Delany, Samuel R. Hogg (1995). Normal: FC2, 2004.

As a quick game take a moment to think of the most vile and perverse sex act you can. Really, push yourself. That sex act is in this novel somewhere.

(Corpses? Yes.)

A lot of the criticism or reviews I've seen for this novel, written way back in 1972 but never published until 1995 (and published by FC2, whose mission is "to publish books of high quality and exceptional ambition whose style, subject matter, or form push the limits of American publishing and reshape our literary culture"), spends a good amount of time confessing how harrowing the experience of reading it is, but that it's in the end so worth it, for the gift I guess we're given of a portrait so honest and revoltionary. Hogg, a rapist-for-hire who never bathes and regularly voids both bowels and bladder right in his crusty jeans, is—so the critics argue—repulsive and yet alluring, immoral and yet moral, hateful and yet capable of love. Delany, the point is, has found a way to make evil sympathetic.

I don't buy it, maybe because I don't buy the representation of evil in these pages. Surely I'm not the first person to read and write about this novel who has slid shamed eyes across the scattershot lines of gay pornographic fiction before, right? And Hogg's taken right out of good old raunchy gay porno. Yes, the critics allow this novel to be labeled as pornographic, but their attempts are to hoist the novel out of the gutter and into fine art.

To me, I think it just wants to wallow in the gutter. Who would read such a novel? Or, rather, who can enjoy such a novel? Men who violently and fiercely hate women, first and foremost, will find much to love here. Also certain scatophilic fetishists. I'll even admit to having been aroused by a sex scene or two, but was quickly put off by all the wretchedness that followed.

There's one other important demographic for the book, folks I'll call for lack of a better term Readers on the Wild Side. Reading this book reminded me of an entry I read recently on Stuff White People Like about the self-righteous joys of Having Gay Friends. Readers on the Wild Side love this book because it's so dangerous and because they feel their eyes are being opened to some difficult truth.

It's bullshit. The opposite is true. Hogg is Delany's silly but successful attempt to pull some pervy wool over the literary establishment's courageous eyes. It's such a trifling, bratty read. Everything in it is phonier than Juno.