Entry tags:

books/authors, community: weepingcock, elitism, flouncing, mom the other kids aren't playing right!, persecution, porn

Henry Miller has a fandom...and it's pretty damn vocal.
Sex scenes can be really funny. Badly-written sex scenes can be absolutely hilarious. Since there are a lot of badly-written sex scenes in the world, the denizens of LJ's weepingcock take it upon themselves to select the best of the worst and laugh uproariously at it. Or cringe. Or possibly laugh uproariously in a cringing fashion. It depends on the excerpt.

Anyhow, pirsquar posts this amazing excerpt, for the enjoyment of the entire community.

"At night when I look at Boris' goatee lying on the pillow I get hysterical. O Tania, where now is that warm cunt of yours, those fat, heavy garters, those soft, bulging thighs? There is a bone in my prick six inches long. I will ream out every wrinkle in your cunt, Tania, big with seed. I will send you home to your Sylvester with an ache in your belly and your womb turned inside out. Your Sylvester! Yes, he knows how to build a fire, but I know how to inflame a cunt. I shoot hot bolts into you, Tania, I make your ovaries incandescent. Your Sylvester is a little jealous now? He feels something, does he? He feels the remnants of my big prick. I have set the shores a little wider. I have ironed out the wrinkles. After me you can take on stallions, bulls, rams, drakes, St. Bernards. You can stuff toads, bats, lizards up your rectum. You can shit arpeggios if you like, or string a zither across your navel. I am fucking you, Tania, so that you'll stay fucked. And if you are afraid of being fucked publicly I will fuck you privately. I will tear off a few hairs from your cunt and paste them on Boris' chin. I will bite into your clitoris and spit out two franc pieces…"

The reaction is a standard mix of 'lol', 'wtf', and 'OW'...

...at least, until Loyal Defender Of The Literary Mighty deborahkla charges in to express her displeasure with the mere posting of this blurb.

Why?

Because it was written by Henry Miller.

Apparently, if you are a Noted Figure Of Literature, you are incapable of writing bad porn, regardless of what our eyes might be telling us. She makes sure to inform us of this. She even did it twice, in the exact same wording.

Wait a minute, folks! This is HENRY MILLER!!! I remember when his books were banned! You have to remember that all his books - including Tropic of Cancer, considered his finest work - were originally published in the 1920s when words like "prick" and "cunt" and "fuck" were never, EVER spoken aloud outside a brothel--and certainly not by regular folks, in bed or out.

I have to disagree wholeheartedly on this entry in weepingcock. It may sound funny to all of you now, but in the 1920s it was downright revolutionary, and it continued to be until the books were finally published in the mid-sixties, almost 40 years after they were banned. Henry Miller was a true poet, the James Joyce of obscenity and smut, and those of us who write both owe him a debt of gratitude for bringing the wild and woolly and truly passionate side of sex out into the open.

Despite the condescending tone, the weepingcock natives are actually quite reasonable in pointing out that funny sex is not discriminating, and 'great authors' are not immune to mockery if they write and publish something weepingcock-worthy. For deborahkla, however, 'reasonable disagreement' translates into 'OMFG EVERYONE'S ATTACKING ME'. So she attacks back...despite not being attacked in the first place. (She has mastered the use of the c&p comment, for sure -- there are several in there that she copies verbatim into multiple threads.)

She also flounces out of the community.

The only problem there is that she keeps right on posting answers to comments, actively telling people that 'she's out of the community now'. Her logic flaw is pointed out to her numerous times.

She reacts, naturally, by doing the most reasonable, mature thing possible.

She messages the mods.

To both the moderators at weepingcock

Dear moderators,

I disagreed with a posting at weepingcock that did not identify a quote from Henry Miller and was attacked for it. When I reacted defensively, I continued to be attacked. Finally, cwitch pointed out that everyone was fair game, and I agreed with her, but this wasn't enough for everyone. They continued to attack me and I continued to attempt to deflect their attacks. When it became clear that no one was ever going to forgive me for having had a difference of opinion, I left the community. Two hours after I had left the community yet ANOTHER person came along and attacked me with yet another nasty, uncalled for comment.

I am hereby asking your permission to delete all my comments in the post in question so that I may no longer receive nasty comments from people. Please let me know if I have permission to do so. Thank you.

Yours sincerely,

DeborahKLA

(Of course just turning off comment notifications wouldn't be good enough -- the comments would still be there for people to make nasty, uncalled-for responses to, and she'd be obliged to go LOOK to see what those responses are, and then she'd have to respond, and...)

When she doesn't receive an answer in a timely fashion, she messages again:

Dear Moderators of weepingcock,

People continue to harass me with comments. Please give me permission to delete all the comments I made in the posting I referenced in my previous message so that people will leave me alone. Thank you.

Yours sincerely,

DeborahKLA

When she again doesn't receive a reply in a timely fashion, she assumes that silence means assent and begins deleting all her comments anyway.

It is, however, worth noting that the first message was received at 5:33am Pacific time.

The second one?

5:42am.

(I have already spoken with the mods, and they are very ashamed about their slothfulness leading to such a mishap. They promise that in the future they will be awake 24/7 to handle inquiries and will respond to all messages within a matter of seconds, even if that message requires a large multi-paragraph answer.)

One of the mods did respond, though, and she was kind enough to bestow a reply on us.

Oh, and those deleted comments? Can't escape the screencaps.

I don't know about all of you, but I definitely feel my ovaries incandescing right now.

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julian_black
2011-02-06 01:00 pm UTC (link)

Oh, god--she's 53 years old and can't resist the impulse to tell young whippersnappers on the Internet how they can't possibly understand the greatness of Henry Miller (who really loved and respected women! Uh huh! Really!), or that sex "isn't always lovey-dovey and pretty and sweet and politically correct."

And explaining that "No, no! You don't get it! It's a metaphor!" on weeping_cock, of all places? [facepalm] I can hear my neighbor's 13-year-old daughter roll her eyes and say "This is why old people don't belong on the Internet" from here.

Yes, Miller broke new literary ground with Tropic of Cancer. And like any novel that does something truly...well...novel, it's an important book. It made other, better books possible.

And yes, some contemporary readers might think Miller's work is still a joy to read. Personally, I find his rampant misogyny and reduction of women to parts (literally cunts) thoroughly repulsive, and I have no idea where deborahkla gets the idea that he loved and respected women (beyond, perhaps, Anais Nin). For all the raw frankness of his writing about sex, it's inescapable that he was terrified and resentful of women, while at the same time he desperately needed them (and the more passive and submissive, the better).

Reading her apologia for Henry Miller gave me flashbacks of a 20th century American lit class I took ca. 1988 that was all Miller and Bellow and Hemingway and Mailer and other members of the He-Man Literary Women-Hater's Club. Just...EEW. NO.

...

BRB, gone to get the mop...

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issendai
2011-02-06 06:09 pm UTC (link)

Reading her apologia for Henry Miller gave me flashbacks of a 20th century American lit class I took ca. 1988 that was all Miller and Bellow and Hemingway and Mailer and other members of the He-Man Literary Women-Hater's Club. Just...EEW. NO.

Oh god, yes. That was the literary canon when I learned SRS Literary Analysis, too. You had the Classic Canon (Plato, Socrates), the Other Classic Canon (Shakespeare, Dickens), then the Cool Canon, which was almost entirely the He-Man Literary Women-Hater's Club and their ladies' auxiliary. There were attempts to get less repugnant authors into the canon, but they were understood to be mostly medicinal: You took a black author and a couple of female authors for the good of your literary health, then went back to your tasty, tasty he-men.

So glad that's over. So, so glad. It's always weird to meet people who are still stuck in that era. It's done, we can leave, look, we've baked fresh cookies!

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seanchaigirl
2011-02-08 04:44 pm UTC (link)

Hey, look - we took the same classes!

Sadly, the most misogynistic lit class I took was taught by a self-proclaimed "extreme feminist" who also thought Henry Miller was a progressive male feminist and spent her time slamming any woman who thought otherwise. I was young and hadn't had much exposure to paradoxes like this yet, so I came out of the class quite confused. And no longer an English major.

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eleganceliberty
2011-02-06 07:27 pm UTC (link)

Yes, Miller broke new literary ground with Tropic of Cancer. And like any novel that does something truly...well...novel, it's an important book. It made other, better books possible.

See, I think 'Tropic of Cancer' is a case of "Just because something broke new ground, doesn't automatically mean it's good/immune to criticism".

I felt physically ill just reading that excerpt. ugh.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	julian_black 2011-02-06 11:16 pm UTC (link)
	See, I think 'Tropic of Cancer' is a case of "Just because something broke new ground, doesn't automatically mean it's good/immune to criticism". Oh, I totally agree. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	edgyspice 2011-02-07 07:42 am UTC (link)
	I love this comment. Yeah, when she started painting Henry Miller as some kind of male feminist, my eyebrows went so high they just about hit the ceiling. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	number13baby 2011-02-07 11:42 pm UTC (link)
	THIS. I remember when I first read Tropic of Cancer in high school it seemed, like, 90% awesome and 10% cringeworthy. And every time I've come across passages from it since, it would shift bit by bit until now it's 1% awesome (for the groundbreaking bit) and 99% cringeworthy and rage-inducing for the pure misogyny of it. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	amy_wolf 2011-02-12 11:07 pm UTC (link)
	I like how she was all "Obviously, they're not complaining about the clit-biting metaphor because they think it's a bad mental image to evoke in a seductive piece, but because they actually believe that Henry Miller wanted to bite a woman's clit off!" and had to defend him against the charge of clit-eating. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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