Transgressive sexual depictions in literature

[Robin Landseadel]

On Sep 8, 2010, at 2:50 PM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:

> I don't know - the baby piranha-filled glass dildo might have been a  
> deliberate attempt to evoke goshes.  The sex scenes in GR are all  
> kind of campily decadent and therefore entertaining.

I think that's a fine example of good writing v. bad writing. There's  
something decidedly Baroque and richly staged in the various couplings  
in Gravity's Rainbow, it's probably the author's most vivid and  
inspired writing as regards sex.

> I'd say the Esther and Dr. Schoenmaker sex scene is the closest  
> analog in V..  The Fina and Lucille scenes come across as a  
> fratboy's play for worldliness, rather than anything as stylized as  
> the GR orgy scene, etc.

Later we have a depiction of a saintly, selfless and decidedly "Queer"  
character in "Against the Day." I take Cyprian as an attempt for the  
author to karmically atone for various uninformed depictions of the  
Third [Fourth? Fifth? Sixth? . . .] sex, particularly in his pre-Slow  
Learner novels.