How to Put Sex in a Novel
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When did literary fiction get so prudish? my colleague Lily Meyer asked in The Atlantic this week. Although raunchy romances are as popular as they’ve ever been, she writes, many realist novels are “evading sex” between men and women. I appreciate her distinction—that recent books are light on straight intimacy—because I do feel that many contemporary queer novelists have no difficulty exploring both the goofy and transcendent aspects of sex. In fact, reading their work helps clarify what is missing from novels that “hide in the cloud of metaphor,” as Meyer puts it.
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Meyer’s essay made me think of a forthcoming book that is very keen on depicting straight sex, Jan Saenz’s 200 Monas. It’s an unconventional slapstick adventure with the DNA of both a thriller and a romance. The story has a simple, naughty premise: Arvy Keening, a college senior, has inherited 200 doses of an experimental drug, Mona, that induces unprompted, uncontrollable orgasms, and she needs to sell all of the pills—fast. Arvy pairs up with the campus’s hunkiest drug dealer, Wolf, to get the job done. Wolf and Arvy are attracted to each other, which becomes excruciatingly clear when they both test the Mona cache, but their approaching deadline forces them to put off opportunities to act on their chemistry.
Arvy is also in a haze of grief—her mother recently died, leaving behind the pills. Her bereavement blunts her emotions, and for most of the book, the only feelings that break through the fog are panic (a stranger has threatened to kill her if she can’t pay back her mom’s debt) and horniness (she is, after all, in college). Her sexual fantasies become a crucial vehicle for character development. Saenz’s prose can be a little overwrought, but, as we learn early on, so are the effects of Mona. When the drug kicks in, no matter where the user is, it overpowers propriety and good sense, and it obliterates psychic defenses in the same way that sex can leave a person totally exposed, physically and mentally.
Over the course of Wolf and Arvy’s jam-packed days together, we see them both in a variety of sexual scenarios. These don’t just titillate, and they don’t just advance the plot. They show Saenz’s characters at their most vulnerable. As Meyer argues in her article, writing about intimacy is important because it opens up new channels for characterization. Sex requires people to communicate bodily as well as verbally. If they wish to dissemble, impress, or flatter, for example, they’ll have to do so in situations with greater stakes and fewer places to hide. These interludes are especially important in building a romance: They show not only how a character is thinking about themselves, but also how they’re feeling about their partner. As my colleague Faith Hill has written, “A frank sex scene can provide a wealth of information about two characters and the dynamics between them.”
After Wolf and Arvy off-load their stash, they finally have the time to hook up. There are definitely fireworks, but also plenty of awkward pauses and mundane annoyances. Because Wolf has seen Arvy under the influence of Mona, he feels insecure about her more muted reactions. But as she eventually tells him, no chemical high can replicate actual human connection. A drug can’t listen or take direction. “Sex is about communicating what the body needs,” Arvy says. Something very similar could be said about sex writing.
When Did Literature Get Less Dirty?
By Lily Meyer
A puritan strain is manifesting in realist novels as a marked absence of straight sex.
What to Read
A Woman in the Polar Night, by Christiane Ritter, translated by Jane Degras
In 1934, the Austrian painter Christiane Ritter, tired of her husband leaving her at home while he went off hunting in the Arctic, packed a bag and boarded a ship to follow him to Spitsbergen. I picked up this memoir feeling half-expert on the topic of the beauty of the island, after spending three weeks there, and was immediately humbled. Ritter describes an astonishing land of giant icebergs, gleaming pack ice, powerful storms, shining mountains. She is attuned to the sounds of the pounding wind—“insane music,” she calls it—eerie green moonlight, unending night, and the moment a glimmer appears on the horizon after months of darkness. She writes absorbingly about humans’ utter subjugation to the elements in this otherworldly place. After one tremendous storm that she has to face alone (because her husband has disappeared, again), she manages to dig out of the hut where she nearly froze to death. The quiet and tranquility of the world outside unnerves her. “Why have I been so shaken by the peacefulness of nature?” she asks. I felt her awe at the ferocious turning calm. — Deb Olin Unferth
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Why I Got Thrown Out of a Jasmine Crockett Rally
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“Are you Elaine?” she asked. I recognized her from the entrance of the event, where I had identified myself as she’d waved me into the building’s press area. Yes, I answered. “Her team has asked you to leave,” she said. When I asked why, the staffer looked at her phone and read dutifully: “They just said, ‘Elaine from Atlantic, white girl with a hat and notepad. She’s interviewing people in the crowd. She’s a top-notch hater and will spin. She needs to leave.’”
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