As the great utopian aspirations of the 1960s circled down the drain of 1970s malaise, the radical and transgressive drifted to the margins, with the cults and the fronts and the whacked-out hijackers. And then punk happened. And Reagan. And AIDS. Sex as art became even more political, a matter of life and death, and writers pushed it right up to the edge.
KATHY ACKER
“I dug her neck into my teeth. Then I nailed her hands against the floor.” (My Mother: Demonology, Kathy Acker, 1993)
VS.
DENNIS COOPER
“I spanked him, and not softly either.” (The Sluts, Dennis Cooper, 2005)
Judge: Naomi Jackson
JEANETTE WINTERSON
“She smells of rockpools when I was a child.” (Written on the Body, 1993)
VS.
ANNIE PROULX
“They seized each other by the shoulders, hugged mightily…” (“Brokeback Mountain,” 1997)
Judge: Sarah Nicole Prickett
THE LOST GENERATION AND AFTER · THE PRE-ULYSSES DIVSION · LOLITA AND EVERYTHING AFTER
