MARQUIS DE SADE – Philosophy In The Boudoir (1795)

About The Author: Guy who—according to biographical reports—probably only ever enjoyed subtly flavoured vanilla sex, but imagined a whole lot more—chiefly in an attempt to piss God off.

Synopsis: Couple of libertines invite innocent virginal girl 'round to their place for the night; evening goes swimmingly (if messily) until her mother shows up. Upon which it gets messier, of course. Theoretical element of the girl's schooling involves convincingly passionate and refreshingly wordy argument that sex is what shall cause us all to become one with Nature, usurp God, insist upon murder as foreplay, rush breakfast, and miss appointments.

Excerpt: O, God's unholy fuck! Thrice blood-splattered cock-rings of Christ! Let's shift, or I'll never restrain myself...

GEORGES BATAILLE – Story Of The Eye (1928)

About The Author: Librarian by day; partied with hookers all night and stumbled home to begin mind-blowing novellas at 4am.

Synopsis: Two French kids run amok throughout the countryside, fucking and killing in increasingly creative fashion. Story of the Eye is a quick read—less than 60 pages, in which every second word seems to be a verb or an aggressive adjective such as 'churning' or 'writhing'—and the cumulative experience will leave you breathless, acrid-tongued, as if someone pissed in your mouth while you slept drunkenly in unusually severe afternoon sunlight. Lovably appalling; transcendent; like the best three-minute rock'n'roll or three-second tequila ritual—with extra, extra salt.

Excerpt: Simone had found a mud puddle, and was smearing herself wildly: she was jerking off with the earth and coming violently, whipped by the downpour, my head locked in her soil-covered legs, her face wallowing in the puddle, where she was brutally churning Marcelle's cunt, one arm around Marcelle's hips, the hand yanking the thigh, forcing it open...

OCTAVE MIRBEAU – Torture Garden (1898)

About The Author: Seminal anarchist—but since politics are boring, we'll focus on the luridly beautiful prose he used them as an excuse for.

Synopsis: Begins with Western drawing-room discussion of whether everyone is, indeed, capable of murder; moves quickly into the Orient, where the narrator discovers an execution-ground doubling as a horticultural wonder. The flowers here grow bigger and brighter than any seen elsewhere—from a soil composed of prisoners hung bleeding from crosses and gallows inside the overgrown hothouse, and their eventually buried remains. It all has something to do with the decadence of the West, and 'oh, it's just an extremely sarcastic metaphor' credentials, but really... this is pornography, and it is marvellous.

Excerpt: On both sides were immense red flowers and purple flowers, peonies the colour of blood, and – in the shadows under enormous parasol-shaped leaves of petasites – anthurium that was like bleeding pleura seemed to greet us as we passed whilst revealing the torture route. There were other flowers, flowers of butchery and massacre, tigridia opening up from mutilated throats, diclytra with their garlands of little red hearts, and also wild labiates with firm, fleshy pulp and veritable human lips...

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD – The Great Gatsby (1926)

About The Author: Young, sad, beautiful, talented; drank too much, 'sold out' to Hollywood, died early and miserable. Brando would say hi, but you know...

Synopsis: Young, sad, beautiful kids being young, sad and beautiful. While drinking a lot. And being miserable. And dying early. Also the Great American Novel, so give up if you're trying to write it.

Excerpt: But there was Jordan beside me, who, unlike Daisy, was too wise ever to carry well-forgotten dreams from age to age. As we passed over the dark bridge her wan face fell lazily against my coat's shoulder and the formidable stroke of thirty died away with the reassuring pressure of her hand. So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight...

NORMAN MAILER – An American Dream (1965)

About The Author: Spectacular narcissist (but entertaining, and therefore lovable) with Hemingway-complex. And God-complex. And Whoever-Was-The-Most-Manly-Man-In-The-History-Of-Manliness-complex. A) Talented; B) Asshole; C) Knows it.

Synopsis: Uh... guy kills his wife, fucks the maid, gets drunk, embarks upon existential journey and—you know, I'm still not sure what this is about. It's all very violent and sexual and important. Portentous of something. Probably the next Mailer novel.

Excerpt: The grenades went off somewhere between five and ten yards over each machine gun, blast, blast, like a boxer's tattoo, one-two, and I was exploded in the butt from a piece of my own shrapnel, whacked with a delicious pain clean as a mistress' sharp teeth going 'Yummy' in your rump, and then the barrel of my carbine swung around like a long fine antenna and pointed itself at the machine-gun hole on my right where a great bloody sweet German face, a healthy spoiled overspoiled young beauty of a face, mother-love all over its making, possessor of that overcurved mouth which only great fat sweet young faggots can have when their rectum is tuned and entertained from adolescence on, came crying, sliding, smiling up over the edge of the hole, 'Hello death!' blood and mud like the herald of sodomy upon his chest, and I pulled the trigger as if I were squeezing the softest breast of the softest pigeon which ever flew, still a woman's breast takes me now and then to the pigeon on that trigger, and the shot cracked like a birth twig across my palm, whop! and the round went in at the base of his nose and spread and I saw his face sucked in backward upon the gouge of the bullet, he looked suddenly like an old man, toothless, sly, reminiscent of lechery...

© Reuben Ham

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