The Lewis Frumkes Writing Center

Although the erotic is part of all our lives, even in this day and age of full disclosure there is very little good writing about sex.  It may have to do with the constriction of the available language with which to describe body parts and the feelings sexual activity invokes -- language that can easily seem either too genteel and flowery, or too gutter-like and in your face, or, perhaps, too transcendent in the D. H. Lawrence mode. Or it may have to do with the soupcon of caution and vulnerability we all still feel around this disrobed subject.

Whatever the reason, in this course we will attempt to leap over obstacles the better to get to the pulsing heart of the matter.  We will read a curated collection of novels, stories and memoirs that attempt to portray the experience of sexual excitement (or, as it may be, malaise) in situ, as well as try stirring up a bit of dust with our own writing.  So here we go, into the breach!