Welcome to this cyberplace, set up as a space for news and reviews of A Gentleman of Pleasure and occasional jottings about John Glassco. Five years have now passed since publication, and I've moved on to other projects, but I'm leaving this up with the thought that those drawn to Glassco's writing will find something of interest.

29 August 2011

'Too Sexy for the Canon'



Now available online, Peter Dubé's thought-provoking essay on A Gentleman of Pleasure from the recent Montreal Review of Books:
...the space in the canon where one should find books intended to arouse both mind and genitals is still overwhelmingly blank. One must ask: if literature is meant, as some might argue, to reflect human life in all its complexity, why is it that of all our activities, sex alone is so rigorously excluded? If books are meant to move, provoke, and stimulate us, why is the stirring of sexual feeling marginalized? Of course, there are no simple answers to such questions, nor am I prepared to hazard any guesses of my own (particularly in a brief review essay), but at a moment in which much of literary culture is radically transforming, perhaps a glance at other basic assumptions is in order. Surely these questions matter? And equally surely, Busby’s fine treatment of Glassco’s complex, artful, and provocative body of work gives us an excellent opportunity to ask them.
More here.

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