SEX
557
work, is a stand in favor of certain kinds of art and against others–
in this sense the literary moralists, in their objections to uninhibited
writing, are asserting their preference for another kind of literature.
Thus Elliott's remarks about sex and society might be said to be a
critical statement, though a fairly , conventional one, for his disgust
with oversexed writing is actually an endorsement of undersexed,
respectable, responsible, unalienated writing that is not too critical
of existing society. Similarly, Steiner's distaste for sexual abandon
or detail is connected with a nostalgia for the classics. In fact, most
moralizing critics rarely propose genuine literary alternatives in the
present; hence they are usually scolding contemporary writers in the
name of some nonexistent moral or literary purity and responsibility
that presumably existed in the past. But this moral Utopia, this myth
of propriety and good taste, however vague, arbitrary and illusory,
is the ideological equivalent of writing that is not so far out or has
already been assimilated.
Editors of popular magazines know very well the distinction be–
tween old and new sensibilities, though they find it profitable to treat
them as fashions. They are able to trade on the appetite for the new,
which is increased by the moral resistance to it, by feeding respect–
able audiences more and more outrageous writing, so that things that
used to be beyond the pale now have become old hat. Of course,
this is due partly to a natural loosening up in matters of sex and
morals, but it is also because the forbidden has been artificially
inseminated into writing. The result is a kind of manufactured chaos,
that is numbing the capacity of frivolous people to be shocked, and
making it more and more difficult for serious people to think clearly
about what is going on. Some writers and critics (like Fiedler) have
been rushing to sign up for the future, while others (like Elliott) are
busy frantically shoring up the past.
One result of the attempt to merchandize the new sexuality is
the confusion between literature and pornography. (I should say I do
not believe in any bans on pornography, but if there is a problem,
it is legal and social, not literary.)
It has been argued by Susan Sontag that pornography on a
certain level, like
Story of
0 (and possibly even
Fanny Hill)
is a
form of literature. Her argument, which is quite powerful and
original, is that the pornographic imagination presents a total vision of
