Buckley... As a young teenager, I was scarred (or at least deeply bemused) by a sex scene in one of his spy novels. In retrospect, assuming I'm remembering it correctly, I feel kind of sorry for Mrs Buckley.
"Hey guys, wouldn't it be a crazy prank if we could start a political movement in which not caring about or understanding policy is considered a virtue?"
"Nah, no one will ever fall for that."
"Ok, I'll be you a coke I can do it."
No, but an alternate-universe Queen of England was involved. The troubling scene was supposed to involve the sexual act being prolonged to an almost torturous degree, demonstrating the spy-hero's inhuman powers of sexual endurance. This incredibly prolonged sex act? A counted ten strokes (the hero was symbolically re-enacting a beating he'd received in an English public school).
At fourteen, I read this, and thought "That can't have taken very long... this is what I have to look forward to?"
be s/b bet, it's not my day for commenting
an alternate-universe Queen of England
I have *got* to read more fiction.
Particularly by well known conservatives.
When "conservative" and "alternate universe" appear in the same thread, I feel obligated to remind everyone of this.
Also: I'm not trying to detract from the ridiculousness of Libby's bear-sex story, but can we all agree that this somehow makes it all seem a little more plausible? I bet those bears get all the tail they can handle.
I should say that it's been literally twenty years since I read the book, so I may be slandering (hmm.. I'm typing) libelling Buckley. But I remember the scene rather vividly, as having been distinctly disturbing.
Saving The Queen, right? It was a less than fulfilling sex scene. Now Ayn Rand -- she could write sex scenes.
Yep. That's it. Nine strokes is "superhuman restraint"?
On the other hand, at least ex-CIA guys aren't big on exposing CIA agents.
And I did think that was decent of him.
Check out the Statistically Improbable Phrase.
Here's the passage in all its brief glory.
He rose, extended his hand, and brought her silently into the bedtoom. She pulled away the covers, dropped her yellow gown, and lay on her back as with her left hand she turned off the bedlight. The flames from the fireplace lit her body with a faint flickering glow. She arched back her neck and pointed her firm breasts up at the ceiling, and he was on her, kissing her softly, saying nothing. Her thighs began to heave, and she said in a whisper, "Now." He entered her smoothly, and suddenly a wild but irresistible thought struck him, fusing pleasure and elation—and satisfaction. He moved in deeply, and came back, and whispered to her, teasingly, tenderly, "One."
And a second,
And third,
Fourth,
Fifth,
Sixth—her excitement was now explicit, demanding, but he exercised superhuman restraint—
Seven…
Eight—she was moaning now with pain—
and, triumphantly, nine!
Emphasis in the original. "She pointed her firm breasts up at the ceiling"? For better reception?
Does "one sausage" come up a lot in Buckley's writing? Certainly not as a result, I hope.
And sweet mother of all things holy, did you have to excerpt that? I nearly choked to death on my caffeinated diet beverage!
This martian kabuki sex would be totally redeemed if it ended with The Count—they call him The Count because he loves to count—saying, Nine! Nine intromissions! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! (peals of thunder).
martian kabuki sex
You know, if you separate it from the quoted sex scene, this sounds as if it could be kind of fun.
You know, the mechanics of the whole event are more suited to a covert ops challenge-response protocol than anything else. She points her breasts at the ceiling; in recognition, he kisses her silently. If he got this far, she thinks, he must be Agent Wang with the blueprints—but she can't take any chances, so she quivers her thighs, and just like her handler told her he would, Agent Wang thrusts himself into her exactly nine times. Their identities are established.
"She pointed her firm breasts up at the ceiling"? For better reception?
Still laughing.
her excitement was now explicit
Does this mean that she's saying "I'm excited! I'm excited!"? Also, shouldn't she be moaning not with pain at the end? Should I even be shooting this enbarrelled fish? ATM.
Her thighs began to heave
I don't think thighs can heave.
I wonder if Buckley has tried this counting thing. I wonder if she laughed at him.
You could heave a thigh, though.
ATKFC.
Also, shouldn't she be moaning not with pain at the end?
It was the sweet pain of excitement, or something.
eins, zwei, drei, vier, funf, sechs, sieben, acht, NEUN!
Damn. This blog should be entirely devoted to ridiculing WF Buckley. Or, as I shall now think of him, The Count.
Do you want to start with a Brandomian analysis of making her excitement explicit?
No?
"She pointed her firm breasts, like bags of sand, up at the ceiling...."
Is it any wonder that, at fourteen, I was terribly puzzled by this as a representation of normal sexual relations? Conservatives have a lot to answer for.
LB, I really feel bad for your past self.
Let's return again to the "pointing" issue. We begin with the woman in question on her back:
and lay on her back as with her left hand she turned off the bedlight.
So her breasts are already facing the ceiling. However, the back-arching does some extra work:
She arched back her neck and pointed her firm breasts up at the ceiling
How to make sense of this? Are her breasts simply so firm that they can be pointed with a high degree of accuracy?
NB it's neck-arching, not back-arching, though I suppose that in that posture neck-arching brings back-arching along with it.
Perhaps, her hand now free from its bedlight-extinguishing duties, the lady in question was pointing them with her hands?
British royalty is trained in highly precise control of the pectoral muscles?
Breasts have different properties in Buckley's sexoverse?
This is just a symptom of the prioritization of style over policy. Buckley doesn't feel any need to work through the details of his breast-pointing scheme.
and lay on her back as with her left hand she turned off the bedlight.
Any guesses as to why he wrote this instead of the much more natural "and lay on her back as she turned off the bedlight with her left hand"? Maybe that's just what Writing's all about.
Well I think maybe you want to end the sentence with the action. "With her left hand" might be, er, anticlimactic.
But bringing the left-handedness of the action to the fore as he does in the original makes it seem as if there's something important about it. Still present if you rearrange it, of course, but less so because it reads more naturally.
I guess the real question is, why not just "and lay on her back as she turned off the bedlight"?
Part of the challenge-response protocol? "If I turn the bedlight off with my right hand, abort the mission"?
Isn't asking why Buckley is employing affected phrasing like asking why Courtney Love looks tipsy?
Obviously alternate-universe Queen had implants. (Otherwise, they'd sort of flop sideways.)
It should be noted that one sausage is what connects Buckley to Madeleine Albright.
Our sense that to Blackford, our hero, sex is awkward and unfamiliar, may be only half right. On page 105, we find him at church letting his mind wander:
Blackford missed—for a moment, until he decisively suppressed the nostalgia—the Greyburn College choir, half of it made up of boys from the Lower School with the bel canto soprano voices, half from the throaty Upper School, under the spirited direction of Mr. Clayton, the gifted pianist, organist, and cellist, for whom the boys in the choir would do anything, so transparent was his pleasure when they did it right. He looked at his watch. The services at Greyburn would be over by now—they began at nine—and the boys would be free to do as the pleased for the balance of the morning, the balance of the blissful morning, that went so fast.
I like this sentence from one of my favorite Deep Thinkers, Ann Althouse:
It’s memorable – I’ve always remembered it since originally reading it.
Is there some sort of insidious plot to start structuring sentences like Bush?
Are all pundits-cum-novelists no more talented than the average slash fiction author, or is it just the conservatives?
Are all pundits-cum-novelists no more talented than the average slash fiction author, or is it just the conservatives?
Thomas Friedman has not, to my knowledge, written a novel, but I am confident that if he had it would start something like this.
