★★★☆☆
Excuse me whilst I hide a blush! For the record, this is not the kind of book I normally stick my nose into, but it did come highly recommended it by one of my lecturers. For context, I was at the time writing a sapphic SM fantasy/romance. In all honesty, it was a rather stressful experiment, one which made me realise that writing about sex in any novel way without making it cringe-inducing, creepy or crass, is a serious challenge.
I did not read Delta of Venus at the time, mostly because I couldn’t find it at the American Library in Paris. Instead I read the first two chunks of Cities of the Interior, which was rather more surreal. My sapphic romance was then handed in and ended up consigned to exile in a sub-folder in my computer.
I did not look back, but then I went on a book-buying binge from my Goodreads ‘To-Read’ list, and here we are.
Under-eighteens, please leave the chat. It’s time to discuss some erotica.
After he had satisfied himself once with a wildness and violence that stunned her, he whispered, “Now I want you to satisfy yourself, fully, do you hear me? As you never did before.”
I thought this book was a novel, but it is actually a collection of short stories, all of which are by degrees sensual, scandalous or downright shocking.
One of the most interesting parts of it, I felt, was the preface, without which I think many readers are quick to dismiss this book as disgusting. It is important to read, because in it Nin rejects this collection as a representation of her art, saying she wrote it ‘under pressure from a client who wanted me to “leave out the poetry”‘. She states that it has value because ‘it shows the beginning efforts of a woman in a world that has always been dominated by men.’ It is important to bear that in mind, and to consider that Nin was writing in the 1940s, before the sexual revolution was even brewing.
She is rather cavalier and generalises about what women want – meaning that the modern reader cannot help but criticise this work as narrow-minded. But I did find the relevance surprising. And for something written so long ago, Delta does have content which even the most desensitised modern reader will find provoking.
She was not tempted to retrace her steps, to elude him. A feeling of exaltation was rising in her, of reaching that pinnacle of emotion which would fling her out of herself for good, which would abandon her to a stranger. She did not even know his name, nor he hers. The nakedness of his eyes on her was like a penetration. On the way upstairs, she was trembling.
You do need to be clear what erotica is, however. If you believe this type of writing is a sort of light pornography, designed to arouse the reader, then this will not meet expectation. Much of Delta provokes a feeling of disturbance, delving unflinchingly as it does into the minds of incestuous pedophiles, rapists and voyeurs.
Delta is not a romance. It is a book about sex. Though the writing is poetic, its focus is the brutal and animal, the lawless places within from whence desire comes. It does not feel safe, civilised or sensitive.
There is something quite Freudian about it, and those who read it at face value may find their sensibilities offended. But I do think they are missing the point. As much as this is a book about sex, it is less about bodies and more about the nuanced psychology of sex. And this is where the book does have great value, because it is deep, insightful and unflinchingly honest. There is something here for all genders, I felt, though Nin was more eager to talk about the feminine experience(s) of intimacy.
I cannot bring myself to give this book a stellar rating, just because of how disturbing certain sections of it are. But I don’t think Nin would particularly mind. In the end, this book still achieves its objective – it leaves the reader thinking.
Darker Fables 