Sex, like hemlines, follows fashions of its own, if novels are to be believed. The eighteen-hundreds was the peak era for the covert carriage assignation, and early-twentieth-century fiction revelled in sex al fresco-leave your britches on the riverbank, step right in for your marshy and mystical Lawrentian communion. The nineteen-sixties saw some awestruck, and genuinely ghastly, odes to anal sex by Norman Mailer and James Salter (from "A Sport and a Pastime": "She rolls over and in the full daylight he slowly inserts this gleaming declaration"). Sadism bordering on snuff was all the rage in the nineties, in the work of Dennis Cooper, Heather Lewis, and Susanna Moore. In the past decade, in what has been called the "millennial sex novel," masochism had a heyday, as sad-eyed young women in books by Sally Rooney, Miranda Popkey, and Raven Leilani slouched forward with plaintive appeals to be hit and hurt, just a little.
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BADDIE ISSUES
\"Wicked\" and \"Gladiator II.\"
LET'S MAKE A DEAL
\"Death Becomes Her\" and \"Burnout Paradise.\"
ANTI HEROES
\"The Franchise,\" on HBO.
FELLOW-TRAVELLERS
The surprisingly sunny origins of the Frankfurt School.
NOW YOU SEE ME
John Singer Sargent's strange, slippery portraits of an art dealer's family.
PARIS FRIEND - SHUANG XUETAO
Xiaoguo had a terror of thirst, so he kept a glass of water on the table beside his hospital bed. As soon as it was empty, he asked me to refill it. I wanted to warn him that this was unhealthy - guzzling water all night long puts pressure on the kidneys, and pissing that much couldn't be good for his injury. He was tall, though, so I decided his insides could probably cope.
WILD SIDE
Is Lake Tahoe's bear boom getting out of hand?
GETTING A GRIP
Robots learn to use their hands.
WITHHOLDING SEX FROM MY WIFE
In the wake of [the] election, progressive women, who are outraged over Donald Trump's victory at the ballot box, have taken to social media with public, vengeful vows of chastity. - The Free Press.
DEADLINE EXTENSION
Old age, reborn.
