Mainstream Books of Interest

[bobov (imported)]

Anything by the Marquis de Sade might do, but I especially recommend his masterwork Juliette. The book is liberally sprinkled with castration scenes, both physical and psychological. It also catalogues an array of cruel, violent sexual practices which, in their number and ingenuity, far exceed what even the most prolific Archive author has documented. There is really no one who does sadism as well as the original Sade. The book is very long, and rife with philosophical discussions about why the best life inverts all conventional moral and religious beliefs. (Some critics have always embraced De Sade as one of the guiding spirits of the French Revolution. He articulated a rationale for the rejection of almost all moral norms.) De Sade took himself seriously as a philosopher, but if you haven't the taste for such digressions, you can easily skip to "the good parts," which comprise about 2/3 of the book. De Sade brings a vividness to his descriptions of castrations, murders, tortures, and desecrations which only a profound emotional commitment could achieve. His characters engage our feelings because they live the life of our dreams. I discovered Juliette as a teen, and its magnificent evil changed my life for the better. Not that I do as de Sade imagined, but it enlarged my sense of what is possible for human beings.

[yankee masha (imported)]

The thing aboujt deSade is that he wasn't philosophizing so much as reporting his own activities. They put him in jail several times but because of his position he was able to conduct his cruel acitivities there as well. His favorite victims were young males. On a philiosphical level it is true that he would do anything as long as it hurt and as long as it was against the conventional. But he actually was just more open about it as manyh other nobles conducted the same sadistic practices on their underlings. Why? Because they could.

Most people into S/M are basically in their real life compassionate and kind and wouldn't hurt a fly despite their sexual behavior. But deSade liked to truly hurt andkill people in the most violent ways he could think of.

In William Burroughs's "Naked Lunch" from the mid-60's, there is a scene of men being hanged naked to watch them shoot as the noose cuts off their air finally. Burroughs was considered a great writer at the time, and he was. What was interesting about him -- that correlates to deSade -- was he was raised as a millionaire's son too. his family owned Burroughs office machine corportion.

Have you ever read the works of Scher-Masoch, who gave his name to masochism? Venus In Furs is interesting. there is a scene where this beautiful, virile man dresses as a woman and goes ot that way and men start proposing to him.

[bobov (imported)]

I've never read Sacher-Masoch, but perhaps I should. I have always heard that his work, while shocking to the conventional sensibility of his time, is tame and oblique for modern readers. Tell me if this is not so. (By the way, isn't the Sacher torte, a delightful pastry, also named after him?)

De Sade led a sad life. He was in prison or the mad-house for most of his adult years. (When the Bastille was thrown open at the height of the French Revolution, he was its one prisoner!) He was first imprisoned at the request of his mother-in-law, who was horrified at his treatment of her daughter. (Aristocrats in pre-revolutionary France were virtually unrestricted in what they might do within their own properties; it was only the complaint of another aristocrat which could have indicted him. His wife remained his loyal friend throughout most of his years in prison.) Freed by the Revolution, the revolutionaries soon could not stomach his license and sent him to the mad-house at Charenton, where he spent most of the remainder of his life. Most of his works were composed while he was in prison, solely as products of the imagination. Eating was the only sensual pleasure allowed him, so he eventually became grossly fat. I have never read that he actually killed anyone. He was accused of whipping some prostitutes and dripping hot candle wax on them. Most of his infamies were committed in his imagination while alone in a prison cell. In his day, the attempt to publish such "offenses against public morals" was sufficient to land the perpetrator in jail. De Sade might have been executed had he not been an aristocrat. In any case, this is my understanding of his life, based, I think, on an essay Francine du Plessix-Gray published in the New York Review of Books around ten years ago. Let me know if I am mistaken, or add fresh detail. I am happy to find a fellow appreciator of De Sade.

[bobov (imported)]

William Burroughs was once one of my favorites, though it's been a few years since I last picked him up. It's true that he was a scion of the rich Burroughs family, and that he was raised in prep schools and lived on the proceeds of a trust fund until he was 31 or 32. However, at that point the trust fund expired, and he was left penniless in Tangiers, where he was then living. He never received any more money from his family. In a documentary film about him, he mentioned that the belief in his wealth caused him trouble throughout his life, because people assumed that they could get money from him or that he could buy his way in or out of any situation. In fact, he became destitute with the expiration of his trust, and that is a good thing for the rest of us, because he began writing Naked Lunch the day after his last check arrived. He wrote in a blaze of creativity, fueled by the need for money, and finished the book in two weeks. He had never written anything before. The money from that book kept him in boys and heroin for more years, while he continued to write. He was a sadist, and very fond of erotic hanging, which turns up frequently in his work. I don't remember any castration scenes, but Bill had great style, and was probably the most talented of the Beats, excepting the Ginsberg of Howl.

[yankee masha (imported)]

All I know about De Sade is that which I've seen in a documentary on his life and read, so my sources are about the same as yours. But the documentary said that he was very attached to a male servant and when the two of them could not get other vicitms he would work on the servant. But of course when it comes to S/M people not into it will make it seem more shocking and hideous. So who's to say? DeSade did remind me of an earlier Burroughs or Ginsburg. I lived in the Lower East Side ofn New York during the time Gisnburg did, although my life was more upown and career oriented. I never saw the romanticism of living on a mattress on the floor with a cheap madras throw and a fairly ugly lover next to me LOL But they were wodnerous writers no argument there. Which one wrote "Last Exit to Brooklyn"?

In fact at that time in teh Lower East Side, were many homosexual writers into S/M. One that was really a genius was Robert Ludlum who had the Riduclous Theatrical Company. His plays back in the 60's were awesome. it was also the time of Andy Warhol and experimentation in thjeatre, movies and writing were intense. even the Village GVoice had a strong voice then.

Ah, thanks for sparking these memories, bobov.

[bobov (imported)]

Yes, De Sade was a fine fellow. I'm happy to raise some good memories for you. I was around during the same years you were, though not on the Lower East Side. The Beats really sacrificed for their art - all talented, they chose to follow their muse, rather than Moloch, and paid heavily. Poor Ginsberg only became rich Ginsberg two years before his death by selling his papers to Stanford for $2M (?) They also made him a Professor at the CUNY Graduate Center, but all this was a little late, after a lifetime of mattresses on the floor. Burroughs died about a month after Ginsberg. Our youth is our identity, then we grow old and die - the irremediable tragedy of life.

Last Exit to Brooklyn was Hubert Selby.

This can't be the same Ludlum who became the thriller writer, can it? If not, I'm embarassed to admit I have no familiarity with his work. I'll check him out.

I recently rented a DVD of Warhol's movie Flesh. It hasn't aged well. Ogling Joe Dallesandro isn't the thrill it once was; the downtown street people make for a simulated urban documentary of limited interest; the device of frequent camera cuts, interrupting action and even speech and reminding the viewer of the photographer's presence, has become a mere annoyance. I never took Warhol more seriously than he took himself.

Keep on. It's good to talk with someone of similar age, background, and tastes.

[yankee masha (imported)]

Thanks for the clarifications. Charles Ludlum was a man about our age who did a lot of wonderous things theatrically. Almost as long as Warhol's interminal films, his stuff was lively, dramatic and fun and very avant garde. I watched on night as he did a satirical 5-acter on Hamlet, Grand Hotel and Sunset boulevard. he played all the main characters. Later on his genius was recognized and he got a big grant from the NY State Council on the Arts and he opened a theatre of his own in Greenwich Village near Abingdon Square, which might still be there. He kind of polished up his avant garde work and of course it lost a lot. He t least did not die broke in the gutter, although he did of AIDS. Worth looking up. Wish I could relate all the memories I hae of him, his plays as well as watching him fly through Stuyvesant Square looking for suckable dicks. back in 1969.

He was a genius and he lived for his art, and lucked out in getting some $$$ for it so he never croaked in the gutter. He was identified as a drag actor, but that was not quite right as he really just did all his plays as ridiculous. When he died the drag actor Joe Bush (sic) took over his roles for awhile.

As to Warhol, you are so right. His movies were hard enough to sit through when he was current. Now I could not imagine wanting to see Joe D'Allesandro naked again. Now he just looks like a street hustler, which is what he was. Warhol was a great artist Of The Moment but his stuff now is just boring. I remember one night wandering down the west side and looking to my left saw a lot of light in a side stgreet. I walked over to where a movie premiere was happening. the lobby was filled with all the people from his Factory. Ultra Violet, Joe D, the whole crew. I tried to buyh a ticket but they said jsut go in. I went in at 10:30.

I looked back at the prjecitonm booth adn there was Warhol's holy white head and glasses. I looked at the clock a little later. it was 3:15 am. And nothing had happened except I had watched a hunky young guy who looked like he walked in from a biker bar taking a long shower while he was filmed. he couldn't understand that was all Warhol wanteed him to do. Next day I found it was the preniere of ****'s (sic) and the whole thing went 23 1/2 hours. Yes. Those were the days, my friend.

[bobov (imported)]

Those were truly the days. You tell wonderful anecdotes which paint pictures and make me feel I ought to have been there. I am so sorry to have missed Charles Ludlum. I don't suppose any of his work was recorded? I wish I had fled with him through Stuyvesant Square. Sigh.

Warhol was at least a brilliant marketer and self-promoter. He was able for so many years to find the pulse of the moment and make it visible. A sort of genius, I suppose: the ad man as artist. A friend of mine once sold him a camera and had the temerity to ask Warhol how much money he made. Warhol said about $2M a year, and this was 1967. A gallery salesman told me that Warhol's rise began with his paintings of dollar signs. He did hundreds of these, just paintings of dollar signs, and David Rockefeller became his patron because of them, and introduced Warhol to Society. I've always felt the image of Rockefeller and his circle crowding around a dollar sign and cooing with pleasure is priceless. Well, as Karl Marx said, "being determines consciousness."

[bobov (imported)]

Have you ever read anything by the French writer Georges Bataille? He wrote fiction and philosophy in the first half of the twentieth century, somewhat in the tradition of de Sade. I have seen only a little of his work, and what I saw I must admit I found disgusting, at least according to my taste, though others have been delighted. Bataille differs from de Sade in that the Marquis was an Enlightenment rationalist who frankly refused the values of correct society, whereas Bataille, in the little that I've seen, fully accepts the correctness of normal values, while finding that he takes immense pleasure in their violation. In what I've read, Bataille embraces guilt, sin, blood, pain, and death, all of which he confuses with sex. To me, this seems a devotedly Roman Catholic outlook. He says, "Yes, yes, sex is a mortal sin, but I am drawn to it, so I must be drawn to sin in all its forms." Bataille thinks he must be damned because the Church says so, and embraces all that is damnable as a result. To me, this is creepy. I much prefer de Sade's perverse moral order to Bataille's Hell Soup, but I suppose that only shows my Boomer roots in the Sexual Revolution. Norman Mailer once said that sex lost its interest without the possibility of sin, and that is what Bataille would have said. Bataille was, for a time, very fashionable among critics, and his work was taught at universities. Anyway, if you like your sex with broken glass and blood, Bataille's your man.

[yankee masha (imported)]

I have never read Bataille. But his philosophy of course is interesting to me. I am older than you. Once you do not believe in churches then there is no need for guilt and most S/m is based on guilt. Some is not. I thihnk spanking is just a continuation of the sexual arousing expereinced in childhood. I think many cases of female wroship comes from a retreat from the pressures put by society on men, and a desire to expereince teh submissive role in sex...why should women get all the fun of just laying there being serviced? There is a great eroticism in submission and not having to do the "work" of sex.

Have you ever seen Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Salo: 120 days of Sodom"? It was an Italian movie that came out around the later 70's. It was too extreme even for extreme S/M devotees. But it was an incredible movie and if you can ever see it, put yourself through it. It was based in part on a Nazi incidennt in Italy and he embellished it byu using DeSade's framework. It did nto work as a movie, but the visuals were astounding. And he used all physically appealing actors and actresses.