Meaning It
October 22, 2023 11:35 PM Subscribe
What is this and why do I want to click it?
posted by Jacen at 5:48 AM on October 23, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by Jacen at 5:48 AM on October 23, 2023 [6 favorites]
I can't follow the archive link, it will not accept that I'm not a robot. It seems that I will have to accept the difficulty of not knowing.
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:04 AM on October 23, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:04 AM on October 23, 2023 [7 favorites]
It's a thoughtful essay in the New York Review of Books by Raven Leilani on depictions of sex in literature that aims high, focusing primarily on Garth Greenwell and his novel Cleanness, with references to Audre Lorde and Toni Morrison. It's primarily concerned with "marginal" sex activity (in this case submission). It's pretty damn interesting.
posted by chavenet at 6:11 AM on October 23, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by chavenet at 6:11 AM on October 23, 2023 [4 favorites]
It is an essay by Raven Leilani (author of Luster) which is talking about the oblivion of the ego: the writer's oblivion through her openness to whatever is out there to push her pen across the paper; and a particular character's oblivion through submission in a chapter of Garth Greenwell's Cleanliness. There's an irony running through the piece: Greenwell's character seeks a wordless state (or finds himself in a wordless state because words can't communicate the nothing he wishes to become), but the writer entering that wordless state must find words.
It's an interesting way to look at the dichotomy between two types of author, the intuitive vs the structural, and something I found interesting was how anxious her description made me feel (not to mention a nagging worry about Greenwell's character and his safety). To feel one's way along the page, to, in the Barthleme quote near the beginning of the piece, have "the mind move in unanticipated directions" with no guardrails seems like the height of danger and foolishness. You could very well end up with no words at all, and none of the pleasure of finding-out, and what good is that? "It is out there somewhere and you have to let it in," according to the Morrison quote, but I do think there is a species of writer who has seen what is out there somewhere and says definitely not, by no means is this thing coming into my house. (What might have changed in the essay, had Greenwell reversed the characters in that chapter, and told it from the point of view of the man holding the leash?)
posted by mittens at 6:11 AM on October 23, 2023 [2 favorites]
It's an interesting way to look at the dichotomy between two types of author, the intuitive vs the structural, and something I found interesting was how anxious her description made me feel (not to mention a nagging worry about Greenwell's character and his safety). To feel one's way along the page, to, in the Barthleme quote near the beginning of the piece, have "the mind move in unanticipated directions" with no guardrails seems like the height of danger and foolishness. You could very well end up with no words at all, and none of the pleasure of finding-out, and what good is that? "It is out there somewhere and you have to let it in," according to the Morrison quote, but I do think there is a species of writer who has seen what is out there somewhere and says definitely not, by no means is this thing coming into my house. (What might have changed in the essay, had Greenwell reversed the characters in that chapter, and told it from the point of view of the man holding the leash?)
posted by mittens at 6:11 AM on October 23, 2023 [2 favorites]
(oh goddamn missed the edit window: cleanness, not cleanliness. the perils of talking literature this early in the morning.)
posted by mittens at 6:14 AM on October 23, 2023
posted by mittens at 6:14 AM on October 23, 2023
Sadly, every archive.ph link is Waymo-walled for me. Nothing but an endless cycle of AI-training challenges. :( Such is life with a VPN.
posted by Ayn Marx at 7:17 AM on October 23, 2023
posted by Ayn Marx at 7:17 AM on October 23, 2023
I really enjoyed reading this essay. Thank you for sharing it.
posted by somedaycatlady at 8:17 AM on October 23, 2023
posted by somedaycatlady at 8:17 AM on October 23, 2023
i read it but I still have literally no idea what it was talking about. though it did bring to mind erik wolpaw's phrase 'the unsophisticated boner of the common man' which made me smile, so on balance it gets a thumbs up from me
posted by Sebmojo at 1:46 PM on October 23, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Sebmojo at 1:46 PM on October 23, 2023 [1 favorite]
He writes sensitively about the human conditions that can make one long to be conditionless, about the wish for pure exteriority that returns us to the problem of interiority.
mm, mm, (nodding)
posted by Sebmojo at 1:49 PM on October 23, 2023
mm, mm, (nodding)
posted by Sebmojo at 1:49 PM on October 23, 2023
I think sex is inherently resistant to language — does not want to be talked or written about, in fact. Which is why for most of our cultural history, the most explicit terms for sex things always seem to end up in the extreme end of the category of forbidden language.
I believe that's ultimately down to the fact that language is transmitted like a contagious disease, from all of which sex inevitably shys away in shuddering distaste.
posted by jamjam at 2:17 PM on October 23, 2023
I believe that's ultimately down to the fact that language is transmitted like a contagious disease, from all of which sex inevitably shys away in shuddering distaste.
posted by jamjam at 2:17 PM on October 23, 2023
Yeah, not using a VPN, just loggin' into the Internet, and the Captchas are endless.
posted by lhauser at 5:40 PM on October 23, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by lhauser at 5:40 PM on October 23, 2023 [1 favorite]
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posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:41 AM on October 23, 2023 [2 favorites]