The Remote Island by Bryan Christian Today on Nerve's TV blog: Dance, Hipster, Dance! Plus: our latest NewsCrush — and why one army brat is breaking up with Army Wives.
SPECIAL ISSUES
posted 12/17/2007
Why are the writers of my generation such pussies when it comes to sex? I can’t figure it out. But somewhere along the line, the Committee for the Preservation of Literary Respectability got together and decided that any mention of the rude bits would constitute grounds for dismissal. Lonely days indeed for us descendents of Philip Roth and John Updike.
How sad.
Americans prefer their pornography in the form of violence these days, anyway. Gunfights. Clever decapitations. Whatever Tarantino and his people can dream up. And if you want to get N-A-S-T-Y, well, you better be peddling lite beer. The notion that sexual desire might be a valuable means of exploring the human adventure — man, that is so Freud.
Fine. Call me a Freudian. I’ve been called worse by my own mother. But I still long for the kind of story where the right people get naked and the author has the courage not to cut away from all that ecstatic fox-trotting, where the endless varieties of human depravity are dignified, rather than debased. That’s what you’ll be getting this month, along with answers to certain pressing-if-not-quite-universal concerns. Such as: what happens when Wonder Woman unleashes her libido on an innocent gay man living in suburban Pennsylvania? Can one restore virginity without medical intervention? And, of course, the biggie: is it possible to fall in love with the cock, absent the man? (God, let’s hope so.)
As guest editor, I’ve endeavored to keep the smut quotient high. Bon appetit. — Steve Almond
FICTION
Couplingsby Robert Olen Butler
In bed with Princess Di, Josephine Baker and Anne Boleyn.
C*ck in a Box by Mary Kann
"It arrived on Wednesday. The package had no return address."
