singular pleasures

the final pearl in our pearl necklace of erotica comes from harry matthews’ singular pleasures. mr. matthews has the distinction of being the only american member of the randy group of french oulipo writers. members of this group used wacky constraints (e.g. never using the letter e, starting each sentence with a successive letter of the alphabet, et cetry etcetry) in order to get their literary juices flowing. mr. matthews, like fellow member italo calvino, used constraints but never really elaborated on what they were.

singular pleasures is a collection of vignettes all involving masturbation in one form or another. it is the invisible cities of fapping. here are some good ones:

Masturbating as he lies on a floormat, his head propped on one hand, his eyes on a lighted television set, somewhere in Kyoto, there is a young man of twenty. The screen in front of him shows a young man lying on his side and masturbating while watching a television set on which a young man is lying on his side and masturbating while watching a television set on which a young man is lying on his side and masturbating while watching a television set whose image is too small to decipher.

Somewhere north of the Bering Straits, sitting on the edge of an ice floe, his face impassive, all movement concealed beneath thicknesses of pelt and fur, an Eskimo male of thirty-one is bringing himself to an orgasm of devastating intensity in a slickness of dissolving blubber.

A man of thirty-five is about to experience orgasm in one of the better condominiums in Gaza. He is masturbating, but neither hand nor object touches his taut penis: arranged in a circle, five hairblowers direct their streams of warm air toward that focal point. He has plugged his ears with wax balls.

(roth’s baseball glove, twain’s field, and now matthew’s seal blubber: if you haven’t already guessed—the secret theme of this year’s sexlit day is onanism)

see this list for more.