“This special looks at the erotic in literature, which has a long history from ancient times to the present. To discuss erotica and our endless fascination with it, Jennifer is joined by a terrific panel, including authors David Malouf, Linda Jaivin, Krissy Kneen and writer and performer, Eddie Sharp.”
Excerpts:
JENNIFER BYRNE: Hello. I’m Jennifer Byrne, and welcome to this special on the erotic. ‘Arousing or satisfying sexual desire’, the dictionary says primly, which, given that one person’s perversion is another’s minor titillation, leaves a very wide field. From the shocking to the saucy to the sublime. Humans have always written erotica, from ancient times when bards and poets spilt their ink in the pursuit of pleasure, right through to the 21st century, which seen a proliferation of erotic writing on the internet. There just seems no limit to the insatiability of readers, and few boundaries left unexplored. So, we’ve assembled a terrific panel of guests tonight to discuss the erotic and our endless fascination with it. Let’s meet them now, starting with Linda Jaivin – a writer, translator, author of eight books, including the very steamy Eat Me, and most recently, A Most Immoral Woman. David Malouf, one of our most treasured writers, and of our deepest thinkers. His work is tinged with the erotic in its most sublime forms. Eddie Sharp is a writer, a curator and a performer who is the mind behind the highly successful, and often highly outrageous, erotic fan-fiction readings that have put images in my mind, some of which I will never, unfortunately, forget. And finally Krissy Kneen, author of the erotic collection Swallow The Sound, the memoir Affection, which explores her own addiction to sex, and most recently Tryptich. Three novellas pushing the boundaries of sexual norm. Please, welcome them all. Let’s start simple. When did you first encounter erotica, or just the erotic?…
JENNIFER BYRNE: Let’s actually just drill under a bit and therefore, what is… It’s a very hard question, what is erotica, and how does it differentiate – I’m sure you would all distinguish it from pornography – how?
KRISSY KNEEN: Oh, I think pornography is a very utilitarian form. It is there to get off. That’s what pornography is for. It’s a useful form. It’s something to create an orgasm. And I think there are people who intentionally write pornography, nd, you know, I’ve done it, and what you do is you time it. You make sure that they’re short pieces, you kind of guess by your own arousal when you have the orgasm. It’s there for a reason. It’s there to turn people on, have an orgasm, move on to the next scene. The erotic has that element built into it. It has a pornographic element built into it. But it also has so much more. And I think for me, I suppose as a writer, the erotic is the interplay of words and sentences, and how you put ideas together. That spark that have the same sexual energy, which may not be about sexual parts of the body, but they have the same kind of spark and that same charge.
Wonderful quote mentioned by one of the panelists -
Woody Allen once said, ‘With erotica, you use a feather, and with pornography, the whole chicken.’
To view the video or read the entire transcript: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/firsttuesday/s3528456.htm#
