Sex in books

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Goodkind sets up the worst sort of straw men arguments in his books and then gleefully knocks them down in the name of "Freedom". I tend to agree with him in some general terms (I think, for instance, that people who are not willing to defend themselves and wait for others to do it do not deserve the same respect as people willing to defend themselves) but he is just repulsive, particularly in terms of sex.

That link you posted, AMaster, was truly hilarious.

 

You want sex in books? Read Laurell K. Hamilton.

She seems to have themes bassed entirly around sex (which after so many books is geting old)

 

Anne Rice has way too much sex in her books, that's why I stopped reading her stuff. Most of it is man on man action as well

Although Interview with a Vampire wasn't bad..

 

I'm reading this quite lame book at the moment that has far too much gratuitous sex in it. I am entirely tired with 'full breasts' and 'thrusting'.

 

What, you can't tell us which book it is?

 

I know I get tired of all that stuff myself...

To be more serious, I don't think that fantasy books need to be anything like those silly "romance" novels. Yet, it appears that sex in genre fiction is not very easy to render in a convincing way, at least for a lot of writers. A lot of "literature" is briming with sex, but no one really gives it a second thought, even when it's woven into a story as a minor, yet important secondary theme, such as in The Odyssey or Goethe's Faust or Chaucer's Canterbury Tales; and not to mention, Boccaccio's Decameron, or even Nabokov's Lolita, where sexual desire is an even greater part of the over-arching theme.

Of course, most literature with sex is largely an exploration of navagating the social politics of sex and what sex says about a particular culture in a larger way (Lolita). And, hardly anyone can object to sexual content if it is rendered with humor - as a way of laughing at a culture's set of particular sexual "hang-ups" and not taking the treatment of sex as an "overly serious" subject.

In other words, a writer can't take himself too seriously in his treatment of the subject of sex, without the scutiny of perhaps "projecting" too much into the mix. Again, in Lolita, there have been numerous attempts to draw similarities between Humbert (the main character) and the author, most of which have been failures, I should point out.

[ August 17, 2007, 08:51: Message edited by: Chandos the Red ]

 

The book was The Last View of Eden by Ralph Hayes - utterly not worth reading. Was especially disappointing because the blurb and title promise an apocalyptic story, which is certainly wasn't.

I'm thinking the problem with the sex here was the wording - lots of cliche and over-the-top descriptions. That these were far more prevalent in the sex scenes than the rest of the book would suggest that the author has some kind of imaginative failure when it comes to sex (but he sure does like writing it...).

Plus describing the same damn thing again and again in each sex scene. Enough about the urgent thrusting already!

 

I don't know, I find them quite interesting