Members with This Book
Newest Reviews
see all reviews-
“[Never News: http://nevernews.squarespace.com/main/2006/10/29/my-girlfriend-comes-to-the-city-and-beats-me-up-stephen-elliott.html]
ColinMoon wrote this review Sunday, October 29 2006. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
Erotic writing is often a place of curious stumbled prose and iffy literary value—that is, if we're to believe the erotic writing floating around the internet, stories where emotion and thought are thrown out in favor of sensationalized play by play descriptive. One needs to look no further than the Penthouse Forum to see the style, ridiculous nature, and formula of base erotic writing.
Thankfully there's been a pretty strong vein of actual erotic literature over the several hundred years since the establishment of the craft: the famous Story of O and Lady Chatterly's Lover are nearly household names; like Freddy Krueger and Citizen Kane, people know of these works even if they've never actually experienced them. Never made to simply arouse, erotica captures a charge of both the reticent sexuality and the emotional strength tightrope of the characters—and it's rare to find work that has the ability to convince you of both threads at once.
Stephen Elliott's My Girlfriend is one of those works.
Elliott introduces the collection by explaining that the works are, essentially, all true—the forward is equal parts manifesto and confession, as Elliott is a bit concerned on the recent war on porn that is targeting “violent” sexual practices.
Which, of course, is the central theme of Elliott's collection—populated by a recurring (if multi-named) character (Elliott himself, if we consider the introduction) on an ever shaky road to finding a sort of sexual salvation, the stories all feature an array of BDSM practices—from simple bondage play to heavy handed humiliation, each with different tone behind its asphyxiation or slapping. The sex of the stories is sometimes the center, sometimes an aside, but the theme behind the collection is an ongoing series of sexual self-actualization: our character suffers the same terrible relationships the rest of us do—his just contain a lust for punishment.
An interesting facet of the work is Elliott's sexualization of past abuse (he informs us in the writing that he was raped as a child as he moved about in foster homes), a catalyst for his lifestyle and his search for a satisfactory form of punishment in his sexual life. As he moves from lover to lover his chances of happiness both grow and rapidly decline in a seesaw of emotional power.
And while his prose is often on the edge of too post-modern (Elliott's writing sometimes veers into Palahniuk style distance before careening into Ellis style intimacy until, in the final set of stories, he reaches a plateau of sullen happiness all his own), it's still a joy to read—whatever instability goes on in the content isn't going on in the craft.
These stories are powerful, sensitive, and alluring. Whether you're a fetishist or of the strictly-missionary type, you'll find yourself moved by the struggles (both civilian and sexual) here—where the sex isn't ever simply written to turn you on and there's always a sense of character.”
Displaying 1-1 of 1
