TS Eliot said that some one said:

“The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.” Precisely, and they are that which we know.”

So when melissa & I decided to embark on a project that aims to be, among other things, a, erm, conversation with tradition, we went to the NYPL to check out what we knew. Or ya know, to giggle at John Updike comparing dicks to various food groups (my favorite pastime and yours).

Melissa reports back:

The problem with literary men who write literary sex scenes is that there’s a completely imaginary line between pornography and literature, and pornography has no time for your posturing and your irony because people only masturbate sincerely*, and literature has no time for the pleasure of anything but literature, and good sex rarely makes for good literature, and pornography only yields to awkward and painful sex by accident.

*Bolded for WELL IT’S TRUE.