http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Wed, 4 Aug 2004 21:44:20 EDT http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/08/04/214420.php Todd Glasscock When we read, we have to submit to the book, we have to suspend our preconceived notions. We have to learn how the book wants to be read. That's something I discovered in my experience of a first reading of James Salter's A Sport and a Pastime. For a long time I've wanted to write or read a great book about Eros, about the erotic life. Not porn, but something that expresses a great understanding of how the erotic affects us. Who were the masters of this kind of book? Obviously the usual suspects line the wall. D. H. Lawrence. Henry Miller. I loved Miller especially. Tropic of Cancer evokes not just the erotic, but an exuberant stance toward life I would be hard-pressed to find in an American novelist until I discovered Jim Harrison. Sex and life in Miller or Harrison are pursued lustily, with great fun, but the deep meaning of a love affair doesn't seem touched. Then, last fall as I read through the 50th anniversary issue of The Paris Review, I ran across this fragment in a piece by Reynolds Price: "James Salter's shattering masterpiece A Sport and a Pastime ... contains the most brilliant descriptions of sexual union ...."I read on. I read the excerpts from the novel that Price includes in the piece (it's a short story describing the seduction in a painting by Katherine Doyle.) From a first reading of the excerpts the language of porn seems to stand out: "He slips his prick between her legs from behind and she gives it a little hug. She reaches behind her to stroke his balls with her fingertips." This doesn't seem to be a "brilliant description of sexual union." Has Price, an interesting writer and good critic, fallen short, here?That's the question I want to find out. Is Salter's 1967 novel--a hard-to-find book--really an erotic masterpiece? What makes me even more curious to find out is that in an interview Salter has mentioned Hemingway and Miller as influences.I begin to read: The Hemingway is clear: Short, terse sentences: "September. It seems these luminous days will never end. The city, which was almost empty during August, now is filling up again." The Miller seems less clear, because the tone of the novel seems flat, and hardly exuberant. The narrator comes off as world weary, existential. There are, of course, the explicit sexual descriptions.But, I'm reading, expecting more. When the first person narrator encounters his friend Phillip Dean, a 24-year-old Yale dropout, and Dean discovers his lover Anne-Marie, the narrative slips between first and third; it's voyeuristic. We know everything Dean and Anne-Marie do in bed. Except, that it seems we only know what Dean feels. Time after time we get descriptions of what Dean's orgasm feels like: "...he rises a little and defines the moist rim of her cunt with his finger, and as he does, he comes like a bull." Anne-Marie seems an insignificance. She seems merely a "cunt." There's that word. The one that made feminists such as Kate Millet rail against Miller. Woman reduced to body part.Then I realize, I'm not reading the book. I'm reading my version of the book. The critic in me is feminist, then disliking such an outdated sexist book. What I want to know is: What does the woman feel, not just sexually, physically, but what's it like for her to be in love? It's a question I've wanted to know for a long time. I've even asked it. And now I'm trying read that into Salter's book.Something happens though, as I read. There's not a certain passage, but I find myself submitting to the book. I come to know Dean and Anne-Marie as if somehow, I'm part of the love affair, the feast of love. That's what Salter wants. For the reader to become part of the book, a part of their lives, because Eros is a part of ours. The book is an erotic masterpiece because it touches on the question that always remains of erotic experiece: What do we really want from it?Is it what Anne-Marie ends up with after Dean dies: the marriage, the children, the walks "together on Sundays, the sunlight falling upon them"? She ends up "deep in the life we all agree is so greatly to be desired."Which of course is ironic. We can end up too "deep in the life we all agree is so greatly to be desired," and lose eros, lose the erotic part of ourselves to commonalities, trivialities, to life full and exuberant. Books18287@blogcritics.org Wed, 4 Aug 2004 21:44:20 EDT