Notebooks

Apostrophe: Tales of Longing and Possession is a memoir, actually a set of interlocking memoirs written by me and my two lovers.  This is not traditional literature or commercial erotica as you'll soon see by reading the blog or the Chapter Excerpts. Traditional literature tends to "fade to black" or "euphemize sex" when the lights go down and the clothes come off.  We'll do neither. The language you find here may offend you. Some of it is as graphic, some might argue as pornographic as the raunchiest erotica. Does that mean it doesn't have a place in literature? Commercial erotica has a sort of "feel-good" happily ever after assumption that I find unreflective of real life. It also has some strict self-imposed taboos against "non-consent" and "underaged sex." We don't abide by them either. We presume we live in a culture where freedom of speech and freedom of thought are alive and well. "Apostrophe" stands in hopeful test of these presumptions.

The giants whose shoulders I stand on are as unorthodox a soupcon as you'll ever hope to find.

The writers and poets who've shaped the world of "Apostrophe" include:
John Updike, Milan Kundera, Vladamir Nabokov, Henry Miller, William Blake, Ursula K. LeGuin,William Butler Yeats, Mark Twain, Geoffrey Chaucer, Doris Lessing, Giovanni Boccaccio, James Joyce, George Orwell, Sappho, Anna Akhmatova and Vittoria Colonna, among other less known geniuses who've contributed to the long historical exploration of Eros in Western Literature.

The literary lyrics of Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan, when they sing of love, loss, desire and possession, have been a profound influence as I work and play.

The photographs of Diane Arbus, Man Ray and Lee Miller, the films of Phillip Kaufman, Maya Deren and Andrei Tarkovski have fed my soul, along with every artist who is fearless enough to look at sex as the powerful influence it is in our lives.

My writing companions will join me as guest editors as we compile our writings and interact with our community of readers. Serialized selections from our memoirs will soon be made available on the Apostrophe site. The full work will be either published traditionally or failing that, be made available for reader download in the near future. This is a work in progress, so we hope you will come live our adventure. Join us--Riccardo, Violetta and Sofia, in a frank, open discussions on love, loss, unconventional relationships and the nature of arousal and desire in a community of like-minded adult readers.

Some of the topics we're discussing include:
Love and Eros
Pornography--What it is and isn't
Apostrophe--Erotic Literature, Literary Erotica or What?
Rape--Does it have a role in Literature or Erotica

... This post continues!

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