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Tuesday, December 13, 2005
The Storyteller’s Art: The Animal Force
"I've reached an age where sex is constantly on my mind, but seldom on my agenda."
That delightful line was given to the character of President Tom McKenna, played by the late Rock Hudson in World War III, a made-for-television production about a Soviet invasion of Alaska that eventuates in the title disaster. But as piquant as it was in its original setting, your Curmudgeon imagines it even more appropriate from the mouth of many a contemporary novelist.
It seems to be common among American writers that the older they get -- and by implication, the less sex figures into their real lives -- the more sexually focused their fictions become. But their borderline obsessions with what they're not getting doesn't render their stories more appealing. Sometimes it spoils them completely.
Granted that the taboos against sexual depiction have all fallen flat these past thirty years. Granted further that an awful lot of editors are uninterested in books that contain no sexual component. Copious writing about sex does not imply eroticism, wisdom, or skill in doing so.
Sex is a fundamental aspect of human life, and eminently suitable as a motif with which to explore the proper subjects of fiction: the virtues, the vices, their expressions in action, and the emotions that move us among them. But it is only a motif. A story of which sex is the whole point is pornography, and pornography is boring.
Some would argue that point, but the refutation is contained in the title of this essay. Lust is an animal force, not a rational or emotional one. Brunner's Laws of Fiction:
- The raw material of fiction is people.
- The essence of story is change.
...demand that in a good story, one must be able to observe changes in people. But changes in people, as distinguished from changes in animals, are about those things that make us human: our rational faculties and our emotional ties to one another. The sex act itself changes neither of these, except as an adjunct to other developments of higher, wider import.
Some extremely skillful writers have turned out one excellent novel after another without ever describing even the build-up to a sex act. Fantasist Steven Brust comes to mind in this regard. In his entire oeuvre, one of the most exciting bodies of work in contemporary fantasy, he's described only a single fleshly clinch, and even there he discreetly drew the curtains before the consummation of the event. Others who rate plaudits in this regard are science fiction giant David Brin, master fantasist Glen Cook, and the immortal Jack Vance. A fine writer who has defaced several otherwise high achievements with gratuitous sexual depictions is Gregory Benford.
In their book Self-Editing For Fiction Writers, Renni Browne and David King gently suggest going counter to the current, sex-drenched trend: "Sometimes the most erotic thing you can write is a line space." Your Curmudgeon concurs. Among other things, it gives readers' flabby imaginations some room to stretch and exercise.
Roughly he thrust his throbbing tool into her quivering quim. "Aaaah!" she wailed, caught fast on the jagged border between lust and outrage as her passion eclipsed her fury at his presumption. Their rhythms conjoined as their bodies had, her alabaster globes heaving in perfect time to the strokes of his velvet-headed love hammer. They moaned and surged as one, willing captives of the tidal forces they had loosed. [From "The Eternal Triangle"]
Where's the imaginative room to roam in that? Your Curmudgeon wrote it as the punchline to a fictional joke, and submitted it to a writers' workshop expecting it to draw, if not guffaws, at least a chuckle or two. It's some measure of the lack of imagination of most aspiring writers that only one of a roomful got the gag; the rest only criticized my excessive use of modifiers. Yet it's merely an ornate equivalent to much of the sexual writing one could find with a random swipe at the shelves of any bookstore. Any section of any bookstore, at that.
Writerly discipline should include sufficient strength and clarity of purpose to eschew the cheap thrill.
Let it be said, however, that your Curmudgeon does not condemn erotic writing as such. Sexual depiction can be purposeful and graceful. Consider the following scene, from the pen of the aforementioned Steven Brust:
"I'm glad Aliera is good at revivification," I said.
"I suppose so."
"For both our sakes," I added, because I meant it. She looked at me carefully. There was a moment when time did strange things. If I had thrown my stones right, I could have kissed here then. So I did. Loiosh flew off her arm as our lips met. It was hardly an intense kiss, but I discovered that I'd closed my eyes. Odd.
She continued looking at me, as if she could read something in my face. Then she said, very deliberately, "My name is Cawti."
I nodded, and our mouths met again. Her arms went around my neck. When we came up for air, I reached up and slid the nightgown over her shoulders and down to her hips. She pulled her arms free and began working at the clasp of my cloak. I decided that this was insane. She would never have a better chance of getting one of my daggers and finishing me. Verra, I thought to myself, I think I've lost it.
My cloak dropped to the floor, and she helped me take off my jerkin. I paused to remove my boots and stockings, then we fell back together, and the sensation of her small, strong body against mine, her breasts against my chest and her breathing in my ear, my hand on the small of her back, her hand on my neck -- I'd never felt anything like it before, and I wanted to stay just like that, forever, and not take it any further.
My body, however, had its own set of rules, and let me know of them. I began stroking her lower spine. She pulled my head away and kissed me; this time we both meant business. I tasted her tongue, and that was nice too. I heard myself making small moaning sounds as my lips traveled down to her throat, then to the valley between her breasts. I kissed each one, carefully, and went back to her lips. She started fumbling for the catch to my breeches, but I interfered by finding her buttocks with my right hand and crushing her to me again.
We drew back and looked at each other once more. Then we paused long enough to send Loiosh out of the room, because love, like murder, shouldn't have witnesses. [From Yendi]
It's a pity that space considerations should compel your Curmudgeon to sever this scene from what preceded it. The narrator, Vladimir Taltos, is a professional assassin. Cawti, the woman to whom he's about to make love, is another -- and Vlad was her target only a day before. The grace of the scene is heightened still further by the unusual context, but the above excerpt is sufficient to display Brust's grasp of the essence of erotic writing: the evocation of the emotion of desire, and the unanticipated directions in which it can pull us.
Obviously, sex and eroticism in fiction is a huge subject that can't be exhausted by a piddling thousand words. Your Curmudgeon will return to it in a future essay, but for the present, let this summation suffice:
Pornography is about plumbing.
Comments
Well and truly said. Amazing how few people get the difference.
Posted by og on 12/13/2005 at 10:48 PMActually, soft-core is about plumbing. Hard-core is about plumbing and friction.
M
Posted by Mark Alger on 12/13/2005 at 10:58 PMI can’t have been the only reader to think of Heinlein on reading your first paragraph. I will always remember how much I enjoyed reading and re-reading stories like Glory Road, Starman Jones, etc—I am re-reading Starship Troopers now—but Heinlein wrote very little worth a damn after “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”. The aphorisms in “Time Enough for Love” make the book worth buying, but after the disgusting end of the book, I suspected he had lost his respect for his readers. What a waste of talent.
Posted by on 12/14/2005 at 01:31 AMPiers Anthony’s another, and I’m starting to wonder if John Ringo, excellent as he is, is another.
Posted by Dave on 12/14/2005 at 02:14 PM
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