Has Literature gotten less dirty

[old_prof]

The Atlantic just ran an article called Has Literature Gotten Less Dirty? (I think this is a link that gives access to the story.)

I admit I have only scan read this article so far and I need to reread it carefully. But I thought others here might enjoy the thoughts.

 

[TheLobster]

Less dirty?...

Yeah, I'll have to read it to make sure, but in the age of porn masquerading as mainstream literature, the title of this article immediately makes me wanna invoke the Betteridge's Law of Headlines.

 

[StillStunned]

I dusted my bookcase this morning, so I'd say yes.

 

[StillStunned]

Having read the article somewhat superficially, I'd say that there are a few things going on.

One is the easy availability of porn and erotica online. People don't need to pay for stories that will make their ears glow, and they don't have to go through the charade of reading "serious" literature just to get their fix.

Another angle to look at, perhaps, is from the perspective of publishers and bookshops. I suspect that categories and genres have become more distinct, and there's a reluctance to inject explicit sex into the mainstream bookshelves. You don't want to be cancelled if the wrong person starts complaining, after all.

But these two factors in combination also mean that writers can't sex up their books as a way to sell more copies. So they'd probably be more inclined to lean away from explicit scenes and hope to be viewed as more serious and artistic.

That said, I think it's silly. Once you start writing erotica, you realise that there are whole aspects of life and humanity that get glossed over in mainstream fiction. A naked person has nowhere to hide their secrets, so to speak, and a good sex scene can add dimensions and depth to characters. It's like people sitting around a table: you can focus on what they're saying, what they're eating, what they're doing with their hands - but that's only half the story. What's going on under the tablecloth?

 

[BobbyBrandt]

R-rated material will typically be more acceptable from strictly a marketability perspective. Smut still has a place, though.

Unlike many here, I am not ashamed of what I write and have given readings, interviews, or presentations at local book clubs and public libraries.

Many of my characters take their names, and even some of their traits, from real-life people that I have met. One of my fellow volunteers in a children's advocacy group told me this week that she wants to be a character in one of my stories, "As long as I get to have sex, lots and lots of sex".

Is literature getting less "dirty", or are expectation adjusting?

 

[Areala-chan]

Writing sex scenes, or at least writing them well, is hard. My college creative writing classes were in the late '90s, but I presume not much has changed in that sex was a topic few of the students wanted to explore in the public written word with their classmates, and no teacher would have encouraged it due to the inherent power imbalance between mentor and student.

I spent hours learning about simile and metaphor, crafting dialog, setting scenes, pacing, plotting, outlining, coming up with the overall theme of your story and populating it with the characters necessary to explore that theme, including romance, sacrifice, and love.

I spent exactly zero minutes of any writing class learning how to write sex. Maybe if I had pursued an MFA, there would have been options around this, but I suspect not.

Writing sex is hard (no giggity). Like most things, the way you get better is with practice, so you can find your rhythm, your bedsheet poetry, and sculpt those muscles. Mainstream writers have been excoriated for years for poorly-written sex scenes. Literary Review spent twenty-six years dispensing a 'Bad Sex in Fiction' award. If you were a writer, attempting to write serious, literary fiction that one day might be taught in classrooms, there was very little impetus to include sex as a part of your story. Much safer to skip over it, allude to it happening, fade-to-black, and give the culture vultures none of that particular carcass upon which to snack.

The rise of direct publishing, the wholesale explosion of erotica across genres other than romance (especially 'Romantasy'), and the easily-accessible nature of written sexual materials in the 21st century makes it so most writers who aren't comfortable writing it don't have to. I don't blame them--writing sex well is hard. I've got twenty years' worth of practice under my belt, and it's still difficult. And @StillStunned made a great point: you can craft the best sex scene in the world, but if the wrong person reads it, you can wind up in a world of hurt over your art. And nobody needs that.

Which is why they should come to Literotica, and read my Lesbian Sex stories instead. Because even I can write a better sex scene than Norman Mailer and Tom Wolfe.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Skimming through it, to me, is not lamenting that the writing is less dirty, but putting it out there, it's less about straight sex and more about gay, lesbian, and transgender sex.

Or am I wrong?

 

[MillieDynamite]

Adding to that, as I dive deeper, the writing about straight sex isn't being portrayed; it's all about the lead-up, and then it skips past the actual nuts and bolts part. All sizzle and no fury and passion in bed, no emotional and physical climax, leaving the reader disappointed and wanting that scene that never arrives.

 

[SimonDoom]

Maybe. I remember back in the 1970s how a lot of popular novels, especially thrillers, would feature sex scenes that served no purpose in the novel other than to titillate and spice things up. Since I wasn't able to buy Playboy or go to X-rated movies, reading the dirty parts of popular trash novels was the surest way to get my erotic fix.

Visual porn has become so dirty and so prevalent now that perhaps the market for "dirty" in literature is diminished.

This is mostly conjecture.

 

[StillStunned]

Writing sex is hard (no giggity). Like most things, the way you get better is with practice, so you can find your rhythm, your bedsheet poetry, and sculpt those muscles. Mainstream writers have been excoriated for years for poorly-written sex scenes. Literary Review spent twenty-six years dispensing a 'Bad Sex in Fiction' award. If you were a writer, attempting to write serious, literary fiction that one day might be taught in classrooms, there was very little impetus to include sex as a part of your story. Much safer to skip over it, allude to it happening, fade-to-black, and give the culture vultures none of that particular carcass upon which to snack.

Sex scenes are hard. But so are action scenes, and romantic scenes, and descriptions, and witty dialogue. It's the badly written sex scenes that people tend to snigger about, though. Because sex is still hush-hush, and we'd rather laugh at it than feel awkward.

 

[MillieDynamite]

@SimonDoom, in my humble opinion (me humble, WTF), the premise of the article is political correctness, as emphasized by the reference to the #MeToo movement. The fear of offending rather than entertaining makes it all about the chase, with nothing showing one as aggressor and the other as object of desire in bed.

Maybe. I remember back in the 1970s how a lot of popular novels, especially thrillers, would feature sex scenes that served no purpose in the novel other than to titillate and spice things up. Since I wasn't able to buy Playboy or go to X-rated movies, reading the dirty parts of popular trash novels was the surest way to get my erotic fix.

Visual porn has become so dirty and so prevalent now that perhaps the market for "dirty" in literature is diminished.

This is mostly conjecture.

 

[Ianus4]

Today I learned a new term: heterofatalism.

 

[SimonDoom]

@SimonDoom, in my humble opinion (me humble, WTF), the premise of the article is political correctness, as emphasized by the reference to the #MeToo movement. The fear of offending rather than entertaining makes it all about the chase, with nothing showing one as aggressor and the other as object of desire in bed.

I read it somewhat the same way, but I think the concept of a rise of Puritanism is broader than just political correctness. It infects thinking across the political spectrum. I DO agree with the article that "Puritanism," broadly defined, has been on the rise in America in the last few decades, and I think one of the ways it manifests itself is an inability to confront the reality of human sexuality, which is complex and messy and cannot be placed in a neat, ideological, moral box.

In the 60s and 70s, authors wrote books because they WANTED to provoke and offend people. They wanted to wake them up, get them out of their comfort zone. They saw it as a good, useful, progressive thing. Our culture today is less willing to do that. Artists walk on eggshells these days.

My view is that the dirtiness is part of the fun. Get rid of it, and try to make sex in your story play by the rules, and the sex, as well as the story, will be less fun.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Well, with all the happy ending romance shit, what do you expect? Movies, TV series, and literature are filled with happy, loving couples where hardly a cheater, liar, or fake can be found. It's like the picture-perfect, sexy-assed models and how they give all of the rest of us heartburn (or much, much worse) trying to keep up with Betsy Gaghan's. Depression, bulimia, anorexia nervosa, and other lovely side effects of modern life.

Today I learned a new term: heterofatalism.

 

[BellaBestia]

Literature hasn’t had a novel since perhaps Tropic of Cancer where the sex is the main vehicle of character and plot development and the basis of the humanist observation of the novel’s purpose. Commercially viable novels are written with the potential dollar value first and foremost in the authors mind. Publishers aren’t looking for the next great American Novel, just following the trends of what book buyers will actually pay to read. Sex, or whatever the current socially accepted vision of sexual relations, is almost uncomfortably shoehorned into novels just to be marketable.

Having said that I can admit that some writers that do use sex so exclusively in their writing sometimes, unwittingly or purposely, excluding the average reader who has not done any literature courses in university. For example I read some of Tamara Faith-Berger’s erotica, and read some reviews both scholastic and average. Educated readers easily picked up on the literary references to things like Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey or New Age French realism, but the average Amazon or Goodreads reader feels alienated or even disgusted.

And as Millie very eloquently pointed out above the issues of gender roles and same sex come into play. The types of sex writing that do push the envelope are not well represented sometimes because they aren’t well written. Not to judge but no one here writing T/I will churn out the next Lolita.

So who does erotica cater to? Who is buying the books and what are they looking for? “Literature” or classical novels that used sex to explore human themes, is sacrificed to an increasing commodification of our reading experiences.

 

[Ianus4]

Well, with all the happy ending romance shit, what do you expect? Movies, TV series, and literature are filled with happy, loving couples where hardly a cheater, liar, or fake can be found. It's like the picture-perfect, sexy-assed models and how they give all of the rest of us heartburn (or much, much worse) trying to keep up with Betsy Gaghan's. Depression, bulimia, anorexia nervosa, and other lovely side effects of modern life.

Yes, there are far fewer novels about how to make a relationship work in the long term. About how you have to put effort into a relationship, not just have expectations of it. About how, if something goes wrong, you can't just throw it away and replace it with something new, but maybe you can even fix it. No wonder the LW category is so popular and so emotionally charged.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Loving Wives, I don't go there, its original design was for cheating and cuckolding stories. Now, it's a minefield of disappointed readers, some triggered by what's happening, some demanding it be written for their quirk, and one or another of half a dozen different dweller types. All ready, willing, and able to hit you with 1-star votes, hateful comments about your cheating heart and vigina like you're the character in the story. Popular, sure, but a mixed bag of insults ready to be hurled out like rice at a wedding.

And the article has nothing whatsoever to do with Literotica; it's about mainstream fiction, not erotic, kink, or BDSM centric writing.

Yes, there are far fewer novels about how to make a relationship work in the long term. About how you have to put effort into a relationship, not just have expectations of it. About how, if something goes wrong, you can't just throw it away and replace it with something new, but maybe you can even fix it. No wonder the LW category is so popular and so emotionally charged.

 

[Andreas_Kreuz]

You don't want to be cancelled if the wrong person starts complaining, after all.

Is that really the status in the US? (European asking)

 

[Britva415]

Is that really the status in the US? (European asking)

That's a great question.

I think there is some concern over "getting canceled," but most of the time when people use it as an excuse to complain about not feeling free to say whatever tf they want, what they really are worried about isn't actually "getting canceled" but instead "being made to feel bad."

I believe that actual cancellation is happening to the right people: People who rightfully earned it through their actions and intentions, and who rightfully deserve the loss of their privilege as a result.

To @StillStunned 's point, which was about publishing companies and not individuals, "canceling" isn't even the right term.

I didn't read the Atlantic article but to me the entire question isn't about literary expression at all, it's entirely about commerce. As if commercial "literature" were the entirety of literature.

 

[Ianus4]

Loving Wives, I don't go there, its original design was for cheating and cuckolding stories. Now, it's a minefield of disappointed readers, some triggered by what's happening, some demanding it be written for their quirk, and one or another of half a dozen different dweller types. All ready, willing, and able to hit you with 1-star votes, hateful comments about your cheating heart and vigina like you're the character in the story. Popular, sure, but a mixed bag of insults ready to be hurled out like rice at a wedding.

And the article has nothing whatsoever to do with Literotica; it's about mainstream fiction, not erotic, kink, or BDSM centric writing.

I wouldn't take Lit out of this picture entirely. On the one hand, because well-known writers also visit here under pseudonyms, and on the other hand, Lit also serves as an incubator for new writers.
On the other hand, what is mentioned in the article can also be observed on Lit to some extent: the Romance category has been significantly reduced, the softer, romantic stories appear nowadays mainly in the LS category. Even more worrying (and in my opinion a bigger problem than LW) is that interracial romance has completely disappeared (from all categories), and the IR category has been flooded with BBC-BNWO-cuck trash. Yet by now, mixed-race couples should no longer be considered a fetish in modern society.
I consider the appearance of stories about marital crises in LW to be just a symptom of the times. What the category was originally about is irrelevant from this point of view, see category IR "Love" in a lot of quotation marks. You could say that this isn't erotica, but it's just as much about escaping or processing the problems of everyday relationships (or the lack of a relationship) as any other category of writing on Lit. The better pieces are explicitly educational, and it's not uncommon to see comments from real relationship experts. The reconciliation stories can actually be considered romance 2.0.
On the other hand, good reconciliation sex is not at all foreign to the genre.
And some marriages are beyond saving, but that's life, there isn't always a HEA.
Yes, it's not good to mix it in with ENMs (there hasn't been a new thread on this subject this week, haha), but there is clearly a real demand for these genre, and this demand can be shaped with good writing (by which I definitely do NOT mean preaching in favor of a particular lifestyle), and it can also make thoughtful readers think.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I suspect the answer depends primarily on how one defines "literature". Having read the article, I'm not sure exactly what the author is looking for.

She begins by discussing Portnoy's Complaint, apparently as an example of how literature used to be more open about sexual content, but then says: "my search was a response to a growing lack of faith in heterosexuality and in straight romance—and my desire for some optimism about both".

It's been a long time since I read Portnoy's Complaint, and perhaps I'm forgetting something, but I would not have described that as a particularly optimistic book about heterosexuality. As she acknowledges, the protagonist is completely obsessed with sex; I remember one scene where he masturbates on a sleeping woman on a bus. I presume this isn't the kind of "optimism" she's looking for. And Portnoy's still far less bleak in its treatment of sex than, say, Last Exit to Brooklyn.

She writes: 'I want to encourage readers to think seriously but not pessimistically about the present and future of straight sex and love by imagining...how a couple might “arrange things to a greater moral satisfaction.”'

If we're looking for stories where "straight sex & love" is a major element, and where it's taken seriously but not pessimistically, there is an obvious place where one can find it. But she rejects that option:

"Romance is booming... Literary writers have other demands to satisfy. In general, readers come to their books seeking not an escape from reality but perspective on it. Romance novels can provide this, just as literary novels can have happy endings, but they’re still beholden to the fantasy that’s part of the genre. Literary writing can explore relationships as they are in the real world, stretching them and unearthing fresh dynamics within them."

It feels like she's asking for optimism but then rejecting romance for its optimism, with an implication that romance is incapable of "exploring relationships as they are in the real world" - which I would say is quite untrue. I've read romances that had far more to offer on RL relationship dynamics than Portnoy ever did.

 

[MillieDynamite]

You don't need to take Lit out of your equation, but the said article didn't take into account anything other than mainstream literary works. The writer didn't explore fetish, kink, or erotica, just mainstream literature. The author was and is a romance writer, not a writer of smut. IR, BBC, BNWO, cheating wives, erotica, or any other writing centering on erotica wasn't covered in the article and was irrelevant to her focus.

I wouldn't take Lit out of this picture entirely. On the one hand, because well-known writers also visit here under pseudonyms, and on the other hand, Lit also serves as an incubator for new writers.
On the other hand, what is mentioned in the article can also be observed on Lit to some extent: the Romance category has been significantly reduced, the softer, romantic stories appear nowadays mainly in the LS category. Even more worrying (and in my opinion a bigger problem than LW) is that interracial romance has completely disappeared (from all categories), and the IR category has been flooded with BBC-BNWO-cuck trash. Yet by now, mixed-race couples should no longer be considered a fetish in modern society.
I consider the appearance of stories about marital crises in LW to be just a symptom of the times. What the category was originally about is irrelevant from this point of view, see category IR "Love" in a lot of quotation marks. You could say that this isn't erotica, but it's just as much about escaping or processing the problems of everyday relationships (or the lack of a relationship) as any other category of writing on Lit. The better pieces are explicitly educational, and it's not uncommon to see comments from real relationship experts. The reconciliation stories can actually be considered romance 2.0.
On the other hand, good reconciliation sex is not at all foreign to the genre.
And some marriages are beyond saving, but that's life, there isn't always a HEA.
Yes, it's not good to mix it in with ENMs (there hasn't been a new thread on this subject this week, haha), but there is clearly a real demand for these genre, and this demand can be shaped with good writing (by which I definitely do NOT mean preaching in favor of a particular lifestyle), and it can also make thoughtful readers think.

Her thrust, pardon the word, was about the lack of anything controversial in mainstream literature concerning romance.

I suspect the answer depends primarily on how one defines "literature". Having read the article, I'm not sure exactly what the author is looking for.

She begins by discussing Portnoy's Complaint, apparently as an example of how literature used to be more open about sexual content, but then says: "my search was a response to a growing lack of faith in heterosexuality and in straight romance—and my desire for some optimism about both".

It's been a long time since I read Portnoy's Complaint, and perhaps I'm forgetting something, but I would not have described that as a particularly optimistic book about heterosexuality. As she acknowledges, the protagonist is completely obsessed with sex; I remember one scene where he masturbates on a sleeping woman on a bus. I presume this isn't the kind of "optimism" she's looking for. And Portnoy's still far less bleak in its treatment of sex than, say, Last Exit to Brooklyn.

She writes: 'I want to encourage readers to think seriously but not pessimistically about the present and future of straight sex and love by imagining...how a couple might “arrange things to a greater moral satisfaction.”'

If we're looking for stories where "straight sex & love" is a major element, and where it's taken seriously but not pessimistically, there is an obvious place where one can find it. But she rejects that option:

"Romance is booming... Literary writers have other demands to satisfy. In general, readers come to their books seeking not an escape from reality but perspective on it. Romance novels can provide this, just as literary novels can have happy endings, but they’re still beholden to the fantasy that’s part of the genre. Literary writing can explore relationships as they are in the real world, stretching them and unearthing fresh dynamics within them."

It feels like she's asking for optimism but then rejecting romance for its optimism, with an implication that romance is incapable of "exploring relationships as they are in the real world" - which I would say is quite untrue. I've read romances that had far more to offer on RL relationship dynamics than Portnoy ever did.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

Which is why they should come to Literotica, and read my Lesbian Sex stories instead. Because even I can write a better sex scene than Norman Mailer and Tom Wolfe.

Writing challenge: Mailer and Wolfe have an affair. We the readers see the work they were both inspired to write by this ahistorical affair.

 

[Areala-chan]

Sex scenes are hard. But so are action scenes, and romantic scenes, and descriptions, and witty dialogue. It's the badly written sex scenes that people tend to snigger about, though. Because sex is still hush-hush, and we'd rather laugh at it than feel awkward.

Yes, absolutely. I didn't mean to imply by omission that these were easy to write, just that all of those things are easily practiced in the confines of an open academic setting. We had exercises that focused on building tension, writing action, and crafting dialogue. I had help honing all those tools of the craft.

What I never had was a unit or exercise meant to help develop my skills at writing erotic interludes. My guess is that an awful lot of other would-be writers are the same, and that might be what makes their sex scenes stick out like an inappropriate boner at a family gathering.

 

[Bazzle]

I read it somewhat the same way, but I think the concept of a rise of Puritanism is broader than just political correctness. It infects thinking across the political spectrum. I DO agree with the article that "Puritanism," broadly defined, has been on the rise in America in the last few decades, and I think one of the ways it manifests itself is an inability to confront the reality of human sexuality, which is complex and messy and cannot be placed in a neat, ideological, moral box.

there will be a rebellion against religious puritanical ideology eventually. When people ask where is the fun?

Skirts will get shorter and the boob tubes will come out again.

everything is cyclical.