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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Sexiest Books

  
 
This Sunday
05:48 / 18.05.06
Anybody else see this Top 25 list from Playboy?

The hell? These things are never agreeable or sensible, still, I want to see what people think, and there's the sexual meanness I'm wondering about.

They're "experts on the subject" and all, but we've got... (on basis of exhangeable elements) 'Interview with a Vampire' as opposed to 'The Vampire Lestat' or one of those Beauty things... 'Story of O' but no 'Philosophy in the Bedroom'... 'Lolita' but no 'Ada' or 'King, Queen, Knave'... I'm having trouble not being facetious... 'Carrie's Story' and not one of the 'Cornelius Quartet'? No Barker? Dumas? Bronte? Neither James Joyce, nor Raymond Chandler? Anais Nin, Byron, or Christina Rosseti?

If I wasn't avoiding actual work for the moment, I probably wouldn't even post this, but I am, so I am. But it's a weird list, y'know? Like seeing 'Ghostbusters' in the top twenty-five religious films of all time. And some, like 'Lolita' the summary of why the chose it is that it has a reputation for smut it doesn't live up to, and then go on to imply that lovely Lo hasn't got a clue what's going on in the funnies-reading scene with HH. Also referring to that as the (only) sex bit, which isn't entirely true. Surprised to see Ballard's 'Crash' make the list, just because the rest of it seems terribly plain, beside. But if you're going to score higher for the more sex bits of different sorts, surely Sade, Burroughs, or Acker all rank? And if it's on a 'it turns me on' scale... what's the point?

Is there an objective method for this, and is actual sex or sex scenes a requirement to sexy books? I'll fully admit my minor obsession with the maid/boarding-school-girl and her friend getting into trouble investigating mysterious things and then crying, laughing, and holding candles in dark hallways together in their nightgowns... might not be entirely free of a sexual connotation, but there's not a whole lot of actual sex.

It's kind of like trying to convince people to see, say, 'Fake' and the quick answer from a number of people being that they don't want to watch gay (animated) porn. Cue same for 'Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss', 'Kissing Jessica Stein', or 'The Song of the Wind and Trees' (even worse, young child porn! Ahhh!) The battle has pretty much already been lost, because two people of the same sex kissing onscreen makes it porn. Or trying to get people to watch the Sarandon/Bowie 'The Hunger' or Clive Barker's silent version of 'Salome' because those might be a little closer to, and once there's a mental lock, there's this ideology that sex has to equal not-well-done, bad, or otherwise wasting time. Which makes me wonder how these same people feel about actual sex.

(Anybody remember the story a bit ago in the news, where some teacher made his junior high students watch porn as punishment?)

Also notice a prevalence to ROUGH instead of, oh, cute, which is little surprising to me. I mean, most of those books... very few of them are happy, are they? Any theories or statistics on that? I guess I just presumed more people would equal happy with sexy more than rough or vicious. Sade isn't often sexy, to me, for that very reason. I'm too lazy, impatient, and flighty for BDSM. I read something like 'Justine' (and, even the Durrell novel of same title and themes) and I'm either empathising or laughing too much to be aroused. The live production of 'Philosophy in the Bedroom' however, was quite an interesting experience in audience discomfort and ultimately, audience relaxation. I don't know that I'd sit through it again, though.

However, I adore overly flirty things full of flush tentative skin and uncomfortable dialogue.

Much bang/pierce/gouge and very little swoon in that list.

Am I just associating with an abnormally gushy, flirty crowd and the rest of the world's angling on the hard-and-fast... or just Playboy's audience/staff?
 
 
matthew.
13:18 / 18.05.06
I think I agree with almost everything you said, except for mentioning Raymond Chandler. He's not a very sexy writer. Any coupling happens off screen, and Marlowe never does the deed within the books. The only thing sexy about Chandler is the scene in The Big Sleep when Marlowe finds the naked Sternwood daughter and then covers her up because Marlowe is a Victorian prude and so was Chandler.
 
 
matthew.
13:23 / 18.05.06
Also, why isn't Bret Easton Ellis on that list? He's a very sexy writer, especially Glamorama.
 
 
All Acting Regiment
15:18 / 18.05.06
Yes, well, this is Playboy, right? So it wasn't going to be good, at all, was it? Because playboy is about pornography, and pornography is not sex.
 
 
This Sunday
15:31 / 18.05.06
Chandler was part of the 'having a hard time not being facetious' but don't sell him too short. The naked/cover-up scene in 'The Big Sleep' isn't particularly sexy in my opinion, but Chandler almost single-handedly (and how's that for a double meaning?) developed the lipstick lesbian, everyone has fabulous legs and at least two out of three daughters of any given hiring household are likely to display them for you in the same manner most folks just offer a chair and a drink. Maybe it's me, but I find the tentative salaciousness of Chandler intriguing, especially considering his real-life prudery/panic. And, y'know, Marlowe's just all kinda sexy all on his own.
 
 
matthew.
17:41 / 18.05.06
the tentative salaciousness of Chandler

Ah. Well I agree then. Certainly he's an agnostic sort of sex writer: there's always the teasing possibility of events taboo.

But in comparison to the other selections Playboy highlights, I would consider Chandler to be barely PG.
 
 
Kiltartan Cross
19:23 / 18.05.06
Because playboy is about pornography, and pornography is not sex.
Mercenary sex. Sex to order, definitely. Sex without love, almost certainly. But sex all the same, no?

(edit)

To expand a little. Is Je t'aime... moi non plus sex? Recorded, produced, hyped, bought and sold as aural pornography... sorry, probably best for another thread.
 
 
All Acting Regiment
05:18 / 19.05.06
Well, ok, it's not the whole of sex then. It's certainly not the subtle side of sex, is it?

I just see a bit of a gulf between stuff like Playboy and the erotic as it appears in literature. Even in something like Naked Lunch, which you could argue is a pornographic book, there's a sense of self-destruction, ego-destruction- from what I've seen of Playboy it's all about ego maintenance. "Here's a woman in submissive posture, photoshopped and surgically altered for you".
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
07:27 / 19.05.06
Yes, well, this is Playboy, right? So it wasn't going to be good, at all, was it? Because playboy is about pornography, and pornography is not sex.

Pornography isn't the act of sex, but it's the representation of sex in a medium for the purposes of turning people on and getting them off. Playboy pictorials may not be very good pornography, they may in fact be very shit pornography, but I suspect many of my own and other people's choices for "sexiest books" (or extracts from books) would also be accurately classified as pornography. Let's not fall into the trap of calling the stuff we like erotica and the stuff we don't like porn, please? Playboy and [Your Classy Progressive Spank Book Of Choice] here are both porn, much in the same way that Nickleback and The Knife are both music.
 
 
Cat Chant
17:10 / 19.05.06
Apparently Lyotard defined as pornography anything which did not acknowledge its own mode of production (viz., if the only way to find something pleasurable is to close your eyes to the work practices and conceptual frameworks which enabled its production, that's porn). I kind of like that definition, though it sort of gets rid of most of Western literature.
 
 
ibis the being
19:42 / 19.05.06
Daytripper, any way to replicate the list for us? The link didn't work me for and I'd like to see it.

Interesting that you find their choices "dark" - I read Playboy pretty regularly and the fiction they publish every month does tend to be dark, cynical, often pretty bleak even. Not just in the sexual content of the fiction but in its themes & plot lines generally... a lot of loneliness, alienation, violence of sorts, etc. I'm not quite sure how that relates to the sexual aesthetics of the magazine but it does seem to be a consistent literary aesthetic of their fiction editors (whom I would presume created the sexy book list as well).

I have to agree with their pick of Lolita, especially over Ada if you're going to draw that comparison... Ada is a beautiful book, and romantic and even sensual in a certain way, but Lolita has a plasticity, thing-ness, and physicality... the evocations are visceral where I find Ada more poetic (not that the two are mutually exclusive, I should admit). I'm guessing that you (Daytripper) would not disagree with that, but your tastes run to the latter sort of sexuality?
 
 
Daemon est Deus Inversus
23:09 / 19.05.06
Don't forget the donkey scene in Nerciat's "Le Diable au Corps."
 
 
All Acting Regiment
14:58 / 20.05.06
Let's not fall into the trap of calling the stuff we like erotica and the stuff we don't like porn, please? Playboy and [Your Classy Progressive Spank Book Of Choice] here are both porn, much in the same way that Nickleback and The Knife are both music.

You're right. I wasn't denying that Naked Lunch could be interpreted as pornographic, mind (nor any other classy progressive spank book, which of course I have an entire shelf for in my fotress of arrogance).
 
 
This Sunday
16:40 / 20.05.06
The list is arranged by picture-links instead of just text. Which is a bit silly and makes it difficult to take in at a quick glance.

However, here's the list of titles:

Fanny Hill
Lady Chatterly's Lover
Tropic of Cancer
Story of O
Crash
Interview with the Vampire
Portnoy's Complaint
The Magus
Wind Up Bird Chronicle
Endless Love
Lolita
Carrie's Story
Fear of Flying
Peyton Place
Story of the Eye
The End of Alice
Vox
Rapture
Singular Pleasures
In the Cut
Brass
Candy
Forever
An American Dream
The Carpetbaggers

I'm too lazy to transcribe the author info or follow each thumbnail cover to the bit on why they picked it.

The thing I found particular odd with 'Lolita' being on there, is that, when you follow the little link, they are immediately upfront about how it shouldn't actually be on the list, except for rumor/legend. And then they get pertinent details (such as the funnies-reading scene) wrong. If you're doing any sort of best-of list, you should be accurately familiar with the works you list. Or don't list them.

I, for example, can safely say I feel 'The Exorcist' to be one of the funniest films of all time. And I can cite 'You're cunting daughter' as an immediate example, with surety and safety. Someone who knows the film by reputation alone, might have a harder time making any sort of assertion to it, as comedy, horror, or even as a movie. Me, attempting to list the top twenty Hemingway pieces... would be crap, because I'd just be talking out of my ass, or listing them in order of which aren't as bad as some of the others.

I listed 'Ada' in exchange for 'Lolita', however, because it had a wider range of sexual elements/practises, with more detail and blunter language, and dealt with them significantly more frankly and thoroughly. Through the eyes of two pretentious full-of-themselves fuck ups, instead of one. The sex-stuff is just buried in more flowery goings-on, especially that first chapter, which was a deliberate, get the kids out of the room, stop gap.

Neither should probably be on a thought-out list.
 
 
Jack Vincennes
17:33 / 21.05.06
(Daytripper, any way to replicate the list for us? The link didn't work me for and I'd like to see it.

There was a space in the link, which meant it wasn't working -I've changed that now, so it should be working again quite soon!)
 
 
Disco is My Class War
15:17 / 24.05.06
Even given the specificity of this list being a Playboy list, I think it's rather odd that Forever made it.

So, what makes a book sexy? I have to disagree that Raymond Chandler is not sexy -- I think you can have perfectly sexy writing that doesn't feature 'actual sex', but incites desire/pleasure in terms of its narrative structure: isn't that what suspense is about? Chandler does that better than almost anyone but Jim Thompson.

And if there was a list of top sexy books, what would you put on it? I'm not sure about a whole 25, but Kathy Acker's Great Expectations would be on mine.
 
 
johnny enigma
08:43 / 25.05.06
I take it that the "Brass" refered to is the book by Helen Walsh? That book truly is a classic - sexy, disturbing and heartwarming.
Curiously, I found Lenoard Cohen's "The Favourite Game" quite sexy.

As for "Fanny Hill", I couldn't get further than about thirty pages into the book.
 
 
nimue
17:27 / 25.05.06
mmmm, not that playboy would probably list these, but i would include the notebooks of don rigoberto or in praise of the stepmother, both by mario vargas llosa... rigoberto is full of the main character's outrageous fantasies which read in equal parts hilarious and erotic. and that, i think, is the mark of true sexiness! in your face, playboy!
 
 
Benny the Ball
05:59 / 26.05.06
Umm, Daytripper, couldn't agree more that Lolita shouldn't be there. Satire, yes, sexy, couldn't be further from it.
 
 
Mysterious Transfer Student
09:28 / 29.05.06
If we're talking about the content of that list, I want to unburden myself of the shame that I've read only four of those 25 titles. However, I post because I want to bang the drum for Haruki Murakami, and to say that yes, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle is a seriously sexy book. Not merely the sex scenes, which are comparatively few, but the entire trippy, slow motion, quotidian, netherworldly atmosphere of the novel, and Murakami's roster of Lynchian Bond girls, do it for me in a way I'm evidently very bad at describing. Perhaps Sax's one-liner should have gone in my place.
 
 
Dutch
22:07 / 10.01.07
The most horrible book I have read that could be considered sexy, if one was so inclined as to dub sexual punishment, torture, rape, etc. as such would have to be Justine by de Sade. I tried reading it through on account of my moral philosophy teacher saying I shouldn't read it, but couldn't finish it. (as the old story goes)

I am still deciding whether I should ever finish it, to form a more balanced opinion, but I doubt if the book has any redeeming qualities.

The really scary thing is that I found it on the bookshelf in my parents' bedroom.
 
 
lord nuneaton savage
10:03 / 11.01.07
'Justine' is very dull. Try 'Philosophy in the Boudoir' if you want a quick and easy-to-read idea of where De Sade is coming from.

No contention with 'Story of the Eye' here. It's not only my favourite sexy book but my favourite book as well, so that's all right, innit?

I'd like to add 'Le Con D'Irene' (I'm sure you can work out what that means) by Louis Aragon. A thoroughly stirring work of sexual obsession by the legendary surrealist poet.

I'm a bit obsessed with Modernist/Surrealist pornography actually, might start a thread on it at some point.
 
 
miss wonderstarr
12:29 / 11.01.07
Isn't The End of Alice a story about a paedophile and child-killer? It's probably more complicated than that, but I'm really surprised if this is being listed as a sexy book. I read it a few years ago and I believe I found it really pretty grim.
 
 
Internaut
15:05 / 11.01.07
out of that list, ive only read "The Wind-up bird Chronicle" and "Interview with a Vampire". I think tWUBC is more about exploring sex as what it is; something that can mean absolutely nothing to a person, or something that can mean something huge, less than just "im going to put sex into this book, hee.." I'm suprised not to see "Kafka on the Shore" on that list, but again its more about the meaning of sex, and tackles a lot of sexual taboos, rather than just sex sex sex.
 
  
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