Gratuitous overuse of the frog analogy
May. 5th, 2005 08:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
geovikiA recent book review in our newspaper read:
Wallace Stegner writes ... that the difficulty with explicit sex in novels is that it invariably usurps all else that the author is attempting to accomplish:
"The trouble with excessive sexuality, in novels or in life, is that it is so compellingly interesting and attention-holding that it makes everything else seem tame or dull; it crowds off the page whole areas of human experience and human feeling that belong there but can't maintain their foothold."
Such is the case in Sue Miller's newest novel, Lost in the Forest. Although Miller's exploration of grief and self-discovery is both compelling and insightful, the sexual trysts of 16-year-old Daisy are so unforgivingly explicit that Miller's attempts to uncover the depth of who Daisy is are muddled by a nipple here and an arched back there....
I thought this over and decided that somewhere, I had crossed over to where this wasn't true for me. I've noticed that after reading fan fiction for nearly two years, I no longer find excessive sexuality all that distracting. It's like the classic analogy of the frog in slowly heating water: little by little, I no longer notice the erosion of my ability to be shocked, tittilated, or even surprised by graphic writing. I have become comfortably numb.
How about you?
Aside: Does anyone have an mp3 of Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven that I can, er, borrow? Got it. Thanks, Paula!
Wallace Stegner writes ... that the difficulty with explicit sex in novels is that it invariably usurps all else that the author is attempting to accomplish:
"The trouble with excessive sexuality, in novels or in life, is that it is so compellingly interesting and attention-holding that it makes everything else seem tame or dull; it crowds off the page whole areas of human experience and human feeling that belong there but can't maintain their foothold."
Such is the case in Sue Miller's newest novel, Lost in the Forest. Although Miller's exploration of grief and self-discovery is both compelling and insightful, the sexual trysts of 16-year-old Daisy are so unforgivingly explicit that Miller's attempts to uncover the depth of who Daisy is are muddled by a nipple here and an arched back there....
I thought this over and decided that somewhere, I had crossed over to where this wasn't true for me. I've noticed that after reading fan fiction for nearly two years, I no longer find excessive sexuality all that distracting. It's like the classic analogy of the frog in slowly heating water: little by little, I no longer notice the erosion of my ability to be shocked, tittilated, or even surprised by graphic writing. I have become comfortably numb.
How about you?
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no subject
Date: 2005-05-06 03:51 am (UTC)i've had a similar experience to
i'm not saying that each story/book needs to have explicit sex in it, just that if the author makes sex an important component of the relationship between the characters, i'd like to know what's going on there. and in more than three sentences.
completely unrelated to this, i saw that you said in another comment that the sequel to a thousand beautiful things will be posted next week! *twirls* i just rearead that story, and found it to be just as enthralling and marvelous as the first time i read it last summmer. i'm so excited for the sequel :)
no subject
Date: 2005-05-07 09:23 pm (UTC)That's been the most surprising thing I've learned from people posting to this thread. I don't read a lot of published fiction, so I had no idea.