Safe Sex is No Fun

[Adam Lou Stephanides]

On Fri, 22 Mar 1996, Burgess, John wrote:

> Guess it's just my reading, but each instance of sex in GR -- though I 
> might exclude the Pudding sequence, but I might not -- seems to be a 
> direct confrontation or refutation of the violence that pervades the 
> background.
[examples snipped]

What about the gang-bang in which Bianca was conceived?  Or Pokler's
film-inspired sex with his wife, which is described in rape-like
terms?  Or the round-robin orgy aboard the Anubis?

Still, I take your point.  Certainly Slothrop himself is a nice guy,
sexually speaking, although a female friend who read GR at my recom-
mendation told me she lost all sympathy for Slothrop when he whipped
Greta (her sympathy returned later in the book).

I would say that sex in GR is Janus-faced: both life-affirming _and_
distorted by Them into an instrument of control.

--Adam