| Author | Message | ||
     Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 06-2008 Posted From: 86.156.32.207 |
Does anyone here put sex into their fiction for sex's sake rather than as a natural part of the story? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.3.65.135 |
Do we fuck. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.18.70 |
No, although given that the Scared Stiff tales - that is, the ones in the original edition - were about sex, there's more in there than in most of my stuff. That said, they're a bit formulaic in a vanilla way - not sufficiently honestly perverse. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.235.60 |
Ramsey, your self-criticism suggests that there's a book of still more audacious erotic horror fiction in you waiting to be written. I'll spare you the jokes about possible titles if you promise to write the book. I do put sex into some of my fiction for its own sake – that is to say I sometimes consider it primary subject matter. That doesn't mean I'm writing porn (except when I am, which is rarely), but that I want to write about sex as seriously as I want to write about, say, music or ghosts. It's still 'a natural part of the story', yes – but the major part. I like serious erotic writing, and take it seriously – Genet being a favourite example. What annoys me is novelists dropping in an irrelevant fuck scene when the story is flagging in order to appease an unmotivated readership. Peter Brenchley's JAWS (no masterpiece in any case) is an obvious example, and I learned recently (perhaps here) that he added the sex scene at the insistence of his publisher. James Herbert depends heavily on this approach in his early work – his target readership being adolescent boys who can't buy obvious erotic fiction because their parents would take it away, but can get away with horror paperbacks. As long as they don't stain the pages. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.237.56 |
Some purely descriptive sentences in Ramsey's work are charged with eroticism - things like "The bar was full of [...] tall thin girls like spring onions in tiny skirts." Positively Nabokovian in its delightfulness, and much more to the point than anything I've read in SCARED STIFF. "We talked until four nurses in a Mini skidded up to us [...]" Magnificent. | ||
| Gcw (Gcw) Username: Gcw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.170.200.175 |
Ramsey's stories drip with sex even if there isn't even a 'sex scene' in them. Repression..self disgust..self denial..homophobia... All the REAL stuff, the shop girls tormenting Hugh in Frugo (in Thieving Fear). One of the sweetest was the charming light bondage scene in 'Nazareth Hill'...Real stuff I thought.Shared. The 'Golem' in Secret Stories. Sex is such a part of everday life, I mean it's what everything revolves around really...So I see sex all over Ramsey's stories. It's just that usually the characters aren't getting any! gcw  | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.234.223 |
'The Second Staircase' is an early example that astonished me as a teenage reader. The presence within the story of layered realities mirrored the presence within Carol of layered impulses or personalities. It's an exceptional portrait of sexual ambivalence. I think Ramsey writes about sexuality rather than sex. When sex happens in one of his stories it's rarely a big event: it's overshadowed by more important things, as in 'Missing'. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.74.96.200 |
In his later novel '48 James Herbert uses a sex scene and makes it crucial to the plot, which is so rarely done in horror bestsellers. (And I know Joel was refering to his early books; I'm not arguing.) | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.248.124 |
Any of you seen the film BOOGIE NIGHTS? Mark Wahlberg is adequate as a porn stud (loosely based on John Holmes), but the film is dominated by Burt Reynolds' portrait of a porn film-maker seething with misplaced intelligence and hopeless ambition. "I want to make a film where even after the audience have come off, they stay to find out what happens because the plot is so interesting." Wonderful. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.22.237.56 |
Yep, seen it. The drug deal gone bad scene is unforgettable, hilarious and scary at the same time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVaX7hPacIU&feature=related | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.242.126 |
Very good film. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.78.7.101 |
No - only if it is relevant. Certainly not for its sake alone. Funnily enough I'm on a panel on this subject later in the year. Details to be anounced. | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.121.214.11 |
Check out "The book of revelation" by Rupert Thompson for a great novel about sex. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Book-Revelation-Rupert-Thomson/dp/0747545693/ref=sr_1_1? ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220879439&sr=1-1 You won't regret it |