Granta 110: Sex (Granta: The Magazine of New Writing) - Softcover

Freeman, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1905881169 ISBN 13: 9781905881161

Publisher: Granta Magazine, 2010

Synopsis

Sex is our oldest obsession. For as long as we've been doing it, it has been used as a mark of decline and a measure of progress. It has been at the centre of rituals and responsible for revolutions. We make money from it, hide behind it, prohibit and promote it. It relaxes us, revolts us, hurts us and helps us. But whatever we think about it, however we do it, it defines us. Mark Doty examines the phenomenon of being a gay man who once married a woman rather than come out of the closet. Brian Chikwava recounts the history of revolution and sexual liberation in Zimbabwe. Jeanette Winterson offers up a wickedly irreverent modern-day myth about sex and the gods, and Jennifer Egan contributes a piece of fiction about a strung-out, disillusioned music producer. Other contributors include Herta Muller and Dave Eggers and Marie Darrieussecq . We're also pleased to present a previously unpublished piece of prose by the late Roberto Bolano.

About this title

Review:

... the mixture of memoir and fiction is unusually successful. JEANETTE WINTERSON's playful story of sex among the Greek gods, "The Agony of Intimacy", is the best I've read by her; ADAM FOULDS's portrait of an angry priest congested by his passion for an inappropriate boyfriend confirms there's no skin FOULDS can't get under; REBECCA LENKIEWICZ , like ROBERTO BOLANO, crams into a mere two pages an entire lifetime of roads suggested by a stranger's finger, roads beckoned down but not taken ... My personal favourite, "Silence", by the poet MICHAEL SYMMONS ROBERTS, describes a stint at a Benedictine monastery in Scotland. The author, given a sheet of Latin plainsong, reads that the service is called "None", the Latin for nine. The word obsesses him. "None as in nothing. No one." In that absent space, that letting go, he enjoys a supercharged encounter, "a profound reckoning with human aloneness". So, during prayer, did Teresa of Avila scale every height of physical pleasure and agony. As Father Benedict tells Roberts: "God is way, way, way beyond anything else we could describe as `experience'" - prompting the rebellious thought that this issue could equally well have been called "God". --The Daily Telegraph

The issue covers all kinds of couplings - mainly the dysfunctional and alienated, rather than the loving and rewarding kind - but one story stands out. EMMANUEL CARRERE's This Is For You ... It's a heroic piece of writing, and trumps everything else in the issue, for this simple reason: it makes the lonely journey to the last frontier of literary sex. --Guardian blog, Chris Cox

...it's an eye-opening voyage through different cultures and sensibilities, where sex provides a conduit to everything from the divine (Jeanette Winterson's deftly witty `The Agony of Intimacy') to the lascivious (Roberto Bolano's saltily voyeuristic `The Redhead'). Like a good lover, an anthology out to display a range of techniques, skilfully paced, and on that score this one's difficult to fault. --Time Out

..this issue [has] sent me into an ecstasy that is positively multimedic: check out these three short films inspired by pieces in the issue; this audio interview with the divine MARK DOTY; and EVIE WYLD's thoughtful, amusing online piece . My copy of the print journal hasn't yet arrived, but I already like it: if it's part of this pretty world, how could it be bad.

--The New Yorker blog

...the mixture of memoir and fiction is unusually successful. JEANETTE WINTERSON's playful story of sex among the Greek gods, "The Agony of Intimacy", is the best I've read by her; ADAM FOULDS' portrait of an angry priest congested by his passion for an inappropriate boyfriend confirms there's no skin FOULDS can't get under; REBECCA LENKIEWICZ , like ROBERTO BOLANO, crams into a mere two pages an entire lifetime of roads suggested by a stranger's finger, roads beckoned down but not taken ... My personal favourite, "Silence", by the poet MICHAEL SYMMONS ROBERTS, describes a stint at a Benedictine monastery in Scotland. The author, given a sheet of Latin plainsong, reads that the service is called "None", the Latin for nine. The word obsesses him. "None as in nothing. No one." In that absent space, that letting go, he enjoys a supercharged encounter, "a profound reckoning with human aloneness". So, during prayer, did Teresa of Avila scale every height of physical pleasure and agony. As Father Benedict tells Roberts: "God is way, way, way beyond anything else we could describe as `experience'" - prompting the rebellious thought that this issue could equally well have been called "God". --Nicholas Shakespeare, The Daily Telegraph

The issue covers all kinds of couplings - mainly the dysfunctional and alienated, rather than the loving and rewarding kind - but one story stands out. EMMANUEL CARRERE's This Is For You ... It's a heroic piece of writing, and trumps everything else in the issue, for this simple reason: it makes the lonely journey to the last frontier of literary sex. Guardian blog, Chris Cox --Chris Cox, Guardian blog

...it's an eye-opening voyage through different cultures and sensibilities, where sex provides a conduit to everything from the divine (Jeanette Winterson's deftly witty `The Agony of Intimacy') to the lascivious (Roberto Bolano's saltily voyeuristic `The Redhead'). Like a good lover, an anthology out to display a range of techniques, skilfully paced, and on that score this one's difficult to fault. ... --Rachel Halliburton, Time Out

...this issue [has] sent me into an ecstasy that is positively multimedic: check out these three short films inspired by pieces in the issue; this audio interview with the divine MARK DOTY; and EVIE WYLD's thoughtful, amusing online piece . My copy of the print journal hasn't yet arrived, but I already like it: if it's part of this pretty world, how could it be bad. --Macy Halford, The New Yorker Blog

About the Author:

John Freeman's criticism has appeared in the Guardian, The New York Times, and The Sydney Morning Herald. Between 2006 and 2008, he served as president of the National Book Critics Circle. His first book, The Tyranny of E-Mail, was published in 2009 by Scribner.

About this edition

• Publisher: Granta Magazine
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1905881169
• ISBN 13: 9781905881161
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288