The novels are not gritty or realistic, nor do they take themselves very seriously. There is a particular pleasure in reading about pleasure: pleasure delayed and deferred, guilty pleasure, the pleasure of repetition and the problems of it. It sometimes feels as if I’m in a Jilly Cooper novel, on the wrong side of some rivalry, the butt of village gossip, or even one of her caricature academics – who tend to be bearded, left-wing and ‘bootfaced’, with dubious personal hygiene and ineffectual yearnings.īut if you set aside for a moment the ‘raunchy’ cover pictures, the breathless titles ( Score! or Wicked! or Jump!), and the publicists’ emphasis on wall-to-wall sex, you do find something worth reading and worth thinking about, which is pleasure, that most ticklish of subjects. In the Senior Combination Room one lunchtime recently, when I mentioned that I was writing this review, a Very Senior Person slumped forward with his head in his hands, muttering: ‘Oh no, soft porn!’ Other people either laugh, or look quizzically at me and hurry away. ’s work is not, so far as I know, much studied in universities.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |