In one of the silliest articles I’ve ever seen at the Guardian, Natasha Walter claims that sex and porn are difficult to write about. But I would suspect that this is one of those first person confessionals secretly disguised as a generalization-laden argument. For one thing, there’s nary a mention of the following words in Walter’s article: “penis,” “bukkake,” “vagina,” “ass,” “naughty bits,” “sperm” and “condom.” The article also makes the following claims:

“Pornography may not quite be part of mainstream culture, but it certainly makes its presence felt.” Hey, Natasha, stayed at a Ramada Inn lately? Beyond the grand selection of porn on the teevee, you can always count on the couple banging away in the next room. If that isn’t a sign that sex is inseparable from mainstream culture, I don’t know what is.

“But many people still feel a deep unease about the growth of pornography – about the way people within the business are exploited, and about the ways in which consumers find their imaginations colonised by a very particular and very narrow view of invulnerable sexuality.” Many people, eh? Care to name some names? Care to cite some examples? Come on, Natasha. I dare you to stand by your generalization.

“Yet most writers who take on the subject of pornography are men, and for them it is usual to adopt a pretty breezy, often humorous view of the way that pornography works.” I don’t know, Susie Bright’s pretty breezy and takes erotica seriously.

“these male writers”: You’ve only quoted Adam Thirwell! He speaks for all men and all erotica?

“But [men] shy away from communicating any moral outrage about the subject.” I don’t know. Steve Almond seems pretty outraged about human urges and what is represented beneath the sexuality.

“Perhaps that is the most important thing that we can ask of a novelist, that they should be emotionally alive as they respond to the emotionless world that is pornography.” Better to be emotionally dead when making jejune arguments about the evils of porn found in…literary novels? Huh?

British libraries are failing, but there’s a plan in the works.

Congratulations, Maud.

Now you can go home again.

Nadine Gordimer has been honored by Cuba.

And here’s my nomination for the cheesiest book of 2004: The Bastard on the Couch: 27 Men Try Really Hard to Explain Their Feelings About Love, Loss, Fatherhood and Freedom. There’s even an excerpt available.

Courtney Love: “She grabs a suitcase and drags it doggedly to the center of the room. She turns to me and barks, ‘Go through my lyrics. They’re great. I’m the best writer of this generation. And if you don’t believe me, fine. But I dare you to find a bad one in there.'”

The whiff of self-delusion’s overwhelming. And there’s more. Hypodermic needles, mammary scars, the works. Hope Strauss got paid extra for writing the piece. (via Syntax)

SUGAR LAND, Tex. — This is the home of Britton Stein — oh, not this sentence, but Sugar Land itself. Stein describes George W. Bush as “a man’s man’s man’s man’s man, a manly man, manning the men manning the best man’s man,” and Al Gore (not a man’s man and not a 2004 presidential candidate) as a “ranting and raving and roving and reeming little chihuahua who needs an Elizabethan collar.”

Forty-nine years old, Stein is a man subject to interesting, yet extremely odd Post reporting. He is a husband, a father, a man, a man’s man, a man’s manly man, and a Republican. He lives in a house that was built by a man and is run by a man, and if you’re not a man or a man’s man, then you’ll get your hair cut by a woman. His three daughters aren’t embarassed by the fact that they aren’t men, even though Stein is a man. But sometimes Stein isn’t a man or a man’s man, because he blows kisses to his wife and daughter (again, members of the Stein family unit who aren’t men’s men). He loves his family, even when there aren’t enough men’s men. But if you’re a member of the Stein clan, it’s possible to be a woman who eats, drinks, talks and spits out tobacco like a man’s man, dammit. Stein’s personal hero, George W. Bush, no longer drinks or spits out tobacco. But, by golly, he runs like a man’s man and sometimes looks like a cowboy, and that’s the ultimate qualifier. Stein believes that being the President is not about your political record, but about comparing size much as Fitzgerald and Hemingway (one not-so-man’s man and one man’s man) did privately once.

Is Stein real? Only Post reporter David Finkel (a quasi man’s man) knows for sure.