Is your work worth less because it's porn?

[SadieRose]

I can agree with Dr.M.

I have a friend who writes absolutely brilliant stuff. She can take on any style you care to name and write an original piece using that style of writing but she can't write a decent sex scene to save her life and shies away from sex in her writing.

It's not so much that pornography can't be good fiction, more that in the mindset of certain people a porn novel is more about the sex than the story. Now, I don't know about you, but anything that is all sex and no raison d'etre quickly loses its sheen after a few pages.

I need to care about a character to read, or even write them, and that goes for both erotic and non-erotic fiction. It takes a good writer to make you interested in the person behind the scenes, whether that person is getting laid (you still want to associate with whatever it is that turns the character on, or it's not worthwhile for you as a reader) or going to the supermarket.

I'll admit without shame that I have a dirty mind, but I also enjoy a good yarn and I don't see why a novel should be considered any the less worthwhile just because it has graphic sexuality in it.

*sigh*
Sadie


PS> I love your AV Slavemaster!

 

[banditman]

Well, for one thing I think it is pretty easy to write a great Chuck Berry-like tune. Jagger and Richard have made a career if it.

And no, it's not easy to write great porn. But it is easy to write mediocre porn, and have it be just as effective as the good stuff. Isn't that what Literotica is all about? I mean, could you imagine a free site like this with as many stories if it were devoted to muder mysteries or science fiction? No, because most people know they couldn't write that kind of stuff. But porn is like poetry: everyone thinks they can do it, and most of them are right: they can. Whether it's good or not is another matter, and that's why porn gets no respect.

---dr.M.

I agree with you regarding porn, but at the risk of hijacking the thread, I'd say exactly the same thing about great rock and roll. Jagger and Richards have made a terrific career of writing Chuck Berry tunes. we should all be so mediocre.

 

[Wildcard Ky]

The first question to be answered is do you write for profit, or simply because you enjoy writing?

If you simply enjoy writing and like to share it with others, then "worth" takes on a different meaning.

 

[lucky-E-leven]

The first question to be answered is do you write for profit, or simply because you enjoy writing?

If you simply enjoy writing and like to share it with others, then "worth" takes on a different meaning.

I love this!

~lucky

 

[Pure]

I agree with dr m, and many of Josh G's points, (note to Wildcard)

The standards of most porn writers, including 99% at literotica are pretty low. "Good porn" as said, is measured (by some) only by arousal.

Another issue not mentioned is *genre*. Most *genre* stuff is not really literature, or should I say, is not good by literary standards. This is because of formulas, cliches etc. Porn for some (mostly male) and harlequins for others fill a need, and best aren't looked at too closely. The publishers too insist on formula and stereotyping. For instance some porn must have only straight and no gay male sexual acts.

The finest of 'genre' writers--the theodore sturgeons-- have valid complaints against literary snobbism, the rest do NOT in my opinion.

One index of the problem is to look in the library of a university; at ours, the only porn in English, by and large, is Sade and the Story of O. Not much else is of enduring interest or value or of serious literary merit (or scholarly interest).

One interesting experiment is to look in the back of an erotic collection: see which authors have published stories that are NOT porn. Those perhaps are the mostly like to be writing very well, but the use of formula may ruin them also.

Anais Nin's porn is around, and imo, is not bad. But my impression is that her admirers do not think it's her best. She has flare, but the patron--paying a dollar a page-- HAD to get off, w/o much distraction, so one finds dubious results. That illustrates the whole problem at issue.

my two cents

J.

Should a porn writer be proud of it? Well, you can be proud of your Hustler magazine collection or dildo collection, so yes. Proud as a good writer, *by the general standards*? Depends on the factors mentioned above.

Note to wildcard: re writing for money; Dickens and Dostoevsky did. It's somewhat irrelevant, though i understand the prostitution concept.

 

[KarenAM]

Very good points all around. I agree with you, Pure, about genre. Since most of my work is Science Fiction erotica, I've looked at a lot of Science Fiction over the years and I have to say that very little of it (Ursula K. LeGuin being the standout exception) is any good at all. This isn't because Science Fiction can't be good, but because it is overwhlmingly written for a specific audience that spends a lot of money on Science Fiction books and has particular things they want in them. Publishers of Science Fiction make more money by publishing lots of mediocre books with the "proper" things in them than they ever would insisting on high levels of literary quality.

The same is true in Romance novels and Porn. Note how Romances are assigned "categories", just as Porn is. It's what's in there, not how well it's done, that matters most.

Now, this is not to say that there aren't writers who can and do produce brilliant work within genres, and again, Porn is no exception. Some of the writers here are outstanding and their work is better than most professional stuff. In my own work, whether my novel or my short fiction, I try and meet as high a literary standard as I can, because I love good writing and I love good storytelling, erotic or not.

 

[NoJo]

I really don't know what you mean when you say "very little science fiction is any good at all".

Firstly, it begs a really important question: What the hell is "good" supposed to mean? Presumably you have some yardstick of good, by which you measure science fiction as a genre. That's about as much use as saying pop music isn't good. Or is"good". Either way, it's pretty vacuous.

Secondly, Ursula LeGuin is often wheeled into the courtroom by people who aren't really into science fiction, becasue she was a "real" writer, who wrote science fiction -- like Doris Lessing, she saw that her Utopian stories could fit into the Science Fiction genre, becuase SF writers had a long tradition of Utopian stories. But she certainly doesn't score high on originality stakes; and to me her stories are humorless and stuffy.

Thirdly, I really doubt if you have read "a lot" of science fiction, because then you would have mentioned at least one of Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Disch, John Sladek or JG Ballard, accomplished "serious", highly literary writers who have a large proportion of their works placed firmly on the Sci Fi shelves in bookstores. And their science fiction is their "best" stuff.

None of these writers expressed, as far as I know, much discomfort at being considered SF writers.

Science Fiction covers a lot of styles. One thing I would say that distinguishes modern science fiction is that there's usually a slightly deeper understanding, or at least a keener interest, in the technological aspect of society. And science fiction tends to explore ideas rather than personalities.

Sex, being part of our culture, has a dimension that's very well suited to science fiction. Human/machine relationships, sexual politics, the influence of the subconscious, all of these have been brilliantly done within the science fiction genre.


"Hard SF", dealing usually with giant space ships, exemplified by Greg Bear, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's stuff, is no longer typical of modern Sci Fi output.

All I can say is that if you think Ursual K LeGuin is a standout exception, you need to read more SF!

Fourthly, it's pretty obvious that there's a large percentage of mudane stuff in any genre, almost by definition. And science Fiction, like erotica, has its fair share.

 

[KarenAM]

Points well taken, Sub Joe.

My yardstick, of course, is my own, and is therefore subjective. I like what I like, and do not apologize for my opinion. Opinions are often expressed in absolute terms, as I did in my post, and as did the young man who once told me that Robert Heinlein was the greatest writer of the 20th century and Ernest Hemingway was a "hack". It's why some people today are saying that Tolkien is the greatest writer of the modern age, on a par with Shakespeare. Such, I suppose, is human nature, and presumably my yardstick is much the same as your "originality stakes" by which you have determined that Mrs. LeGuin's work is not up to snuff.

Now, as to what I have read or not read, please understand that simply because I have not listed an author in my post does not mean I haven't read them; the point of my post was that as a genre, Science Fiction has certain expectations imposed on it by its fans (the people who keep its publishers in business), and this has a profound and not always beneficial influence on it. The distinguished writers you mentioned (some of whom I've read and some of whom I haven't) have by your statement only a percentage of their work in the Science Fiction section of the bookstore; by what yardstick do you rate these works as their "best"?

Again, we are both giving opinions, which are by nature subjective.

Now, my yardstick: I like character driven stories, and I like authors who treat the English language itself as a thing of beauty, not merely a way to communicate. These are features of what is loosely called "literary fiction". Because Science Fiction is a genre that values ideas and external conflict, this means that a lot of it isn't going to appeal to me. There are exceptions: LeGuin is one, Vonnegut another. Are you familiar with the work of Ian MacDonald? Jacqueline Carey? Joanne Greenburg? Claudia O'Keefe? Orson Scott Card? I do read Science Fiction; I used to read more, but about ten years ago got seduced by other writers who were more to my taste, especially as Science Fiction publishers kept dropping writers I enjoyed in favor of the next inch-thick volume about the conquest of the galaxy by someone who delighted in describing how his plasma blasters worked.

As I said above, Science Fiction as a genre is heavily influenced by its fans, who are highly organized and very vocal about what they want, which so far as I can tell is usually action, technology, larger-than-life characters and a simple writing style. This would be fine if the genre also welcomed other approaches, but in my contacts with editors, agents and fans (which are fairly broad, thank you), such variation is typically dismissed as unprofitable and therefore undesirable. Publishers today make more money off of ten mediocre books than one masterpiece, and so they encourage writers to write fast and to write about the same things over and over again because those things sold last time. Editors are overworked and are under tremendous pressure to produce bestsellers, which discourages the kind of literary risk-taking that Science Fiction used to be proud of.

Now,

Sex, being part of our culture, has a dimension that's very well suited to science fiction. Human/machine relationships, sexual politics, the influence of the subconscious, all of these have been brilliantly done within the science fiction genre.

This is true. It is why I have chosen Science Fiction as the genre of much of my erotic work.

And,

Fourthly, it's pretty obvious that there's a large percentage of mudane stuff in any genre, almost by definition. And science Fiction, like erotica, has its fair share.

On this we agree.