Edith Templeton

The work of aristocratic bohemian writer Edith Templeton, now 86, is undergoing a revival. Last year Pantheon published the collection The Darts of Cupid and Other Stories, the title story of which appeared in The New Yorker in 1968. And earlier this month Pantheon reissued Templeton's novel Gordon, an autobiographical account of a sadomasochistic affair first published pseudonymously in 1966. Laurie Stone reviews Gordon (LA Times registration required) and compares Templeton to other notable women writers about sex.

To hear Templeton's voice is to realize how rare it is and how valuable. Compared to the assured, swaggering male sexual memoir, the female sexual story is just learning to walk, and for the most part it has ventured forth with decided leanings. Jean Rhys and Marguerite Duras list toward entrapment and melancholy. Anais Nin withholds candor. Pauline Reage writes from inside the trance state rather than about it. More recently, in "The Sexual Life of Catherine M.," memoirist Catherine Millet prettifies her appetite for debasement as a form of sacrifice and spiritual longing. Performance artists Holly Hughes and Karen Finley celebrate female parts and practices to defy their being veiled. Templeton has no political, moral or clinical agenda, no grievances, no record to set straight. She stands so squarely in the light, she doesn't cast any sort of shadow, and this allows the reader freedom to enter her world, a realm where precise description is everything, where we understand the way her speakers feel from the way they see things.

The SF Chronicle has a less positive review. Debra Hyde provides invaluable historical background on the early publication and censorship of Gordon and the recent Templeton revival. "Yesteryear's foul smut is today's literary work of art." You can read the first chapter of Gordon at the New York Times. (Links snagged from the always excellent Pursed Lips.)