Erotica goes mainstream
2004-09-20 11:15
Washington - Pornography and erotica have made their way into mainstream US bookstores with guides to a better sex life written by adult film stars, seven months after Americans expressed shock over briefly seeing Janet Jackson's right breast on television.
The baring of Jackson's breast during the Super Bowl in February fed a week of outrage and prompted a crackdown on broadcast indecency, but bookstores are now selling material reminiscent of a sex shop.
Porn queen Jenna Jameson has penned How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale, a 580-page volume filled with illustrations now in seventh place on the New York Times' best-seller list.
In the book, not stocked by US retail giant Wal-Mart, Jameson describes her nervous debut strutting her stuff in strip-clubs, the rape she suffered at the hands of an ex-boyfriend's friend and her drug addiction.
Regan Books, Jameson's publisher, has also released How to Have a XXX Sex Life by the Vivid Girls, a group of 15 porn stars giving advice on improving one's sex life, with tips that include the creative use of lubricants, vibrators, assorted sex toys and body parts.
Photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders published XXX: 30 Porn-Star Portraits, which includes pictures of porn stars and essays on the role of pornography in Western culture written by, among others, actor John Malkovich and British author Salman Rushdie.
Succumbs to temptation
In the fiction category, Joni Bentley wrote The Surrender, a tale of a former classical dancer who discovers she has an affinity for sodomy.
Grove Atlantic is publishing 100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed, an Italian best-seller based on a 16-year-old girl's diary detailing lurid sexual encounters.
The same publisher is releasing a history of human sexuality, O, The Intimate History of the Orgasm, and a history of prostitution, Love for Sale.
Even the most established US authors have succumbed to the temptation.
Tom Wolfe wrote I am Charlotte Simmons, a book about a university where students spend their time drinking, having sex or both simultaneously.
Even former Playboy covergirl and Baywatch star Pamela Anderson has joined the erotic novel club with Star, which Amazon.com describes as a "funny, sexy, and utterly compelling" book whose main character appears patterned after the author.
This mini-sexual revolution started two years ago with the release of The Sexual Life of Catherine M, a memoir by French art critic Catherine Millet, who described her numerous sexual escapades.
The book, in which Millet writes about her experiences at Parisian swing clubs, spent 10 weeks on the best-seller list, with more than 100 000 copies sold, despite negative reviews.