Uriah’s Comments (group member since Mar 24, 2025)

Uriah’s comments from the Red Scare Bookclub group.

Wynn wrote: "-The five books in the George Miles Cycle, along with a few of his standalone books (The Marbled Swarm, The Sluts, etc.), by Dennis Cooper fit this description almost to a T. It's about the intensi..."

Thanks for the rec. I've been seeing the title The Sluts around. This definitely seems like what I had in mind.

hello, i am trying to compile a list of books that are (a) within the literary canon, and (b) revolve around sex, and/or prominently feature sensual descriptions of sex. i'm putting this together so i can have something to jack off to, i mean understand better how sex has been described by others so i can know how to do it in my own writing.

the only book that unambiguously fits what i'm imagining is A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter. the sentences in this book are highly lyrical, clearly showing influence from modern literature. the sex scenes are explicit, use words like "cock" and "cunt," describe anal and oral sex and cum, and are intended by the author to be "sensual / erotic." the plot revolves around a couple and explores the contours of their relationship through their sexual dynamic. it also has more high-level themes that are presented in the layered perspectives within the text, and which relate to story-telling, all of which place this book in relation to the canon of modern literature.

a work that wouldn't fit: Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille obviously features a lot of explicit descriptions of sex, but there's nothing sensual or erotic about it. Naked Lunch is another random book that features a lot of explicit descriptions of cock and balls, but which is not erotic.

another work that wouldn't fit: House of Leaves, off the top of my head, had descriptions of sex that i thought were hot when i read it as a teenager, but they are by no means the "point" of the book. much commercial fiction will include erotic representations of sex because sex sells. i'm trying to narrow down to books that revolve around sex, rather than just putting together a list of every book that has a hot sex scene.

another type of work that I am explicitly trying to exclude are the reams of erotica published on KDP and by big publishers. these works, whose titles i don't know but whose existence i am aware of, are not in or even adjacent to any kind of "modernist canon," however we might want to define that.

feel free to just mention things in the thread, or you can add them to the list here: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/2...