Transgressive sexual depictions in literature

[Matthew Cissell]

This is a (loose ) response to the thread about gang-rape etc. in V. Several 
people have mentioned Lolita and the Nabakov connection but i would suggest that 
we have to include some other factors in our consideration. First, Nabakov was 
hardly the first to use such a transgressive element as pedophilia in his work. 
We could go back to Shelley's The Cenci to find something as shocking as incest. 
Of course from about the same time the M. de Sade stands out (although his work 
was only later rescued from oblivion) and alongside him we could note Comte de 
Lautreamont. Now i dont think TP had these in mind. Most likely he also didnt 
have in mind Mann's Death in Venice (infatuation with a young boy) or Sartre's 
Nausea (again pedophilia). Perhaps he was aware of Joyce's "dirty book" Ulysses 
or the even more radical Finnegins Wake (incest, etc). But we can say with 
certainty that he did have the Beats in mind (see SL intro) and most likely 
would have been aware of the censorship and ensuing trials concerning Burroughs 
Naked Lunch or Ginsbergs Howl, perhaps even Henry Miller's own transgressive 
writing and censorship trials (Grove Press Inc. vs. Gerstein, 1961). We see a 
bit of a trend. Sexually transgressive writing becomes a part of avant-garde 
writing; and let us not forget that press (even, or especially, when it brands 
something naughty or notoriuos) sells books (see Joyce and censorship). This is 
not meant as justification for what TP wrote or how, simply an attempt to widen 
the frame of our analysis. 

    That said, i think we can certainly see some maturing and tempering of this 
transgressive writing as his fiction moves from the gang-rape and killing of the 
Herrero girl to GR's catamite Gottfried and much later to Cyprian.


      
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20100908/39d4d732/attachment.html>