Publisher: Two Dollar Radio, Price: $14 (U.S.) paperback, ISBN: 0976389576, Page count: 160 pp., Released Aug. 200

I am fascinated by the secondary materials that accrue around a published book like so much light-scattering dust around a black hole. In a sense, it is this excess material that makes a text visible to the consumer audience. To the observer, a text itself is a closed system, a world secreted between two covers which only signifies itself, at first, through its marketing materials. As a book reviewer, I never simply receive a text, for the plain fact is that I am a hard sell. I’ve got tons to read, little time to do it in, and my reading is never simply about the indulgences of fiction. My reading creates its own secondary cloud of disjecta: reviews. Therefore, a publishing company has got to give me a little more than simple back-cover blurbs. No, if they want to make my words become another mass of molecules revolving around this phenom of a published text, they’ve got to market to me. So I don’t just get a book; I get a book complete with a press release.

As one might imagine, the relationship between a text and its marketing materials is a tense one, fraught with discrepancy and inequity. In the case of Francis Levy’s Erotomania: A Romance, this relationship had done much to inform my reading of the text itself. What originally drew me to the book was the following passage, penned by Levy himself, from the press release:

“My main characters basically are not people at the start of the book. I start with a couple who scent each other out without the delight or restrictions of consciousness and end with a pair of humans who deal with relationship problems. Using writer’s license, I have created animals that turn into people.”

The enticements of the passage were many for this reader. First of all, I was fascinated by the idea of characters that begin as beasts. How would an author attempt to convey the consciousness of an animal? I expected some pretty wildly experimental linguistic pyrotechnics here, for certainly an animal would not think in sentences, right? To back up such a bold claim there’d have to be more than story elements. This kind of project would necessitate a whole new approach to language, I thought, something akin to Burroughs’ cut-ups or the Oulipo S+7 technique. The fact that Levy went on in the marketing material to claim a certain kinship with the work of Dali and Bruñuel [sic] only reinforced this expectation.

And it was this expectation that led to the first of my disappointments with this piece. There is no way in which this is anything like an experimental novel. Its discourse is, throughout, that of any bourgeois realist text, centered on a typical male subjectivity that seems to lead a life of relative leisure. And he seems anything but bestial in the novel’s opening passages. Despite passages of consciousness obliterating sex with the novel’s ingénue, James does a great deal of thinking about the relationship – in addition to meditating on Levi-Strauss’ The Raw and the Cooked, Foucault, film and gourmet food (not to mention inviting a homeless man to crash in his apartment). These all seem like very human occupations to this reader, and while it might be argued that these meditations spring from the protagonist’s already burgeoning humanity, I’d have to ask when, exactly, it was that James was a “mere” beast.

Which leads me to the second of my annoyances with this text: the fact that it revolves around a stereotypical and sex-negative dualism in which sexuality is “bestial” and “relationships” are “human.” Despite James’ recurrent meditations on the transcendent meditative potential of his sexual experiences with Monica, the novel’s overall depiction of sexuality is powerfully negative. Granted, the two are supposedly indulging in an overly obsessive sexuality, but as the only sexually active characters in the novel (excepting a gay chef whose own sexual relationships seem equally obsessive and maladjusted), the portrayal of their carnality as actually physically destructive is somewhat disturbing. (In one admittedly memorable moment, the couple demolishes their apartment building during one typically incendiary fuck session.) In and of itself this sex-catalyzed downward spiral wouldn’t have bothered me too much – indeed, I often think that it is one of the great flaws of literary criticism that it tends to extrapolate singular narrative situations into allegorical representations of authorial opinion – but when combined with the novel’s marketing materials, the Manichaeism of the novel becomes glaringly obvious.

In the marketing, we are essentially told that this is a story of two people learning to truly love each other: “James, the narrator, discovers what it means to commit to, and love a partner. Not too shabby a message.” Considering that the two protagonists eventually undergo psychic and physical changes so drastic as to make their relationship entirely asexual, it seems that Levy is trying to tell us, in the grandest of religious conservative traditions, that sex is bad and love is good – that the two are, in essence, incompatible. That love is, definitively, that emotion felt toward a one-time sexual object when all attraction has been sublimated, or simply eroded by time. All too often in our culture it seems that the idealized love is that shared by individuals who have been rendered by time and/or circumstance completely asexual, and it is this novel’s apparent confirmation of that claim that makes it so disappointing.

Despite the above, I do have one shining hope for this novel: that it truly was Levy’s intention to debunk that claim – that he is consciously attempting to undermine this demonization of sexuality. After all, in the novel’s closing pages, Levy describes James’ and Monica’s new habits – exercise and eating, respectively – in the same negative terms that he described their sexuality. Both individuals’ habits are called “compulsive” and “obsessive,” and are both metaphysically and actually alienating. These descriptors seem enough to indicate that Levy is saying – consciously or not – that the couple’s newfound, supposedly transcendently loving, relationship is indeed as dysfunctional and wrong as their sex life was; that, for whatever reason, these individuals are doomed to a codependent relationship regardless of the nature of its foundation. The fact that both characters were subject to incestuous molestation as children might be an explanation for this woeful fate, but it’s hard to say since Levy spends so little time on either character’s past – indeed, their histories of incest are only alluded to in passing.

But each time I return to the marketing materials, I am forced to contemplate one of two depressing realities. In one, the marketing is a faithful reflection of the book, and Levy really is trotting out another trite cliché about the evils of sex. And in the second, equally depressing reality, Levy is attempting to deny said cliché, but the novel’s marketing scheme lacks the courage of its source’s convictions, and would prefer instead to wrap a revolutionary theme in a nice, pretty, culturally-conformist package for ease of mass consumption. This book comes in a sugar-coated package, but that doesn’t make it any easier to swallow.

Perhaps the ideal work of any “best of” anthology is twofold. On one hand, it can point neophyte readers in new and important directions, acting as a map to a new literary world. On the other, it can serve as a gallery of all the finest works a genre has to offer. In her collection for 2007, Susie Bright, the grand dame of American literary erotica, has attempted to fulfill both functions, and may have minimized the impact of her anthology in the process.

Don’t get me wrong; there are some absolutely fine pieces to be found here, and together they make the collection a fine buy. Vanessa Baggott’s delightfully blasphemous revision of the Christian genesis myth, Dennis Cooper’s thoroughly postmodern formal experiment, Peggy Munson’s gender-bending and fiercely poetic meditation on Freud and Laureleigh Farrell’s darkly intense fetish-fantasy cover the price of admission alone–and ensure that the “literary” half of the “literary erotica” equation is not forgotten. But with the exception of Cooper’s piece, these are all short stories–and there is another side to Bright’s anthology.

Nearly one-quarter of the book is composed of excerpts from erotic novels, and it is in these selections that the anthology disappoints. While each excerpt points new readers to authors who certainly deserve the fond attentions of erotica aficionados, the excisions themselves fail to encapsulate the condensed energy that makes the short story such a vital and important form, making them some of the weakest examples to be found in the book. I understand that these excerpts may have been the only means by which these fine authors (Cooper, Octavia Butler and Kathryn Harrison among them) could be included, but it is my feeling that these writers—and their works—might have been better served by mention in Bright’s preface to the collection.

On the other hand, I was pleased to note that another quarter of the selections are culled from various internet sites, reflecting the increasing importance of this literary source.

Overall, I’d say that the anthology lives up to its back-cover claim to satisfy “every sexual appetite,” but that those seeking gay or lesbian erotica should look to the “best of” collections tailored to suit those orientations rather than this largely hetero buffet. Also, to those more sensitive readers: don’t let Bright’s stress on what she calls the “Lolita gap”–i.e., a significant age difference between lovers–in these stories deter you from picking up a copy! Only a few of the selections really cross boundaries in this direction, and these, of course, are easily skipped. Plus, they’ll give you something to complain about in your blog.

photo by Kate Romero

Probably the best thing about this book by Clint Catalyst is its title: Cottonmouth Kisses. Wonderfully multivalent and punning, it manages to perfectly convey the mix of drugged-up, misplaced passion and tenderly venomous (auto)eroticism that dominates the text. Though billed as fiction on its back cover, the book is a hybrid of short stories and poetry, an amalgam that recapitulates one of the more interesting questions that a close reading of the text evokes: is this fiction or non-fiction?

This question is immediately brought to the forefront in the first—and, to me—most interesting tale, a quick and brutal dip into goth-punk nightlife that ends in an interesting (though somewhat sophomoric) frisson of self-examination. The tale’s supra-natural premise and intensely hot central encounter had me hooked right up ‘til the end, which is when I realized what the little note on the book’s back cover probably should have read: confessional.

Now, this is no “forgive me, Father, for I have sinned” autobiography, nor is it a bleakly poetic paean to the darker side of the psyche à la Plath and Bishop. (Catalyst’s poetry will never be so fondly remembered.) Rather, it seems like a kind of log of self-transformation more or less thinly veiled in the guise of fiction. Catalyst has written what he knows, and I’m glad he’s learned a thing or two about his life. In fact, had I read this book at 19, I might have found it infinitely more interesting than I do now. Overall his view of his past comes across as something of a morality tale, one that might have been more honestly marketed as an autobiography.

Though the prose does constitute the stronger half of the book, it’s also the part where this self-judgment comes across most strongly. The disappointment of the book’s opening tale, “Some New Kind of Kick,” lies, for me, in the fact that instead of reveling in the story’s central encounter, the protagonist (i.e. Clint Catalyst) ends up viewing it in an admittedly fascinating dynamic of self-voyeurism, through disgusted eyes. This revulsion gradually became emblematic of a strain of conservatism woven throughout the book that I found surprising coming from such a subcultural icon.

I had an especially difficult time with the poetry. Though occasionally shining forth some venomously visceral lines (“then spat out a laugh and a / dark yellow lung creature that / clung to her lips as she spattered / stared stuttered stammered”), it reads for the most part like broken-backed prose. In other words, the great majority of the pieces remind me of the tired old argument of opponents of free verse that without meter and rhyme, poetry becomes little more than prose hacked into little pieces. Catalyst’s poetics would seem to be one place where these arguments are, regrettably, correct.

However, I must admit that the book has inspired a certain amount of self-analysis, and that, I suppose, is one of the finest things a text can aspire to.

In the end, I would say that if you have a history in goth subculture, drug use and/or queerdom (guilty on all counts) you might find this a fascinating and worthwhile read. Otherwise, you might prefer to skip it.

This latter point seems radically important, suggesting that contemporary culture has developed an image of male sexual performance which men are simply not capable of matching, yet Monzini does not address this issue. For her, prostitution is all about the market and economy, whether that economy be one of actual capital or of dominance. It is a natural enough approach, for one obvious reason, but more are involved, including the fact that a majority of prostitute’s customers are of elevated economic status and education, are generally married and of considerably greater age than the prostitute. Monzini reads this reality as reflecting an economy of dominance in which the male subject reduces the female prostitute to the level of object via an assertion of his economic superiority. Certainly there’s something correct about that, but it also reminds one inevitably of the conservative feminist reading of pornography. For years many feminists have argued that pornography contributes to the objectification of women, making them nothing more than objects of the voyeuristic male gaze. The male is seen as occupying a position of power in the relationship between woman-as-image and himself; in his clothed state he reaffirms his superiority over the vulnerable and exposed woman. What this reading often leaves out is, ironically, both the model’s subjectivity and the mechanisms (psychological, cultural and biological) that drive men to want to experience porn.

For me, both Monzini’s reading of prostitution and the conservative feminist reading of pornography reflect a pervasive academic squeamishness about acknowledging the biological factors at play in any economy of desire. Obviously we cannot afford to deny the import of other elements, but it would seem to me that a denial of the purely physical/sensual elements at play in such economies only contributes to our misunderstanding of their function.

On the other hand, I recognize that there is an undercurrent of defensiveness to the argument, even as strongly as I am convinced of the truth of that last statement, and it is perhaps the great strength of this book that despite its academic tone and constant citations, it is a truly challenging work. Given its subject matter, this isn’t a huge surprise. Many of us tend to think of our world as liberated, as beyond the brutal economies of sex slavery, and this book is—to employ an overused phrase—an eye-opener. But it is especially challenging for a male reader. I can’t help but feel implicated in the world that this book brings to light, though I have not, myself, ever paid for sexual services. No book on male patriarchy, Western European imperialism or white racism has, for me, remotely approached the sense of guilt and involvement that this book evokes, for here there is no comforting distance as there is the aforementioned texts.

I can claim to be a sensitive, feminist, politically liberal, non-racist male, but I cannot say that I have not thought, from time to time, about hiring a prostitute. There’s something about the ease and the formal legality of such an exchange that manages to simultaneously satisfy physical urges and deny the need for an emotional intimacy to match the physical closeness. And, yes, there is a trace of emotional retardation in the ideas that make prostitution attractive to men. This book is a revelation for any reader, but as a male, it is particularly challenging, and for that reason, I strongly recommend that any man who thinks of himself as sensitive, feminist, politically liberal and/or non-racist read this book. Readers should, however, keep in mind that this is an academic text and not a piece of popular scholarship, and may thus seem a bit dry or repetitive at times.

* Though Monzini recognizes the increasing willingness of women to pay for sex, men as consumers are still seen as the major demons of the trade.

Ever since reading his canonical work, The Story of the Eye, I’ve been practically obsessed with Bataille’s nearly neurotic admixture of eros and thanatos – and while I have yet to complete his collected works, this new book’s subtitle, “Lost Writings by Georges Bataille,” immediately had me sold.

Unfortunately, as editor/translator Mark Spitzer’s lengthy introduction relates, the works anthologized in Divine Filth are something less than “lost works.” There’s no exciting history of Indiana Jones-meets-A.S. Byatt literary-archeological skullduggery behind this collection, but rather a somewhat unromantic (though admirably diligent) bringing to light of fragments, notes and sketches.

The book consists of two shattered short stories as full of holes as a moth-eaten sweater (which are nonetheless quite lovely in their allusive suggestions of what they might have become), and slightly over 100 pages of what Spitzer calls “Fragments/Poetry.” The latter are a smattering of what could either be read as minimalistic koans, deeply surreal shards of thought or tossed-off scribblings in the margins of notebooks. Some of these marginalia did, eventually, coalesce into a long poem called “The Archangelical” (included in The Collected Poems of Georges Bataille, also edited by Spitzer), and the final section of the book is devoted to a gathering of these tatters of a poem yet to be. Sheerly for its glimpse of a brilliant artist at work, this section is perhaps the most interesting.

Now, all of the proceeding might suggest that I was not, overall, a fan of this book. Nothing could be further from the truth. But I’m absolutely conscious of the fact that the pleasure I derived from this text is probably only due to my intense interest in Bataille, and I would suggest that anyone interested in discovering one of the true greats of erotic literature seek out instead either The Story of the Eye or his book on taboo, which has been published as either Eroticism (Vintage) or Erotism (Grove).