THE LESBIAN BODY

by Monique Wittig ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 5, 1975

It takes all kinds, but Monique Wittig's polyphonic-prose epithalamion for her lesbian lover--""m/y eater of ordure,"" ""m/y most foul one""--is likely to churn your stomach. (There's a feminist ideological explanation for the egoistic orthography of ""m/y"" and ""I."") The maenadic variety of sexual experience engaged in here equates joy with horror, happiness with sickness, rapture with cruelty, adoration with self-abasement. Even if sado-masichism turns you on--and even if mutilation, disembowelment, cannibalism and dismemberment delight your heart--the devouring, licking and sucking of oozy discharges and excrescences are excessive. Every few pages there's a scabrous anatomical recitative and in between are some ""indigo pink mauve violet"" flights of sapphic poetry. Her earlier books had the seal of approval of Mary McCarthy, Marguerite Duras and Alain Robbe-Grillet and this one is being launched by Margaret Crosland, so you know this is art--but does that account for its being as boring as pornography?

Pub Date: Sept. 5, 1975

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Morrow

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1975

Categories: FICTION