Pollygraph (interviews with romance and erotica authors): Matthew Stillman
Genesis Deflowered: equal parts holy scripture and blaspheming scandal.
Why biblical erotica?
I was helping my friend Jill Hamilton of the brilliant and hilarious blog “In Bed With Married Women” do some research on a piece she was writing about strange erotica. So I started digging deep in the bowels of Amazon. I found books about having sexy times with snowmen and making them melt, forced impregnation by leprechauns, lactation werewolf stories and the like. I had never written erotica or been a big reader of it and rolled my eyes at this particular stripe that I was finding even though it fit the bill for Jill’s piece. But I followed the “if you liked this then you might like THIS” path that Amazon sends you on. I came across a book that was an erotic retelling of Mary getting pregnant.
I read the sample and, to my mind, it was awful writing. Cliche. Brimming with typos. Sloppy.
But the comments/reviews were amazing. There were not only lots of them but they were summarily glowing.
“This book made me feel closer to Jesus.”
“Now I know how scared and proud Mary must have been to have been approached by God this way.”
“To think that my Lord Jesus came from a union like that makes me feel good.”
I was amazed.
Something about the “message” of this book broke through to a segment of readers who clearly desired to connect their spiritual urges with their sexual ones.
I believe in that message very deeply – connecting the spiritual and sexual urges. I was confident I could do better. Though I am not religious at all I have a great interest in the impact The Bible has had on literature and culture. I have been a very amateur biblical scholar since college and I have great affection for the language of the classic King James Bible published in 1611.
Tell us more about Genesis Deflowered.
I worked really diligently to make the text I added to flow with and into the original text. So I was attentive to capture the style of the Elizabethan/Jacobean writers. With the help of an excellent editor, Veronica Tuggle, I used only words that were in use at the time and used Elizabethan grammar rules – which are different from ours. Knowing how deeply the KJV influenced the English speaking poetry tradition I tried to imagine that the version I was writing was the original and therefore embedded turns of phrase, rhymes, and fragments of poems from Donne, Keats, Swinburn, Suckling, Shelley, Byron, Tichbourne and many others to make it seem like these poets had picked up these phrases from a biblical source. I think using that poetic language helped the sweep of the narrative (such that it is) to move along and to read more beautifully.
But beyond that it is sexy as well. And it is sexy because it is restrained. Don’t get me wrong, there is certainly something sexy about orifices that are sopping wet and organs that have been used to fuck someone being all hard. But there is so much of that out there. I wanted to go with the “less is sometimes more” approach and really cover new ground in the erotica space. “Genesis Deflowered” does indeed stand alone in that regard.
And you should see me at the readings I do. There is nothing like being at a reading of biblical erotica.
Is this erotica with a mission, or is it simply an idea that grabbed you?
Both. I think there is very little erotica with a specific mission (no pun intended) out there. So in that regard I am glad that “Genesis Deflowered” has a point beyond pure titillation. Though I am delighted if people find it exciting on that level alone. If masturbating furiously to the tender love story of Isaac and Rebecca gets you off or the blatantly homoerotic Jacob/Angel wrestling scene turns you on – hooray. But broadly speaking I get grabbed by missions.
A few years ago I thought “Why hasn’t there been a documentary that explains the origins of poverty? And why does poverty persist and increase despite our actions?”…so I wrote a treatment, got a company to say yes, got someone to pay for it and suddenly I was making a movie about a huge issue of global significance. And that film went to the Cannes film festival and I spoke at the UN about it and its ideas four times.
Why do you think spirituality and sexuality are, well, such uneasy bed partners?
Well, I would clarify and say that religion and sexuality are uneasy bedpartners because religion is a tool of civilization, of order, of structure, and of hierarchy. So anything that is disruptive to that structure is constitutionally not a match. Sexuality is about feeling desire and acting on it, playing with it, and experimenting with tension and release, hot and cold, hiding and being found. These are all types of polarity where a circuit of energy can flow. But all those things compromise the integrity of the vision of social control that all religions have for the societies and cultures where they reside.
And that control can bear amazing fruit in some ways – look at our world and culture – Amazing.
And that same control can and does deeply damage people and societies – look at our world and culture – Horrifying and sad.
Religion is living by books and the written word. Sexuality is written on the body.
Religion is black ink on white paper that you look at in repetitive lines.
Sexuality is curves and textures, sounds, smells and sensations.
I can go on, but as the events that were happening that formed the mythology of Genesis and the texts of Genesis there was a battle of ideas of monotheism rising up against cult like Goddess worship in that part of the world. So conflict with the feminine and the sensual is built in from the beginning. For more on this I highly, highly suggest reading the book “The Alphabet vs. The Goddess” by Leonard Shlain.
What kind of reaction have you had to Genesis Deflowered?
Mostly positive for those who are willing to push through the first jolt of “this isn’t written in normal Engilsh.” I have had many people who have said that this makes the Bible more readable and makes the stories make more sense because I have made the characters more human. And they are reading for the dirty parts. I have received a beautifully touching and thoughtful response on the nature of faith and desire from a nun in the Order of the Sacred Heart who really appreciated the book. I have had a former priest cry in joy at it.
But I also have had a few right wing tea party Bible thumpers yell at me on Twitter. But none of them read the book. But a little bit of press on Fox News will bring those people to you.
Do the people around you know what you write? How have they reacted, or how would they react?
In my mind promoting a book like this requires you having to stand behind it. So I have done that by using my real name and really working to put it out there. Unafraid to mention it in conversation. Mostly the reactions have been good, congratulatory, and amazed at the weird specificness of it. But my wife is English (from Sheffield) and her parents are a bit conservative and in a bit of a slow motion hard time and my wife really doesn’t want to get into it with them. Which is totally understandable. But all of my English family otherwise knows about it and they have cheered at the ambitiousness of it.
Tell us about your experiences as an author. What have the big challenges and successes been?
The actual book writing part was largely a joy and fascinating. Talking and writing about the book is great. The part that is really hard for me is the marketing part. That is not only a foreign skill to me but a book of biblical erotica requires a bit of a different pitch than your standard issue erotica.
Do you see yourself as a writer who specialises in sexuality, or do you write in other genres, too?
I’d preface this by saying that I don’t really think of myself as a writer. I am someone who writes. Maybe even writes well. But I don’t self identify as that most romantic of titles…(sigh) a writer.
I write a lot about self development and creativity at my blog stillmansays.com. But I am also writing a part of presentation I’m making at the New York Federal Reserve in a few weeks on reforming the property tax code.
And I have written thousands of hours of scripts for television shows about food – I used to run program development at Food Network (a US cable network).
But at the moment I am writing biblical erotica and have something to say about that. And I love doing it and can see myself writing in this fashion for some time – especially if I break into a space where there is a real desire for it in a segment of the public.
What is next for you?
I am working on Exodus Deflowered and hope that this book is successful enough for me to merit working on down the entire Bible. Also I have recently discovered that steaming eggs for 9 ½ minutes in a steamer as opposed to boiling them makes superior hard cooked eggs with a shell that easily peels off on any kind of egg, new or old and never tears the white. The pressure of the steaming puts just enough space to get the porous shell to separate from the egg.
Genesis Deflowered
Where many see the Bible as the pathway to Heaven, others say it should be covered in a brown paper bag because it is so, so filthy.
There are hundreds of sex acts implied in the first book of the bible. How has nobody ever described how each of them would have played out in biblical language?
If the writers and translators of the Bible had been a little less prudish we might have an entirely different relationship between sex and religion than we have now. In Genesis there is sex before marriage, threesomes, incest, group sex, kinky fetish cuckolding, gay sex and more. Isn’t it time that you read the Bible for the dirty parts?
Using the seminal King James Bible in its Elizabethan English as spring board,”Genesis Deflowered” makes the beginning of the Bible come out as a sexy, readable and fun erotic novel.
“Genesis Deflowered “: equal parts holy scripture and blaspheming scandal.
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