the purest of treats

Q: Give us a writing tip.

2012-01-28T00:01:00.001-05:00

A: Say something and say what would have to be said next.

Padgett Powell

exercises in suffering

2012-01-27T00:01:00.002-05:00

Colin Cook

Q: For our readers who may not be familiar with your work, what’s the most accurate thing someone else has said about it?

2012-01-26T00:01:00.002-05:00

A: Maybe that it must have been written with great but aimless care.

Gary Lutz

exercises in suffering

2012-01-25T00:01:00.001-05:00

Philip Guston

If I say that we had sex, all I mean is that we possessed it one at a time while the other of us had to make do without.

2012-01-24T00:01:00.001-05:00

Gary Lutz

The Human Animal

2012-01-23T00:01:00.001-05:00

all things amazing

It is said, isn’t it, that you “make” love because it’s otherwise not really there?

2012-01-22T00:01:00.001-05:00

Gary Lutz

The Human Animal

2012-01-21T00:01:00.000-05:00

[source?]

Meanwhile, the smell of the sea mixed with the smell of wet linen, our naked bodies, and the come.

2012-01-20T00:01:00.002-05:00

The Story of the Eye

The Human Animal

2012-01-19T00:01:00.001-05:00

Fantomatik

HOW IT IS DONE

2012-01-18T00:01:00.001-05:00

There is a description in a child’s science book of the act of love that makes it all quite clear and helps when one begins to forget. It starts with affection between a man and a woman. The blood goes to their genitals as they kiss and caress each other, this swelling creates a desire in these parts to be touched further, the man’s penis becomes larger and quite stiff and the woman’s vagina moist and slippery. The penis can now be pushed into the woman’s vagina and the parts move “comfortably and pleasantly” together until the man and woman reach orgasm, “not necessarily at the same time.” The article ends, however, with a cautionary emendation of the opening statement about affection: nowadays many people make love, it says, who do not love each other, or even have any affection for each other, and whether or not this is a good thing we do not yet know.

Lydia Davis

The Natural World

2012-01-17T00:01:00.003-05:00

Deer

She shpritzes and shpritzes.

2012-01-16T00:01:00.001-05:00

“She pulls off her panties and stands before me with open legs, protruding pelvis, and slightly bent knees. Her rough, swollen tongue fills my mouth. Her belly pushed against my dick as if she were knocked up. The stiff little wads of her vaginal lips keep springing together like two halves of a rubber ball. She moans. Her abdomen works like a machine. She shpritzes and shpritzes. Our knees buckle. I shove my dick into her from behind, right up to my nuts, and I writhe as if I were touching a high-voltage line—while she, impaled, and with her tongue hanging out, rattles like a slaughtered calf.”

Klaus Kinski’s autobiography All I Need Is Love

The Natural World

2012-01-15T00:01:00.001-05:00

Deer

Re sexual intercourse: always disappointing and often repulsive, like asking someone else to blow your own nose for you.

2012-01-14T00:01:00.001-05:00

Philip Larkin, Letters

The Natural World

2012-01-13T00:01:00.001-05:00

Tiger

LOVE AGAIN

2012-01-12T00:01:00.001-05:00

Love again: wanking at ten past three
(Surely he’s taken her home by now?),
The bedroom hot as a bakery,
The drink gone dead, without showing how
To meet tomorrow, and afterwards,
And the usual pain, like dysentery.

Someone else feeling her breasts and cunt,
Someone else drowned in that lash-wide stare,
And me supposed to be ignorant,
Or find it funny, or not to care,
Even ... but why put it into words?
Isolate rather this element

That spreads through other lives like a tree
And sways them on in a sort of sense
And say why it never worked for me.
Something to do with violence
A long way back, and wrong rewards,
And arrogant eternity.

Philip Larkin

The Natural World

2012-01-11T00:01:00.001-05:00

Iguana

Sex is too good to share with anyone else.

2012-01-10T00:01:00.001-05:00

Philip Larkin, Letters

The Natural World

2012-01-09T00:01:00.001-05:00

Wolf

Another Saturday night staring at my computer and sucking cookie dough out of the tube.

2012-01-08T00:01:00.001-05:00

The Parts of the Body

2012-01-07T00:01:00.001-05:00

This is a great day to handle those real estate matters!

2012-01-06T00:01:00.001-05:00

The Parts of the Body

2012-01-05T00:01:00.001-05:00

Anyone know how to stop bleeding from a gushing wound?

2012-01-04T00:01:00.001-05:00

Urgent question.