Review of Fanny Hill by Cleland
But she never beat anyone to death?
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| Aside from this wonderful French addition I just spotted, the covers for Fanny Hill are all so ridiculously boring. |
Indexed (well, not Pius IV, but whatever)
Banned smut is my favorite fashion of smut. If your work has been blacklisted, then I am a fan. Of course, Fanny Hill: Memoirs Of A Woman of Pleasure is redolent in this charge. The work has been abused by parochial souls, dragged through puritan circumspect, called out and sinned against by one moral majority after another. Mr. J. Cleland knew something of the Orient, but, alas, this makes no appearance in this novel. Maybe I do wish to critique the writer. I shall do so but for, let us hope, the right reasons—none of which have anything to do with that ugly puritanism that has for so long shortened the sights of Occidental fuckery.I have enjoyed this novel very much. I only read it last week. Though I’ve known about, known of, this story for some time, I only downloaded it on my Kindle recently.
The plot is one of “corruption.” A beautiful theme if done correctly, corruption means here that some young female thing falls from stupid innocence to gutter-sucking puss-buggery. The hit-and-love dimension of my perfect soul is much angered that the teenage girl character, our Fanny, never learns the joy in blood-wet sex. Despite Fanny’s first encounters of the flesh being sapphist (and here Cleland does well), the silly tart never rams her forearm up anyone’s bunghole. The feminist in me cannot do without a binge of anal-boy rape. To shame, Cleland, to shame.
No Sex in Your Violence (yes, yes, and I've gotta machine head as well)
To an honest appraisal I conduct this swath of tilted letters. Damn the French, damn de Sade, from whom I've stolen my name. You’ve soured my brain to anything but what I want most now these days. No joy, let alone ecstasy, is really permissible without physical or mental, that is, all physiological really, destruction...The language itself is a treat; I can easily grant this. So much smut today is smut because it is shit. It is smut for the wrong reasons. It doesn’t even attempt perversion. Big, overzealous, perfidious, pestiferous diction is what I love. And, on occasion, Cleland’s “machines” (what a wonderful moniker for a ribald penis, no?) are wordsmith-worthy. At the very least, having composed this in the 18th century means that, by default, the language is already scrumptious—the English language. Nothing about this pornography in prose of Cleland has anything even remotely American about it.
Highly Recommended
Oh, and I did mention the Orient above because the writer spent some time on the subcontinent. This was when Mumbai was Bombay and colonialism was still profitable.In conclusion, I recommend that you consume Fanny Hill when wearing your dress, the summer dress that flaps about in the wind and is easily turned up. I did rub myself. This is smut, English smut. A minx in mind is a minx in heart is a minx in thought and dreams and soul and spirit. Yes, ignore my sad sadist reservations.
Fanny Hill is a treat and one that is to be enjoyed for the ages.
Love always, -V. de S.
