I’ll see your Auel and raise you Piers Anthony.
Judith Krantz (I think she’s retired) has some pretty sexy sex scenes in her beach novels (Scruples, Princess Daisy, etc.)
Definately not Harry Turtledove! :eek:
Brett Easton Ellis.
A friend of mine got me a copy of The Rules of Attraction. All apologies to said friend, but the only parts of that I found particularly enjoyable were the sex scenes.
Is it just me or has he stopped with the sex scenes? Now he just says they had sex, but he used to describe everything.
Think an editor finally hit him over the head?
Applause! Some of ]b\Skulldigger**'s and my favorite scenes are listed above.
Xaviera Hollander had a nice even hand in writing about sex.
You have to read it to understand. It truly is the most sexual book I’ve ever read, and the most sexually-intense; if I were a homosexual, I would be extremely turned-on by it. Since I am not, I’m merely fascinated by it. The outlandish level of detail…the sheer depths of human depravity and perversion that Delany plunges into, with an unmatched courage and honesty, breaking the strongest taboos of our society make it a work unparalleled in its transgressive nature.
Another vote for Crusie.
Diana Gabaldon? All the man on man rape scenes sort of cancelled out the sexy for me.
I’d be happy to contribute to that fund.
HOGG! HOGG! HOGG!
You can make it stop! Paypal account info available by PM.
I was going to ask if it was with extinct species of animals…but I’m not sure if that’d make it better* or worse. :eek:
*Read: “Less-awful.”
100 dollars and I swear to God I’ll never say another word about Hogg. I have a paypal account. If it really bothers people so much, I’m willing to stop mentioning it if they’re willing to pay me.
I happen to think it’s a work of transgressive genius and, hell, if there’s any thread that would actually merit bringing it up, it’s this one - but hey, 100 dollars buys me a lot of beer.
Here’s a nickle for the cause.
No offense, AT. It’s just that most of us would rather not hear about cacophilliac rapists all the time.
Except it’s not at all what I was looking for since it sounds exactly like “dragging it down so it’s all obsession and abuse and general unpleasantness with a side order of desperation if you’re lucky” and “a glamorous or sleazy fantasy.”
That’s that book? I remember disliking Outlander, but couldn’t remember why.
I think that’s why I like Roth’s writing so much. It’s not graphic. It’s the emotional, innermost contemplation of sex. I cannot recall a single graphic description in his writing. It’s by no means a “how to” manual.
I’ll have to check out Roth some time. He’s one of those authors I’ve been saying that about for years.
But with Gabaldon (sp?) even the man on man rape scenes, while stomach-turning, had a twisted kind of tenderness to them. It was an emotional and mental rape much more than physical.
This should be titled “What authors handle sex well, by my standards?” There’s not really an objective definition of handling sex “well.” Some people like sex to be hard and dirty, not “emotional, innermost contemplation.” There are a lot of ways to describe sex in a novel and make it work, on different levels, and they all require skill. A lot of people mocked Tom Wolfe for his novel I Am Charlotte Simmons, which presented sex in really over-the-top clinical language, even using the medical names for different bones and muscles in the body and stuff like that; some of them didn’t realize that it was supposed to be a joke because the main character of the book is a science student who views college students as horny animals, like a biologist would. From that standpoint, that book handles sex really well - but from one specific kind of perspective.
Hogg handles sex well from the perspective of someone who will do anything. Likewise so does Crash, by J.G. Ballard, another transgressive novel. The average person would simply find it bizarre. But if there were someone out there who actually did get turned on by car crashes, and by cars in general, and not only cars but all of the surrounding landscape that’s built around them - roads, exit ramps, parking garages, junkyards, all of which combine to create an atmosphere of sexual excitement in the mind of the book’s protagonist - they would find Crash to be an extreme turn-on.