As to "Don Juan," confess ... that it is the sublime of that there sort of writing; it may be bawdy, but is it not good English? I...t may be profligate, but is it not life, is it not the thing? Could any man have written it who has not lived in the world? and tooled in a post-chaise? in a hackney coach? in a Gondola? against a wall? in a court carriage? in a vis a vis? on a table? and under it?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Those whose goal it is to sell domestic dwellings hope to persuade their patsies that a house and a home are identical, and thus a...dvertise "a lovely quarter-of-a-million-dollar home." But since a housewrecker differs significantly from a homewrecker, the inference is clear that house and home mean different things, although the new gentility and sentimentality, issuing in the new euphemism, labor constantly to efface the difference. The Philadelphia Inquirer has spoken recently of boarding homes, and it will probably not be long before we hear of whorehomes, homes of prostitution, and bawdy homes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is ... useful to distinguish between the pornographic, condemned in every society, and the bawdy, the ribald, the shared vulgar...ities and jokes, which are the safety valves of most social systems. Pornography is a most doubtful safety valve. In extreme cases it may feed the perverted imagination of the doomed man who starts by pulling a little girl's braid and ends by cutting off a little girl's head, as each increasing stimulus loses its effectiveness and must be replaced by a more extreme one. This is particularly true of the pornography primarily designed to be brooded over in secret. But is quite otherwise with the music hall jokes, the folk ribaldry at a wedding, the innocent smut of the smoking rooms, where men who are perennially faithful to their wives exchange stories which release explosive laughter. Pornography does not lead to laughter, it leads to deadly serious pursuit of sexual satisfaction divorced from personality and from every other meaning. The uproarious laugh of the group who recognize a common dilemma--the laughter of a group of women at the story of the intractable unborn who refused to budge and merely shivered under the effects of the quart of ice cream hopefully eaten by its poor mother, the laughter of a group of men at the story of the bride who asked to be "frightened" a fourth time--is the laughter of human beings who are making the best of the imperfect social arrangements within which their life here on earth is conducted.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Old women snore violently. They are like bodies into which bizarre animals have crept at night; the animals are vicious, bawdy, no...isy. How they snore! There is no shame to their snoring. Old women turn into old men.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We need a new kind of feminism, one that stresses personal responsibility and is open to art and sex in all their dark, unconsolin...g mysteries. The feminist of the fin de siècle will be bawdy, streetwise, and on-the-spot confrontational, in the prankish Sixties way.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Here is a dirty book worth reading ... a bawdy which will be very useful to put Wyndham and J.J. into their proper cubby holes; ca...use Miller is sore and without kinks.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Susanna's music touched the bawdy strings Of those white elders; but, escaping,... Left only Death's ironic scraping. Now, in its immortality, it plays On the clear viol of her memory, And makes a constant sacrament of praise.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If "heavy metal" was the Anglo-American contribution to low culture, then "rap" was the African-American donation. And if "metal" ...came from the garage where Junior had been sent with his guitar and extension cord, then rap came from the street where young blacks played the only instruments they could afford--the mouth organ and the foot drum. Rap is performed in street clothes; metal in elaborate costumes of leather and fringe. In metal, the volume carries the aggression; in rap it is the words. Both are rife with adolescent misogyny, homophobia, and threats of violence. They are rude, bawdy, boastful, with a kind of "in your face" aggression (called "attitude") characteristic of insecure masculinity. Both musical forms were unique, however, in that they produced platinum records with little radio exposure. They found their audience on MTV.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »