The 25 Sexiest Novels Ever Written

One of my favorite magazine editors of all time, Jim Petersen, just wrote a "Best Of" list for Playboy.com— the twenty-five sexiest novels ever written.

I was eager for debate, mutual swooning, and peculiar insights. I asked Jim if he would entertain some of my questions...

SB:  How did this list come together?

JP:  Stacy Klein is one of the dot.com brigade at Playboy. She called up one day and asked if I would do a quick list. The give and take proved fascinating. She would ask "What about...?" and off we'd go.

I did a long essay on the erotic power of paper, which we cut to a paragraph. I kept getting sidetracked: Amazon lists 3500 titles in its erotica section!

All those niches within niches: lesbian stories, vampire stories, harem stories, S&M stories, coming of age stories.

Remember when all you needed to be aroused was the rise and fall of a woman breathing?

Plus, now you can post the your favorite titles on a Wish List, like some depraved bridal registry. The entire world will know that you are desperately seeking a hard-on.
      
Finally, there's that Amazon tool, the SIP (Statistically Improbable Phrase) that tells you that the phrase "ass fuck" appears sixteen times in one book, or that "absolute dismemberment" shows up seven times in the Bataille Reader, as well as books on Heidigger, Hegel and literary economics.

SB:  When it came to older legends, like Fanny Hill, or Lady Chatterley, how much emphasis did you put on them because they were historical turning points, versus their erotic endurance?

JP:  When I researched my own Century of Sex I had the wonderful experience of coming upon these books from the other side. I went chronologically through books, movies, and music of the past hundred years, and experienced what it must have felt like to read these books for the first time, and to appreciate the leap.

Fanny is still a wonderful read, and what it taught me was to look inside the sex act. Not to lie back and think of England, but to lie back and dwell on the moment of penetration.

As for the Lady, Lawrence had a sense of the swoon. Yes, it's creaky, but this is the creation myth, the arc of liberation— let sex take you from here, to there.

Court cases aside (which had as much to do with the lawyers as they did with lust), there is the cultural impact of these books (Remember the story of a couple taking the Lady into a bomb shelter in an experiment at Princeton in the 50s?)

SB:  When it comes to your third choice, Miller's Tropic of Cancer, that's where my pleasure reading of old school erotica begins. I can't get over how contemporary his work still sounds. And it continues to gets me off, intellectually, and viscerally.

Story of O also holds up for me, like a Greek Myth that invites repeated retelling. And Crash still puts most post-modern literature to shame.

Jim, what does it say about me? — That out of the whole list, the ones that thrill me to this day, are: Miller, Réage, Ballard, Nabokov, Bataille, Baker, Walsh, and Southern.   

Out of all those, I'll distill it further... Miller and Terry Southern.   What personality type does that make me?

JP:  One of the conversations I had with Stacy concerned the generation gap: I can recall when checking a potential lover's bookshelf (as opposed to her  medicine cabinet or myspace page) told me all I needed to know.

Literary taste reads like a list of prior convictions. There the people (victims of classical education or the seminary) who try to persuade us that the Bible is a sex book. Okay, naked in the first chapter, plants the idea of temptation, tasting your lover's fruit in the song of Solomon, yeah, yeah.  Has anyone ever gotten aroused to Sappho? 

What strikes me about your reading list is the power of the first ascent— these authors presented sex as discovery, new terrain, weird places, wonderful improv. They ask you to consider sex from weird vantage points (car crashes, frozen time, telephone calls, the permission of the pedophile, the focus of a fetish).

SB:  Out of the pulp reads on your list, I'd pick Susanna Moore's In The Cut, which I reprinted in BAE. I like being scared as well as aroused, and sometimes both at the same time.

JP  Yes—sex, danger and Moore's love of words. One of the standards for inclusion in our list was that you knew something about sex. That you had been there.

SB:  Was there anything you privately hated on the list?  But felt had to be given its due? I can't stand Roth's complaint. Sorry.

JP:  Yeah. Erica Jong. Whine, whine, whine. Bad writing, party-line feminist complaints. Even her take on Fanny Hill shows almost no grasp of sex. (Put everything in capital letters to show excitement?)  But in terms of cultural moment, she had to be there.

SB:  I never read Endless Love by Scott Spencer... what am I missing?

JP:  What it's like to be inside, out there. He builds an entire one-act play out of the physiological, the insight that sex is a way of gathering information, intelligence about a relationship.

It's not the Ike and Tina Turner/Mickey Spillane cliché of "first you do it tough, then you do it tender." A lot goes into an erection, or the gristle of sex— that's what had Miller going around Paris comparing cunts, or Roth trying to discover America through fucking.

The really good writers know how to fuck in character. (The only comparison I can make is Pierce Brosnan in two movies that weren't James Bond— the sex in The Thomas Crown Affair, and the sex in The Panama Tailor thing— that's exactly how those characters would fuck).

SB:  Also Singular Pleasures... I never heard of it. Am I lame?

JP:  This was one of Stacy's finds. It defies categorization. Closer to the prose poems of M.S. Merwin.

SB: You didn't get into gay erotica, which would have changed and overwhelmed everything, because there's been so much more great liteary work. I know it's not your Playboy beat, but could you add a few titles by gay authors off the top of you head?

JP:  Marco Vassi once wrote that he could walk into a room of 100 people and be aroused by 98 of them, male or female. I can walk into a room of a 100 people and maybe find one of them sexually attractive— usually the woman on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

Why that one? I wonder. I tend not to think of sex in terms of the broad categories, but rather the specific permissions, the autobiographical cues. What I've read of gay fiction doesn't linger, not even on the top of my head.

[Note to self: send JP Death in Venice, Boyd McDonald, City of Night, Alan Hollingsworth, Our Lady of the Flowers, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Edmund White, Women in Love, Mr. Benson, The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon!]

SB:  Hey is there no great LESBIAN erotic novel? I'm remembering piles of short stories instead... My god, let me think about this. The Well of Loneliness doesn't count, does it?—  although it was thrilling at its time.

Aha!  It's come to me. Jane DeLynn's Don Juan in the Village, is the best lesbian erotic novel of all time... and deserved to be on this list of all time greats.

JP:  See what I mean? Now I have another title, or two, on my list. And when I order them from Amazon, the page will say, "if you are interested in these titles, are you in some kind of crisis?"

Staci and I argued over different categories. At one point we thought of structuring the list like the Oscars: Best Foreign Book (don't the French deserve their own planet?) Best Nonfiction. Best Woman's Voice. Best Male. Lifetime Achievement. We kept it simple and as you noticed, heterosexual.

SB: My friend Pam Rosenthal, who wrote Carrie's Story under the pseudonym of Molly Weatherfield, is thrilled to bits you picked her novel for the list. What made Carrie stand out among so many others of S/M romances that have been published since Story of O?

JP:  I once went on a tour of San Francisco with a reporter who wanted my views on strip bars, fern bars, and gay bars.

There was a moment where we watched a string of topless dancers, and one woman came out and grabbed us by the eyeballs. She dominated. I could see "the intelligence behind the entertainment"— and that's  why I responded to Carrie. I loved her attitude, intelligence, eye for detail. She was alive, compared to O— a story that is like watching a suicide. Water down the drain. Someone slipping through your hands and falling.

SB:  Does everyone know The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is an erotic novel? It takes a while to get there. I haven't seen it on anyone's erotic list before.

JP:  A friend recommended Kafka On The Shore, and that led to Wind-Up Bird. The sex is spooky, almost out-of-body— the sex scenes stay with you for days. 

SB:  How come you picked Interview with a Vampire instead of Anne Rice's more explicit storybooks?

JP:  I was in a lounge in New York. A woman got on stage and sang "Since I Fell For You." Over drinks she said, out of nowhere, "I'm looking for a new kind of sex."  I gave her a galley of The Vampire L'Estat.

I find the Beauty books stilted beyond belief. Same with most bondage videos— you push the fast-forward button and they look like hummingbirds or weight loss exercise tapes.

SB:  Carpetbaggers, Number 25? The last word? I found that odd. It's so quaint now.

JP:  It wasn't at the time. That fertility stick dance is still walking around in people's sexual curriculum vitae— and I think it is the direct antecedent of Scooter Libby's book, i.e. Republicans go nuts over pagan-ritual-dildo-type things.

SB:  What are your personal, vulnerable favorites?

JP:  I am still aroused by print. Be true to your school. Certain of the books on this list rerouted blood.

SB:  Is there anything that almost got your list but didn't?

JP:  The next twenty-five titles would have all been by John Updike. How did I do a list without a book by Michael Ondaatje?  The English Patient is sexy, but it's chaste, the sex is in the past, like an unexploded bomb.

My primary regret was shelving the nonfiction/biographical books. It seems that the most arousing writing these days is all in memoirs. That's another project.

SB: Let's do it! And you should really write your own, Jim. We want to hear all about that irresistable woman on the lunatic edge.

Comments

[Josh Hanson]

Just chiming in with a second for Spanbauer: I'd put it near the top of the list.

[C.S. Lewiston]

Funny you should mention “Candy”. I very unwisely passed on a book-on-tape edition of it at a library book sale some years ago. A favorite DJ of mine
( http://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/19121 ) played Steppenwolf’s “Rock Me” which reminded me of it. It’s from the ‘68 movie version of that novel. ( http://imdb.com/title/tt0062776/ ).

If memory serves, Jim Carroll's "Basketball Diaries" contain an entry describing a fairly hot quickie-sex scene involving himself, a friend and a woman they were both trying to sell some stolen raffle tickets to!

[Alan Russell]

I recently read "Fortune's Rocks" by Anita Shreve. I've read others by her but this story lifted the coming of age experience of a young woman to a level beyond some "wink, wink nod, nod" sex story. It takes place at the turn of the 19th century when everything, outwardly, was pretty circumscribed.

[Demiurgic Poet]

Whoa, whoa, whoa! You GOTTA include Jeanette Winterson's Written on the Body and Carole Maso's Aureole in that list! Both are WAY sexier that the ho-hum English Patient.

[heathergrace]

there are so many great erotic writers out there, because erotica for me seems to come from the most subtle and mysterious places---recently fell into a Lucy taylor story--The Safetly Of Unknown Cities
and Marco Vassi's carcass of dreams.

[Alana Noel Voth]

Hi Susie,

Thank you for sharing the list of top erotic books with us. Not a bad list although its heterosexual and White. Anyhoo! Love Lolita, love Tropic of Cancer, love In the Cut, love Vox, love End of Alice and just finished reading it last week. I like Forever. Not a D.H Lawerence fan and couldn't get past the first twenty pages of Fear of Flying. I must read Brass, Crash, and Carrie's Story. Why haven't I read Crash??? Saw the movie. James Spader. Wow. Nuff said.

C.S: You're right about that scene in "Basketball Diaries."

Heathergrace: Lucy Taylor is wonderful and remains a real inspiration to me. I had the opportunity to read with her in Denver four years ago. I was like her opening act. Have you read "Real Blood" and "Choke?"

My favorite sexy book of ALL TIME is The Lover by Marguerite Duras. Oh, I love that book! I've read it more times than I can count. I've written in the margins and underlined things. I gave a presentation on it (and "Lust" by Susan Minot) in grad school. Sometimes, I just open the book and read a passage for inspiration.

XXOO
Alana

[Eric Albert]

This list doesn't do much for me -- it's mostly "good for you" books, books "they" say you should like. Not books I could masturbate too, which is what I mean by "sexy" or "erotic."

Having said that, I'd keep _The Story of O_ (absofuckinglutely; what a category killer -- it's hard to find (or write!) a D/S book that doesn't sound derivative) and _Fanny Hill_ (you can jerk off to it, and the historical weight pushes it over). _Carrie's Story_ is a possibility: excellent porn with a smart (maybe too smart) protagonist.

_Endless Love_ is a nice pick, with some hot sex in a compelling tale of young love that's madder than usual (and it made me fall in love with the title poem by Delmore Schwartz). But Top 25 *Sexiest* Novels Ever Written?

_Vox_ is too clever by three quarters; I find its archness distancing and thus a turnoff. And if you can get off to _The Story of the Eye_, you're a stronger-stomached person than I. (I put no moral judgment on this.) _In the Cut_ has some good sex scenes, but they're not the focus of the novel.

I haven't read all the other books, but I know enough about most to be comfortable they wouldn't make my Top 25.

So what would?

Here's a definite: _The Sign of the Scorpion_ by Anonymous. Or maybe it's _The Devil's Advocate_ by Robert Sewell. A novel with very similar (but not identical) content has been published under both titles. In either version, it's an OK detective novel with a classic "young, innocent girl gets progressively debauched" storyline. The devil is in the details, of course, and the details here are superb.

Here's another sure thing: something by Aishling Morgan. Let's say _Maiden_. Probably _Tiger, Tiger_, too. When is this British author going to get the recognition she deserves? She's created at least four different worlds, including one with a variety of human-animal species (each of which has sex differently), and written multiple novels for all the worlds. At her worst, she's completely professional; at her best, she combines solid research, writing, plotting, and characterization with nastily creative BDSM sex.

Gotta have Marco Vassi represented. Let's go with _Slave Lover_, to include one of the great opening lines: "When she woke up, she was tied face down on a table and a man, she could not see who it was, was fucking her slowly and rhythmically in the ass."

There should probably be six to ten Victorian novels just to adequately represent that Golden Age of written erotica. Here's a grand one: _Davina, or the Romance of Mesmerism_ by Victoria's favorite, Anonymous. (Heck, you could probably make a decent list just from good Victorian hypnotization novels.)

I'd nominate _Pleasure Us!_ by "John Cleve," which opens up another fruitful area -- all those science fiction authors who had a sideline of writing porn under pseudonyms. In this case, the real name is Andrew J Offutt, and the book is compelling space opera that's packed with inventive ideas and exciting sex that's absolutely integral to the plot.

I could go on, but dinner awaits, and no one's paying me for my list!

[Hapax Legomenon]

I have to agree that Marco Vassi's Carcass of Dreams is one of the most amazing pieces of erudite erotica I have come across (printed in full in Maxim Jakubowski's Mammoth Book of Erotica in 2000). I don't find it particularly arousing though--more thoughtful and surreal, a cross between Poe and Kafka and Baudelaire.

I was actually shocked that nothing by Kundera appeared on this list. He was really hot (in both senses of the world) while I was at college. The interesting thing is that the list didn't list any online fiction or ebooks. I guess they're still being in the process of being discovered. (I compiled a brief list here: http://www.asstr.org/~99ernotions/recommendations.html
a while back).

Wait a year or two, and you'll see how the primary mode for reading erotica will be via ebook instead of via pbooks or the web. (Today for instance I read a complete short story on Clean Sheets on my pda ebook reader while waiting in line at Walmart.

Ultimately though it may be that titillation is more likely to come via porn or cable shows or R rated movies than from text on a page. I haven't decided whether that is a bad thing.

[Eric Albert]

Hapax Legomenon writes, "Ultimately though it may be that titillation is more likely to come via porn or cable shows or R rated movies than from text on a page."

"Ultimately"? This is already true for the youngest generation or two, and has been for a while. Text-centric sex is definitely minority entertainment in today's world.

An ex-partner and I had this dramatically demonstrated one night, a number of years ago. She'd called our favorite (truly) amateur phone-sex line: women called free; men paid ten cents a minute; I'd listen in on an extra headset. She left, as her "profile" message, the following: "Hi! Tonight I'd like to hear you read me a passage from your favorite porn book. Give me a taste of what you like, and, if it's hot, I'll connect."

We usually gave an assignment for men complete in order to get a crack at her -- with a male-female ratio of better (or worse, depending on your gender) than 10-1, guys would do *anything* to get through. Except that night. 'Cause none of them (all under 30 in age) owned any porn books!

Oh, a couple had magazines with dirty pictures, and one made a good stab by trying to read us the letters column. But we ended up going with a guy who was watching a porn video (with the sound turned off), because he did a great job of describing the action he was seeing *as if* it were a dirty novel.

Text has lost its supremacy as an erotic form, and that battle's lost for good. As a side note, amateur phone sex also seems to be a dying art form because the internet chat room has taken its place (LOL!!).

[Michael House]

Emmanuelle Arsan (Maryat Rollet-Andriane) would take the top four places on any sexiest novels list I might make, at least.

[Alexander Chee]

For some queer stuff that might make an impression on your editor, he could go old school, 70's style, with The Lord Won't Mind, A Measure of Madness, Perfect Freedom and The Great Urge Downward, all from Gordon Merrick. The old paperbacks with the painted covers of men in Speedos are hot but the new Alyson editions are easier to hold with one hand. . .