, so vulnerable and beautiful. <BR/><BR/>On one level, it was just a short, kind of self-congratulatory article by an erotica writer. But to thirteen/fourtee year old me, it was a revelation. <BR/><BR/>At the end of the article, he mentions the Song of Songs. My experience of Christianity sure changed after I sought that book of the Bible out! ;)<BR/><BR/>The second essay was "<A HREF="http://www.nerve.com/PersonalEssays/Oxenhandler/TheFleshIsSad/" REL="nofollow">The Flesh is Sad</A>" by Noelle Oxenhandler.<BR/><BR/>She talks about how "between lovers. . . absence engenders a kind of cellular grief, a grief that is deaf and blind to all but its need to breathe in, breathe out, to smell, to touch the body of the other." She shares two journal entries from a broken relationship with a man who seems to have been falling into mental illness. She knows that the relationship between them is toxic, but "But my body aches for him. I've been unable to sleep and have great difficulty swallowing. I'm growing thinner and thinner, and as I move about the world, I feel small and painfully singular. Above all, I have the sensation that there is too much air on and around my skin. The entire surface of my body feels exposed.<BR/> Exposed. Like a baby left on a mountaintop. Oedipus. All of a sudden, it hits me. Isn't it strange that Oedipus, who was destined to enter the most devastatingly proximate of relationships — incest with his mother — began life lying utterly alone, on a bed of rock under a huge sky?"<BR/><BR/>Before finally letting the relationship go, she finds herself at his house: "We make chitchat for a while, and then I tell him, I need you to hold me. We go into the bedroom and lie down on the bed. He puts his arms around me. It's clear to me that he's not in good shape. There is something dark and slack in his face — a deeply self-estranged look in his eyes that has grown all too familiar.<BR/> Hold me harder, I say.<BR/> In my mind, I'm berating myself. Backslider, I say. If one or two people I've confided in could see me, they'd be aghast. They know the oracle has spoken clearly to me: would Oedipus, having grasped the truth, slip back into bed with his impossible love? Yet, here I am, back in the lair with the beast. He begins to rant, in a particular way that he rants in his paranoid states. "The dogs . . . " he begins. "They're at my heels. The spears. They throw spears at me when I'm down. . . . "<BR/> I used to try and reason with him, but I won't anymore. Let him rant, I say to myself, pressing even closer to him, my face against his neck, the top of my head under his chin.<BR/> He smells right.<BR/> He smells right.<BR/> His is the only skin in the world through which I want to breathe."<BR/><BR/>To this day, when I'm reading, I look for the shadow of the feelings those two essays brought out in me. I don't care if the h/h are old, disabled, chubby, or plain. If they feel those things, if they share this magnificent, ridiculous striving together, if their partner's is "the only skin in the world" they want to breathe, I'm moved beyond any description of "naked playthings with rubbery parts."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com