Work It, Writers!

In an interview, novelist Allan Gurganus shares his thoughts on writing about sex:

I think one reason people now seem afraid to write about sex, they’re afraid to write about good sex. There is so much porn on the web and in the air, young writers bypass sex for fear they will make byproduct porn by accident. But you need not have gym bodies in your stories. All sex is not all good… And yet, for fiction’s sake, all sex is good. People talk about not being willing to risk bad sex on the page or between the sheets. I want to say, “Yeah, I know you have high standards. But it’s Saturday night and I’ll just go ahead and take my chances.” The right answer to most questions is usually Yes, All the Above.

All artists have to be whores, really. They really have to just get down, get on that thing, and work it — whatever that thing is for you and yours. [Laughs] I really encourage writers, when they’re writing about two people — or three, or six — entering erotic circumstances, to refrain from pulling back into the frozen Presbyterian safety of good taste. Good taste is our enemy. Good taste is what our middle-class upbringings have done to us. It makes us and everything be beige. It holds us back from some unbelievably essential material. We have a responsibility to our characters to allow them a sexual life such as we have. Or have had. Just because we’re living in a puritanical, sex-hating country doesn’t mean we should hold ourselves to its bogus standard. Subvert, subvert.