Interview with Susannah Breslin
Susannah Breslin has written about sex and the porn industry for Salon, Harper's, Details, Nerve, Variety, Exquisite Corpse and other publications. She took the sexblogosphere by storm with the Reverse Cowgirl's Blog, then disappeared into the internet night. She recently published her first book of short stories, You're a Bad Man, Aren't You? from Future Tense Press. According to the press release, this book "heralds the unexpected arrival of Pornographic Postmodern Literature." We sat down together by email in early November, 2003.
Your book "heralds the unexpected arrival of Pornographic Postmodern Literature." What is Pornographic Postmodern Literature exactly?
Ah, yes, this is the question. You make up a term, people expect you to explain it. I think what I was trying to suggest is that there can be a kind of writing that is simultaneously literary and about sex. It is not pornographic, per se, in that it is not intended to arouse, at least not in the groin area. Like, Postmodern is the joykill part of it, but the Pornographic part of it still lets you have a good time. In latin, Pornographic Postmodern Literature means, "Not erotica, because erotica sucks."
What writers or artists would you cite as influences?
Well, I'm a big fan of Molly Bloom's masturbatory reverie care of James Joyce, and the blank space Addie created on the page in As I Lay Dying. Warren Ellis is nice; he makes me feel unlonely when I write about freakish things. Chuck Palahniuk is a wonderfully unapologetic admirer of the grotesquely beautiful, as well. The internet is a big influence. Why, just look at this.
So your book doesn't belong in the "erotica" section. Why not? What's different? Writers about sex sometimes say, "my work is erotica, not pornography," if they want to be taken seriously (though to be fair, this squeamishness has faded recently). You've flipped that around.
There are no pendulous breasts being fondled in my book. There are no quivering wankers spewing forth salutations. Erotica is trying to turn people on. Quelle bastardization of words, of language, of literature. Why not rent a porno, then? Take the quick route there. I don't think anyone who writes "erotica" is taken seriously by the true literary world at large. Name one. I dare you. I'm far less interested in the sex in my writing, and far more interested in the people behind the genitals. The porn director gone bad of the collection's title story, he's gone out of control in the world of pornography. But why? That's the answer I'm interested in uncovering. I'm not interested in penning an ode to somebody's labia. For what?
How much of your stories is drawn from things you observed in Porn Valley or people you knew or things you heard about? As an outsider, my (perhaps unfair) guess would be that most pornstars and directors and execs are kind of boring once you get past the fucking-on-camera aspect.
My writing is based in a mix of things: what I saw in Porn Valley, what I experienced outside of Porn Valley, and the things about which I only read. At the time I was doing the most freelance writing about the porn industry for mainstream publications, the industry itself was becoming increasingly more extreme, so as to compete with the unfettered content of internet porn. There were several directors pushing the envelope in whom I was quite interested; I wrote about the legal tribulations of several of them, in "Extreme Porn Crackdown," for Salon. I find these men to be amongst the most charismatic characters in the Valley. They are a walking embodiment of the uncensored mind at play. They are not boring — at all. On the other hand, watching two bored people have bored sex for several hours can be boring. It all depends on the circumstances under which you enter. So, you can go onto very conventional adult movie sets, as George Plimpton, god rest his porn loving soul, did for Men's Journal, or as Martin Amis did for Talk, god rest its porn loving pages. Or, you can take it down another circle. The times I spent on bukkake movie sets, where up to 100 men were milling about, masturbating onto the face of one woman, were probably the most, shall we say, impactful experiences that I had there. Generally, I'm interested in whatever the latest odd, extreme sexual thing is that people are doing. A story I wrote, "E is for Eunuch," was inspired by cruising around the image gallery under this subject on Body Modification Ezine. I wrote another story about forniphilia after visiting The House of Gord site. In both cases, these images were riveting to me.
You also took photographs in Porn Valley. What was that like? What kinds of images were you trying to get? How did that compare to writing about the Valley?
A few years ago, I was writing a story on bukkake for Nerve, and they asked if I would bring a camera along to take some pictures for the piece. I'd never taken photographs before, except for the usual crap around holidays, so shooting in the middle of a sperm-fly zone was a bit different. In a way, taking photos on the set of a porn movie is helpful because the camera provides a filter between you and the subject. I use a digital camera, which I tend to hold at crotch-level; therefore, I'm looking into the image on the screen on the camera, instead of directly at the people. I think its easier to get candid photos this way, an acute issue under these circumstances. I think the camera emboldened me, as well. Standing, as a writer, on the periphery, notebook and pen in hand, promotes a certain kind of passive disconnectedness from what's happening. But, for some reason, at a certain point around two-thirds of the way through every bukkake shoot, the one-handed P.A. at the center of the action would gesture me over to the middle of the concentric circles of men around the girl. I would venture in there, between all the busy skin-flute players. It seemed like I always ended up down on my knees to get the best shot, some fellow beating himself off to the right of my head. It was hilarious and horrifying and thrilling. I enjoy creating a world through fiction out of the sexually extreme things that I've seen, but there's something about the suspended visual impact of the images that I took there that continues to fascinate me. I don't know what images I was trying to get. I still don't know what I'm trying to say when I look at them. Maybe they're moments when the beautiful and the grotesque co-exist.
One of the stories in You're a Bad Man, Aren't You? deals with mannequin fetishism. You've also taken photographs of mannequins. What interests you about mannequins?
Well, that's an interesting question. Maybe, mannequins are to women what robots are to men. They're human-like and inhuman at the same time. They're caricatures of the female gender, which is one of the reasons why I'm interested in female porn stars. And, they're all over the place down on Hollywood Boulevard. There, they tend to look kind of sad and bored — and, they have incredibly complicated hairdos.
Many years ago, you had a weblog subtitled "wherein a writer attempts to justify the enormity of her porn collection." Just how enormous is your porn collection? And what's in it?
Well, that wasn't many years ago, was it? That was The Reverse Cowgirl's Blog, which exists no longer, and neither does my porn collection. I gave it all away, although I had about 150 videos. It had some real doozies in it, too. Century Sex was probably the jewel in the horror porn crown. An eighty-something-year-old woman does a sex scene — or, should I say, tries to do a sex-scene, except her co-star, Dick Nasty, surprise, surprise, can't perform. The wild thing about it is, in the face of all that, the fellow behind the camera proceeds to interview this woman about her whole long life leading up to this, as she sits on the edge of the bed, yanking at Dick. It's ... beyond words. Brides of Countess Recula was another wild one. That one has a blood orgy, an autofellator, and a crucifix made of dildos. Probably the most shocking video that I ever saw was a loaner from an editor at Hustler. It was scat compilation tape. There was an explosive scene in a German dungeon I will never, ever forget, as long as I live. And that, of course, is unfortunate.
You read from your book at the New Orleans Bookfair recently. How did that go? What kind of audience did you draw?
The New Orleans Bookfair was a great time. I read at three different venues around the event. The most entertaining was at the Bookfair venue, the Contemporary Arts Center, inside a yellow schoolbus that had been driven into the museum. It was a hot, packed schoolbus, and it was fun. From the booth where I was selling my book, it seemed, initially, people were, perhaps, a tad self-conscious about buying a book with tawdry themes. After the reading, it surprised me how diverse the people who bought the book were — a dreadheaded girl, a New York neurosurgeon, a homosexual fashionista. I never know what the hell people are thinking when I read from my stories. They looked interested. I mean, they didn't walk out of the hot steam-bath of the schoolbus when I said the word "penis."
Planning a book tour anytime soon?
I'd like to do some readings in New York and California. Right now, Future Tense Books and I are trying to get word out about the book. I want to change the world of books, really, one forniphiliac, one eunuch, one mannequin fetishist, one pornographer gone wild story at a time.
And you have some other book projects in the works ...
Right now, I'm working on a semi-autobiographical novel, If Only These Hands Could Talk. I like to think of it as Dante's Inferno meets Boogie Nights. It's the story of Xerxes Xavier, the Berkeley-born son of two intellectuals, who, in the wake of his father's death, propels himself down the truly great state of California to write the first great American novel set in Porn Valley. I'm looking for a publisher for another book project, The Fetish Alphabet, which was originally inspired by Edward Gorey's The Gashlycrumb Tinies. Each letter of the alphabet is assigned a freakish fetish, and then coupled with one of my flash fictions on the subject and an amazing art illustration by Anthony Ventura. I've also got various other book, art, photography, and comics projects going on in various stages. I think all of them are about sex. But, why, I cannot tell you.
Read an excerpt from You're a Bad Man Aren't You here.
You're a Bad Man, Aren't You? is available at Powell's and Amazon.
Photo of Susannah Breslin by Steve Diet Goedde.
