My recent post Abandoning Books has a
list of a few books I’ve given up on over the past few years, as well as a
quick look at the reason why I abandoned them. If you read the list, you may have noticed
something about it: of the eight books I listed, three of them were because
they were “too sexual.” Also, on the “Do You Take Suggestions?” page of this
site, the first item I mention in the list of books I will not read is “Erotica – Or even
books that are just highly and/or explicitly sexual.”
There
must be something to this then, you’re thinking. And you’re right.
To explain this, I’ll use the example of
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami (which I included
in the list of books I gave up on because it was too sexual).
1Q84
was highly interesting. It had a very mysterious, intriguing plot, and the way the
mysteries were slowly unveiled as the book progressed was well-done. I read 700
pages of the book, and it honestly felt like much less.
One of the two main characters was a single
woman named Aomame. There was plenty to find intriguing in her character – her motives,
her personality, etc. She also had a quirk: about once a month or so, she would
get desperate to have sex with a stranger. So she’d go to a bar, scan the
crowd, pick a man (always middle-aged and with a receding hairline, even though
she’s in her early thirties) whom she thought would please her for the night,
and approach him to get things going.
I actually don’t really care that she
has this quirk. Characters have quirks; sometimes that’s what makes them more
realistic (even if their quirks are a bit abnormal, such as Aomame’s taste in
men). That’s fine.
What I mind is how much time Murakami
spends – and the heavy, explicit detail he uses – showing us this quirk. I just
explained to you Aomame’s sexual quirk in three sentences. That’s really all it
takes. I wouldn’t mind a scene in which Aomame goes to the bar, chats up a man,
and they decide to go to his hotel room. I wouldn’t even mind seeing this scene
a few times throughout the book. This all makes sense; I can see why Murakami
would want to include these scenes. They help paint a bit of the picture of
Aomame’s personality, conversational style, thought processes, etc.
That’s really all we need though, isn’t
it? Once Aomame and her lover enter the hotel room, there’s really no reason
for any more detail than that. The reader doesn’t need to enter the hotel room
with them.
And yet Murakami spends pages upon pages
explaining everything else: the look the characters get in their eyes as the
other undresses, the shape and size and color of all the anatomy involved, how
long the encounter lasts, the exact feelings that Aomame experiences during intercourse
– sometimes good, sometimes bad – the ideas she has as she studies the man’s
naked body as he’s asleep afterward.
My goodness. Absolutely zero of these
things are relevant to the story. They do nothing whatsoever to enhance or
propel the plot. They don’t give us insight into Aomame’s character or
motivations. They’re just explicit sex scenes for the sake of…who knows,
really.
Again, I don’t care that Aomame has her
sexual quirks. I don’t mind how often she has sex, or who she has it with. I
wouldn’t care if it was twice as often or twice as quirky. What I mind is that it’s
described in such irrelevant, unnecessary, explicit detail.
(By the way, the other main character,
Tengo, has his share of unnecessarily detailed sexual encounters as well, about
which I can say all of the same things. I just figured it’d be a little easier
to explain using Aomame as the example.)
When a writer chooses to give us these
unnecessary sexual scenes and details, I can only assume they’re included
because, frankly, sex sells. They have no literary merit. They don’t enhance
the book in any meaningful way. But, unfortunately, they sell the book.
So it is that, in most cases, I can only
assume these explicit sexual encounters in books are really just a gimmick, a sell-out.
No thank you. I’ll take my literature
with a serving of literary value, not dirty tricks.
gross.
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