OK…this has gotta be phoney.
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1497601.html
Still, Swift was a cynical rascal…
I had to click on your link to understand this. I couldn’t figure out what the hell “pron” was.
Not true. Swift occasionally used scatology, but if you’ve read Gulliver’s Travels you know how he worked to turn it into a non-sexual fantasy. He describes a Brobdingnagian breast as grotesque, covered with moles, irregularities, and uneven color. Even when he sees the young ladies of the court naked he goes out of his way to make them seem unappealing.
This hasn’t stopped people since from turning out Gulliver “fan fic” in which things are sexualized. Heck, National Lampoon did it in their “Obligatory sex Scenes” piece many years ago. There are entire websites devoted to Giant/Giantess and Shtrunken people stories. But Swift himself didn’t lean that way, from all indications.
Bosda, I’ve taken the liberty of editing your thread title from “pron” to “porn” which I think was your intent. If you meant “pron,” then email me and I’ll edit it back. (I knew I couldn’t type that with a straight face.)
We’ve had people re-write about everything to add sex, from Huckleberry Finn* to Tolkien… so I’m not surprised to find Swift given the treatment. Coming soon: various biblical stories retold to add more sex. David and Goliath ahd more between them than slings and stones.
Yeah, sounds like a bunch of hooey to me. I read Gulliver’s Travels in one of my grad school classes with a Swift scholar as prof. She made it out to sound like he was mostly afraid/angered by women and sex and all that. The only thing that can really be said is that he seemed to really like poop.
And, um, maybe I was reading too much into it, but I seem to remember the Brobdingnaggian women use Gulliver as a sex toy in the copy I read. I think the words “human dildo” were bandied about the classroom…
Not if you were reading the real thing. One of the maids in Brobdingnag placed Gulliver astride her nipple, I believe, and he almost passes out from the intense perfume she’s wearing. If they’d tried anything more aggressive, he’d have died, I think. And Gulliver keeps telling you how abysmal he found this.
I think he may have been aiming for “pr0n,” which is a l33t ha><or (translation: leet haxor. Translation: elite hacker) term for “porn.” cec3l sp33ks.
As I recall, there is a scene in Lilliput where Gulliver serves as a Colossus for a Lilliputian parade and they march between his outspread legs. Since Gulliver’s breeches are much the worse for wear by this time, this leads to some astonished gasps and a great deal of giggling by the Lilluputian ladies who look up as they pass below, but that’s about as far as it goes.
Swift doesn’t come right out and say it, but it’s definitely implied. I can’t find my copy right now, otherwise I’d quote it for you … and of course I was reading the real thing. And I never said Gulliver liked it.
I agree it seems unlikely.
But, we are talking about the author of “A Modest Proposal.” It’s not completely impossible. I, personally, don’t much care one way or the other. Considering the number of so-called legitimate books that have similar ancestries, it wouldn’t be really surprising.
(The famous story I am thinking of is where some soft porn publisher contracted with four of the top SF authors of the day to write some interesting erotica. The publisher eventually folded, but all four books were eventually published in one form or another: Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land; Theodore Sturgeon’s Godbody; and I think (less certain about these two) Arthur C. Clarke’s Songs of a Distant Earth and Issac Asimov’s Robots of Dawn.)
I remember. That scene was pointed out to me by a guy in my high school class. A guy who I had a huge crush on. So getting to talk about penises with him was a rather thrilling moment.
I don’t know. I agree Swift would not write porn. That is, writing that promotes sexual excitement (unless of course it’s being read to you be a hot boy in you’re English class, as above). And if Neonilla Samukhina is marketing it that way and calling it “steamy” then that’s definately bullshit. But I could see Swift considering putting in more explicit sexual material for satirical purposes. I mean…if he finds sex grotesque and the Brobdingnaggians and the Lilliputians grotesque… not too big of a leap. (But less likely to sell books that “Swift Writes Porn!!”)
Nah. There was such a publisher – Essex House – but it was different titles. Stranger, for instance was written for Heinlein’s regular publisher as a “boy’s book”; the publisher decided to publish it as an regular SF novel. Robots of Dawn wasn’t written until years after the publisher went under (Asimov began in in the late 70s/early 80s) and I’m sure Clarke wrote his book after that. I also can’t find any connection between Essex House and Godbody.
Philip Jose Farmer is the best known author to have published with Essex House (Blown, The Image of the Beast and A Feast Unknown). Piers Anthony started Pornocopia for them, but they went out of business before he finished. Other SF authors who published with them include Jane Gallion, Christopher Priest (sold but not published), and Hank Stine.
Writing a story like that as a porn novel would be awfully, well, Yahoo-ish. Swift was certainly no prude, but the sexual content of the book is already stretched as far as it could be.
Heh. For years, I couldn’t help but sing along with the song “Fire:”
“Romeo and Juliet
David and Goliath
Baby you want to bet…”
I originally did it as a joke, but found I would sing my own lyric if I wasn’t thinking.
Also, I was referring to the claymation Lutheran boy and his dog.
I find it a little bit hard to credit that a long-lost Swift manuscript would be published by the author of *Kama Sutra in the Office*.
She is also the inestimable author of The Art of the Experienced or Everything About Oral Caresses, and my personal favourite Stars and Sex – Astrology of Love. Her CV brags that she:
One wonders how Russia managed to grow to a population of 150 million without the benefit of the doctrine of coupling.
Do not miss this survey at the Insititute of Soitology’s webpage. My favourite is question #6:
Joint campaigns in the bath are my favourite. Except for the time when that girl from accounting sunk my bright blue battleship with a sodden loofah. That kind of sucked.
FOr a second there I thought you were talking about Ferienheit[sp] 451. Casue in the edition I had (which was loaned out and never returend you thieving bastard!) Bradbury thanks Hugh Heifner for taking a chance on him and runing his story in serial form in Playboy.
Not sure what that has to do with anything, but I just wanted to bitch about somebody taking my book :mad:
I think you’re wrong here. I’ve read and re-read Gulliver countless times, and I can’t recall this incident – the serving-maids setting him on their naked bodies, the monkey kidnapping hjim and stuffing food in his moutrh, all that I recall, but no Gulliverian sex, liked or unliked. And I think I’d rem,ember something like that, even if it was only implied.
Here we are:
This clearly invites some speculation about what Lemuel is being so discreet about. He says he’s been “used.” He’s coy, twice: Once, when leaves off talking about the particulars of their naked appearances, “to say nothing farther concerning the rest of their persons,” and then immediately begins talking about how the girls had absolutely no shyness about urinary discharge. This invites the reader to think specifically about how Brobdignagian minge must look like to the poor fella. From there he goes directly to revealing that a naked girl placed him on one of her major erogenous zones, and adds that there was much more that is too distressing or improper to relate. What could be more shocking than the immodest behaviour already described? What are the “many other tricks” that Gulliver was used for?
I think that the passage is pretty clearly meant to imply that Gulliver was placed in direct contact with at least one girl’s naughty bits.
Heh heh. “Passage.”