Erotic Literature is Rarely Recognized as Art; Most often, lumped with Erotic Stories, It is Set Aside
by: Tuning
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Word Count: 720
Erotic Literature is Rare. Even expending the effort to try to write Erotic Literature is uncommon because anyone with any writing ability will usually recognize the difficulty of having his writings taken seriously once they contain more than a few sentences depicting sexual activity. Almost any actual description of sexual activity relegates that particular piece to the pile of "erotic stories" and other pulp fiction which is assigned no "literary merit" by polite society. Further, erotic literature is even more rarely recognized as art in the United States than in other countries due to the U S's unconditionally retained and proud puritanical values and ideals which to a large degree disallow the selection of anything sexually oriented as literature or art. Some would go so far as to call erotic literature an oxymoron.
Certain "enlightened" segments of society in the USA simply call the "moral majority" morons and only the very large ones oxy-morons. This significant, more realistic, if much less vocal group has worked hard to now allow many great works of art to be viewed as art. The Catholic Church was not successful in attaching "fig leaves" to every historically revered penis on statues and paintings displayed across the country and the world as they once proposed.
Since prehistoric time, after all, representations of the nude body has been a major theme in art. Great fiction concentrates on human activities of all types. To exclude sexual activities from great fiction is unthinkable. But having to modify and abreviate sexual descriptions from works of art in order to retain the ability to have them seen and recognized as art, or as literature, is a sad but pragmatic fact of life.
Henry Miller once observed,"Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation. . .The other eight are unimportant," He expressed a broader view of the problem inherant in making people alter their art in order to have it fit what is acceptible thusly: "It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd." He later observed: "One of the reasons why so few of us ever act, instead of react, is because we are continually stifling our deepest impulses." Little wonder Miller spent so much of his writing life abroad. He could not ignore sexuality and still write. He stands as one of only a few recognized masters of that elusive commodity, erotic literature.
There is a significant portion of the population of the United States of America who claim to believe that a supreme being, built the universe in seven days, albeit many people may concede the days were longer back then. They say God breathed a soul into man which separates man from all other creatures on earth and then set him loose in the Garden of Eden to be tempted by the devil and then fail to obey God's will. This body of beliefs as it may be modified in other religions and sects, almost universally ignores scientific fact and relegates accumulated scientific knowledge to date into a separate but equally valueless pile of unenlightened facts as the pile of pulp fiction, to which we relegate erotic stories and sadder still, erotic literature. Miller says about God: “Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything."
When our forefathers wrote the constitution of the United States, they left out the Bill of Rights; in due time it was added. They also failed to recognize and write into law, as it were, the accumulated body of factual knowledge accumulated by man. In due time, it was denied by the religious zealots in favor of religious myths. No, not the Zealots in Iran and the Middle East espousing Jihad in the name of Allah. I'm referring to the closer more politically entrenched religious Zealots here in the good old USA. Perhaps it is time to write the Bill of Facts into law. Certainly it may be time for the enlightened majority to decide which brand of religious Zealot is actually more dangerous to our society. Which group is more pernicious, more deceitful in their intent. How long are we going to turn the other cheek, Jesus like, in our belief that it is important to respect their rights?
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