By Jason Diamond
But my favorite part of Kate Roiphe’s essay, “The Naked and the Conflicted“, in the New York Times Sunday Book review has to be:
“writers like Jonathan Safran Foer who avoid the corruptions of adult sexuality by choosing children and virgins as their protagonists.”
What I gained from this essay is more evidence that Philip Roth is an old guy who can’t deal with his inability to hump women that he probably treats like shit, Norman Mailer had serious inadequacy issues, Michael Chabon is a shy guy, and Jonathan Safran Foer is a pussy, but putting Benjamin Kunkel at the “cuddling” end of this chart seems silly, I think the guy should be in the middle as a “pragmatic lovemaker“.
No comments
My novel, American Moses has sex in it. Almost all urban literary fiction has sex in it it. Sex is one of the better parts of life.
For the new year, I’m taking off the literary gloves. Truth is most contemporary literary fiction signed by major publishers lacks balls, particularly male writers. At least in chick lit there’s plenty of sex. Chick lit, though, lacks social commentary for the vast majority of Americans that are struggling to pay their bills and keep their jobs. Where is the social outrage? Where are the working class heros? Where is the act of sex as passion, love and carnal desire? In the global world and emerging markets people fuck like rabbits and God bless ’em!
I just want to say thanks for bringing my attention to this. The chart is hilarious.
After reading the article, I’m glad most male novelists do not reside inside a feminist utopia. Also, the sex in Foer’s novels is pretty easily dismissed here, not that the scenes are substantial and overwhelming, but they do have a mystical quality and are not entirely absent due to adolescent protagonists. After all, there the doing it through a hole in a wall scene in _Everything is Illuminated_, and there is the doggy style scene from _Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close_ that reads as if Henry Adams decided to write poetry.