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SUSAN SONTAG
under and now, increasingly, over the counter no more impugns the
status as literature of at least a dozen pornographic books I have read
than the proliferation of books of the caliber of
The Carpetbaggers
and
Valley of the Dolls
throws into question the credentials of
Anna
Karenina
and
The Great Gatsby
and
The Man Who Loved Children.
The ratio of authentic literature to trash in pornography may
be
somewhat lower than the ratio of novels of genuine literary merit to
the entire volume of subliterary fiction produced for mass taste. But
I doubt that it's any lower than, for instance, that of another some–
what shady subgenre with a few first-rate books to its credit,
science fiction. (As literary forms, pornography and science fiction
resemble each other in several interesting ways.) Anyway, the quan–
titative measure supplies a trivial standard. Relatively uncommon as
they may be, there are writings which it seems reasonable to call
pornographic-assuming that the stale label has any use at all-which,
at the same time, cannot be refused accreditation as serious literature.
The point would seem to be obvious. Yet, apparently, that's far
from being the case. At least in England and America, the reasoned
scrutiny and assessment of pornography is held firmly within the
limits of the discourse employed by psychologists, sociologists, his–
torians, jurists, professional moralists and social critics. Pornography
is a malady to be diagnosed and an occasion for judgment. It's some–
thing one is for or against. And taking sides about pornography is
hardly like being for or against aleatoric music or Pop Art, but quite
a bit like being for or against legalized abortion or federal aid to
parochial schools. In fact, the same fundamental approach to the
subject is shared by recent eloquent defenders of society's right and
obligation to censor dirty books, like George P. Elliott and George
Steiner, and writers, like Paul Goodman, who warn of pernicious
consequences of a policy of censorship far worse than any harm done
by the books themselves. Both the libertarians and the would-be
censors agree in reducing pornography to pathological symptom and
problematic social commodity. A near unanimous consensus exists as
to what pornography is-this being identified with notions about the
sources
of the impulse to produce and consume these curious goods:
As
a theme for psychological analysis, pornography is rarely seen as
anything more interesting than texts which illustrate a deplorable
arrest in normal adult sexual development. On this view, all porno–
graphy amounts to is the representation of the fantasies of infantile
