Her Throbbing Volvo:
My Troubles With Upscale Erotica
Book review feature, 1/6/99
SEDUCTIONS: Tales of Erotic Persuasion
Edited by Lonnie Barbach, Ph.D.
Dutton, $23.95
HIGH INFIDELITY: Twenty-Four Great Short Stories About Adultery by Some of Our Best Contemporary Authors
Edited by John McNally
Quill/William Morrow, $13 (paperback)
THE PENGUIN BOOK OF INFIDELITIES
Edited by Stephen Brook
Penguin, $12.95 (paperback)
THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF NEW EROTICA
Edited by Maxim Jakubowski
Carroll & Graf, $10.95 (paperback)
Every year, a group of British book critics gives out an award-O-shame for the most ridiculously-written sex scenes in contemporary mainstream novels. Sure they’re fun, but bad writing, when it’s done right (no, that’s not a contradiction), can make a sex scene sexier. After all, sex at its best is a release from the rigors of the intellect and the propriety of good taste.
Would that any of that contest’s winning examples of purple prose appeared in the ’80s-’90s specialty genre of upscale “literary erotica.” You know: those hardcover and trade-paperback collections sold in the back of Tower Books or the front of Toys In Babeland, promising ever-so-tasteful excursions into the lower passions, many of which proudly claim all-female and/or all-gay mastheads.
Instead, what you usually get are bland, mannered accounts of bland, mannered people, almost always upper-middle-class and ultra-caucasian (except in anthologies specifically ethnic-branded), for whom orgasms are merely another upscale leisure activity, and for whom discovering a new lover is no more or less exciting than discovering a new store.
Lonnie Barbach’s collections appear to be aimed at those readers who can only indulge in visceral-fantasy reading if it’s got a justifying patina of “education.” Her introductions in Seductions denote specifically what pleasures and psychological lessons the reader is expected to attain from each of the collection’s 20 stories. Only five of Seductions’ stories are written from a male point of view–in three, the men serve as helpless targets of women’s schemes; in one, a nice gay man pondes another man’s cute dimpled face (but never gets into discussing gay-male sex as explicitly as other stories in the book discuss lesbian sex); and in the other, a Renaissance-era rogue (i.e., a safe fantasy figure from a time and place far removed from ours) gives a lovemaking lesson to another man’s fiancee.
The book’s other stories are all about heroines, nice complacent heroines who have nice complacent fun with nice complacent men and/or women. Even when cheating on husbands or screwing compliant department-store workers in the fitting room, none of these women (except the ones who get converted to lesbianism) learn major life-changing things about themselves, and none of them does anything really mind-altering like falling in love.
(At least, however, the stories in Barbach’s collection present non-monogamous and recreational sex as something potentially beneficial and even wholesome. After 15 years of stupid “erotic thriller” movies and novels in which intercourse (even hetero intercourse among HIV-sparse population segments) was treated as a crime punishable by death, it’s welcome that fictional heroines can again enjoy their and others’ bodies this nonchalantly.)
In contrast to Seductions’ unbearable lightness of licking, the High Infidelity collection occasionally acknowledges the limitations of a lifestyle-centered sexuality. Indeed, its focus is not The Affair (let alone The Act) but about how affairs are great angst generators for self-centered, all-too-literate white people who seem to get off less on sex (or on the excitement of illicitness) than on the opportunity to wallow in their own guilt, confusion, and/or vengeance. This is a theme implicit in most of the book’s segments and is made explicit in one story (Robert Boswell’s “Flipflops”), wherein a philandrous couple vacationing at a Mexican seaside resort are only briefly, temporarily, disrupted from their vapid relationship-talking by the sight of a local man drowning just beyond their beach.
The Penguin Book of Infidelities tells more, and far better-written, tales of illicit couplings and the wide variety in cultural attitudes toward them in different places and times. While John McNally’s introduction to High Infidelitytreats extramarital play as an eternal problem, the Penguin collection notes it’s been considered more or less of a problem depending on where and when it happened. From Tunisian wives who found public veil-wearing advantageous while persuing local stable boys without being seen, to old French lords and ladies who sat for banquets as foursomes with their respective current lovers seated to each side, there’ve been plenty of social solutions to the stability/monotony dilemma, few of which (besides secrecy and guilt trips) find their way into the modern-day tales in High Infidelity.
If you want to find out about this genre without investing a whole lot of money, Carroll and Graf’s huge paperback collections give you a lot of different stories for not much money. Few are outstanding, but they do represent almost as much variety as you can expect in the scene. The best of them try to combine the visceral manipulation of the reader with a solid plot; such as The Mammoth Book of New Erotica’s centerpiece novella, Michael Hemmingson’s “The Dress.” A proper upper-middle-class British couple realize (unlike any of the protagonists in Seductions) the limitations of their mannered upscale life. The husband’s solution: Go out in public with the wife in highly revealing dresses. It revitalizes their sex life, but then leads them to further self-realizations that change their lives forever, as the wife goes from play-acting the “lead” role in the couple’s sex life (at her husband’s prodding) to taking charge for real. But still, all works out for the best; as both partners decide they’d rather enjoy their passions than sit around and brood about them. Perhaps a lesson to be learned by the characters in some of the other books discussed here.
