The Naughty Bits (28 page)

In effect, the Song of Solomon is generally agreed to be a dialogue between two lovers (although I, for one, detect more than two total speakers, but that truly is a debate outside our scope), one called Solomon (not necessarily the famous king who appears elsewhere in the Old Testament), the other his unnamed lover, who, by some accounts, may have written the piece. Orthodox Christian interpretations attempt to downplay the hot and heavy eroticism in the Song by saying that the female lover is the Church, Solomon is Christ, and their love is the spiritual union of the material Christian apparatus with the higher spiritual forces.

Yeah right. The Song begins: “The song of songs, which is Solomon’s. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.” If the point here was supposed to be that the Church wants to merge itself with the love of Christ the Savior, there would have been considerably less distracting ways of saying it. No—the Song of Solomon is a love poem, and the love is a very corporeal one. That it made it into the foundational book of Christianity is a mystery beyond my comprehension. But, like the Psalms, here is a part of the Bible that can be read purely for the love of its poetry.

I’m touched all the more by the Song for the occasional odd chord it strikes. Such compliments as “thy neck is like the tower David builded for an armory” or “thy hair is as a flock of goats, that appear from mount Gilead” have perhaps lost some of their charm in the last few thousand years (a modern adaptation might be: thy hair is like dark-suited businessmen, leaping out of skyscrapers on Black Monday). And there are moments that seem downright overdone: “My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him.”

For the most part, though, the poem’s imagery is most pleasantly evocative. A few highlights: the lover says that her beloved “feeds among the lilies” and that her hands, when she rises up to him, are “dropped with myrrh.” And Solomon, meanwhile, says to her, “Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as honeycomb: honey and milk are under thy tongue.” And she back to him: “Blow on my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat the pleasant fruits.” Heart be stilled!

Fan though I am, I hadn’t read much of the Bible until I went to graduate school and, on a rather prolonged lark, decided to become a medievalist. As a result, I found myself a late twenty-something pagan having to read the whole of the Good Book. I did it straight through— not quickly, mind you, but steadily. What I discovered between the now worn-off covers of my red-letter edition corresponded so minimally to what I had anticipated I wondered if I had the right religion. The sex and sexual oddities were only some of the Bible’s unforeseen pleasures (others include the almost James Bond–like coolness of Christ, the beauty of Paul’s prose, the phenomenal stories of Job and Ruth, the bombast of Ezekiel, etc.). Having now read the entire Bible multiple times over, I am still a pagan, but I’m all for placing copies in every hotel room. It’s the most influential book in Western culture, and it’s a lot better than TV.

Acknowledgments

First off, I’d like to thank the friends and readers who pointed me toward their favorite bits—without you, I would have been in the unenviable position of having to rely exclusively on my own knowledge. Mike Moore deserves special mention for often reminding me of the actual facts of history (quite opposed to what I am wont to believe) and for catching my all-too-frequent typos. I also received enormous technical help from the
Nerve
gang, especially Isabella, permissions queen, my fabulous assistant, Jessica, and my editors, Genevieve, Susan, and Emily. Thanks also to my editor at Crown, Rachel Kahan, who let me keep many of the nerdy bits, despite the sales team’s admonishments. More than anyone, I have the founders of
Nerve,
Rufus and Genevieve (again), to thank, not only for letting me get away with the column in the first place, but for tolerating such iconoclastic indulgences as Naughty Pushkin Month and Burn Victim Week. It is a rare privilege for a writer to be able to invent his genre as he goes along; I thank them for having sufficient faith in me to let me loose. One of my advisors in graduate school once told me that you’re only as good as your colleagues; in my years at
Nerve,
I can only hope that that was true.

Credits

From
Money
by Martin Amis, copyright © 1984 by Martin Amis. Published in the U.S. by Viking Penguin and in the U.K. by Jonathan Cape. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc. and the Random House Group, Ltd.

From
Giovanni’s Room
by James Baldwin, copyright © 1956 by James Baldwin. Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.

Excerpt from
Crash
by J.G. Ballard. Copyright © 1973 by J.G. Ballard. Reprinted by Permission of Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, LLC.

From
Vox
by Nicholson Baker. Copyright © 1992 by Nicholson Baker. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc.

From
The Life I Lead
by Keith Banner. Reprinted by permission of the author.

From
Hell
by Henri Barbusse, copyright © 1995. Reprinted by permission of Turtle Point Press.

From
The Floating Opera
by John Barth, copyright © 1967, 1968 by John Barth. Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.

From
A Stranger in this World
by Kevin Canty, copyright © 1994 by Kevin Canty. Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc.

From
Falconer
by John Cheever. Copyright © 1975, 1977 by John Cheever. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

The Exeter Book
, translated by Andrew Cole. Reprinted by permission of Andrew Cole.

“This Condition” from
Almost No Memory
by Lydia Davis. Copyright © 1997. Used by permission of Salt Hill, a division of Syracuse University Press.

Excerpts from
The Name of the Rose
by Umberto Eco, copyright © 1980 by Gruppo Editoriale Fabri-Bompiani, Sozogno, Etas S.p.A., English translation copyright © 1983 by Harcourt Inc. and Martin Secker & Warburg Limited, reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc.

From Serve It Forth by M.F.K. Fisher. Copyright © 1937, 1954, 1989 by M.F.K. Fisher.

From
The Thief’s Journal
by Jean Genet, 1965 edition. Reprinted by permission of Grove Press.

From
Neuromancer
by William Gibson, copyright © 1984 by William Gibson. Used by permission of Putnam Berkley, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.

Excerpts from
Cat and Mouse
by Gunter Grass, English translation by Ralph Manheim copyright © 1963 by Harcourt, Inc. and Martin Secker & Warburg Limited and renewed 1991 by Ralph Manheim, reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc.

Excerpt from Pan by Knut Hamsun, translated by James W. McFarlane. Copyright © 1956 and copyright renewed 1984 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Reprinted by Permission of Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, LLC

From
Clit Notes
by Holly Hughes, 1996 edition. Reprinted by permission of Grove Press.

The Art of Love
by Ovid, translated by Rolfe Humphries. Reprinted by permission of Indiana University Press.

From
Fear of Flying
by Erica Jong, © 1973 by Erica Mann Jong. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company LLC.

From
Ironweed
by William Kennedy, copyright © 1979, 1981, 1983 by William Kennedy. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.

From
My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist
by Mark Leyner. Copyright © 1990 by Mark Leyner. Reprinted by permission of Harmony Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

From
The Plaint of Nature
by Alain de Lille. © 1980 Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto.

From
Near to the Wild Heart
by Clarice Lispector, copyright © 1986 by Editora Nova Fronteira, English translation. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

From
Sexus
by Henry Miller, 1965 edition. Reprinted by permission of Grove Press.

From
Beloved
by Toni Morrison. Reprinted by permission of International Creative Management, Inc. Copyright © 1987 by Toni Morrison, published by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. Reprinted by permission of International Creative Management, Inc.

Excerpts from “Elena” in
Delta of Venus
by Anais Nin, copyright © 1977 by The Anais Nin Trust, reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc.

From
Gravity’s Rainbow
by Thomas Pynchon, copyright © 1973 by Thomas Pynchon. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.

From
Portnoy’s Complaint
by Philip Roth. Copyright © 1969 by Philip Roth. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc.

“Roughhouse” by Thaddeus Rutkowski. Reprinted by permission of the author. Published by Kaya, New York 1999.

From
Justine
by the Marquis de Sade, 1965 edition. Reprinted by permission of Grove Press.

From
Rabbit Redux
by John Updike. Copyright © 1971 by John Updike. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

“Profile of a Human Being” from
In Praise of the Stepmother
by Mario Vargas Llosa, translated by Helen Lane. Copyright ©1990 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, LLC. Reprinted by Permission of Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, LLC

From
Breakfast of Champions
by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., copyright © 1973 by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Used by permission of Dell Publishing, a division of Random House, Inc.

From
Sexing the Cherry
. Reprinted by permission of International Creative Management, Inc. Copyright © 1989 by Jeanette Winterson.

About the Author

JACK MURNIGHAN received a Ph.D. in literature from Duke University in 1999 while editor-in-chief of
Nerve.com
, the website that pioneered “literary smut.” At Nerve he coedited (with Genevieve Field) the short story collection
Full Frontal Fiction
(Three Rivers Press, 2000). He now writes essays and fiction full-time. His stories have been chosen for
The Best American Erotica
in 1999, 2000, and 2001.

Translations © Jack Murnighan unless otherwise noted. Credits appear on p. 235.

Copyright © 2001 by Jack Murnighan

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published by Three Rivers Press, New York, New York. Member of the Crown Publishing Group.

Random House, Inc. New York, Toronto, London, Sydney, Auckland
www.randomhouse.com

THREE RIVERS PRESS is a registered trademark and the Three Rivers Press colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Most material in this book was previously published on the website Nerve.com.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Murnighan, Jack.
The naughty bits: the steamiest (and most scandalous) sex
scenes from the world’s greatest books / by Jack Murnighan.
1. Sex—Literary collections. I. Title.
PN6071.S416 M87 2001
808.8’03538—dc21 00–047963

eISBN : 978-0-307-42220-0

www.randomhouse.com

v1.0