FILTHY, LOVELY BOOKS: A Look Back at “A Sport and a Pastime” and “Tropic of Cancer”
Common is the overlap between the erudite and the erotic when it comes to fine art; rare, however, is the artist who can inhabit that Venn diagram with the aplomb of James Salter and Henry Miller. Both New York boys, both at various points ex-pats living off the degenerate succulence of France, these two writers have done for smut what Louis Leplée did for Édith Piaf – dusted her off and made her respectable. It is for A Sport and a Pastime (1967) and Tropic of Cancer (1934) that they are best known, and rightly so. Moist, engaging, morally unfettered, these two narratives – voyeuristic and fantastically omniscient for Salter, protagonistic and reflexive in the case of Miller – careen through the Gallic landscape with a fervor and dark beauty that must truly be sung for full effect. Not sung at the workplace, however, if one intends to keep one’s job.
On garter belts:
“Dean wakes first, in the early afternoon. He unfastens her stockings and slowly rolls them off. Her skirt is next and then her underpants. She opens her eyes. The garter belt he leaves on, to confirm her nakedness.” – A Sport and a Pastime
“O Tania, where now is that warm cunt of yours, those fat, heavy garters, those soft, bulging thighs? There is a bone in my prick six inches long. I will ream out every wrinkle in your cunt, Tania, big with seed . . . I shoot hot bolts into you, Tania, I make your ovaries incandescent.” – Tropic of Cancer
On the coming of night:
“The town is already in that rapid descent towards darkness, the lighted shops appearing, headlights, restaurants, the small cafés. Everything else is turning black in a great, incorruptible cycle, too serious, too ancient to vary, while behind the shutters and heavy curtains an evening life is measured out in mean portions, as exact as those of an old shopkeeper.” – A Sport and a Pastime
“Indigo sky swept clear of fleecy clouds, gaunt trees infinitely extended, their black boughs gesticulating like a sleepwalker. Somber, spectral trees, their trunks pale as cigar ash. A silence supreme and altogether European. Shutters drawn, shops barred. A red glow here and there to mark a tryst. Brusque the façades, almost forbidding; immaculate except for the splotches of shadow cast by the trees.” – Tropic of Cancer
On the utility of loins:
“Along the empty streets, yellow headlights of a car occasionally pass and bells mark the hours, the quarters, the halves. With a touch like flowers, she is gently tracing the base of his cock, driven by now all the way into her, touching his balls, and beginning to writhe slowly beneath him in a sort of obedient rebellion while in his own dream he rises a little and defines the moist rim of her cunt with his finger, and as he does, he comes like a bull.” – A Sport and a Pastime
“As she stood up to dry herself, still talking to me pleasantly, suddenly she dropped the towel and, advancing toward me leisurely, she commenced rubbing her pussy affectionately, stroking it with her two hands, caressing it, patting it, patting it. There was something about her eloquence at that moment and the way she thrust that rosebush under my nose which remains unforgettable; she spoke of it as if it were some extraneous object which she had acquired at great cost, an object whose value had increased with time and which now she prized above everything in the world.” – Tropic of Cancer
On the beauty of France:
“Beloved town. I see it in all weathers, the sunlight falling into its alleys like fragments of china, the silent evenings, the viaduct blue with rain. And coming back – this is much later – there are long, clear stretches with fields on either side, and we fly down an aisle of trees, the trunks all white with lime.” – A Sport and a Pastime
“Or wandering along the Seine at night, wandering and wandering, and going mad with the beauty of it, the trees leaning to, the broken images in the water, the rush of the current under the bloody lights of the bridges, the women sleeping in doorways, sleeping on newspapers, sleeping in the rain . . .” – Tropic of Cancer
On sexual fervor:
“He is overwhelmed. As his prick goes into her, he discovers the world. He knows the source of numbers, the path of the stars. Music pouring over them from somewhere, ah, from her white plastic radio.” – A Sport and a Pastime
“Naked and sexed she rolls among the clouds in the violet light of the stars. All of her, from her generous breasts to her gleaming thighs, blazes with furious ardor.” – Tropic of Cancer
On quiet meanderings:
“Past and haunting images of France, reflected over and over again like the facets of an inexhaustible stone. I walk through the silent house, the tall rooms chilled with winter light, the furnishings crossed by it, the windows. The quality of stillness is everywhere. There is no single detail that provides it. It exists like a veiled face.” – A Sport and a Pastime
“Sometimes I walk home alone and I follow her through the dark streets, follow her through the court of the Louvre, over the Pont des Arts, through the arcade, through the fents and slits, the somnolence, the drugged whiteness, the grill of the Luxembourg, the tangled boughs, the snores and groans, the green slats, the strum and tinkle, the points of the stars, the spangles, the jetties, the blue and white striped awnings that she brushed with the tips of her wings.” – Tropic of Cancer
On the transcendence of coitus:
“The sky is pale and drained of heat. In this silence like folded flags, Dean’s awareness of things seems extraordinary. He puts his prick into her slowly, guiding it with his hand. It sinks like an iron bar into water. Her eyes close. Her voice is cut adrift.” – A Sport and a Pastime
“Into that crack I would like to penetrate up to the eyes, make them waggle ferociously, dear, crazy, metallurgical eyes. When the eyes waggle then will I hear again Dostoevski’s words, hear them rolling on page after page . . . swelling like an organ note until the heart bursts and there is nothing left but a blinding, scorching light, the radiant light that carries off the fecundating seeds of the stars.” – Tropic of Cancer
On chthonic vapors:
“These slow days with their misty beginnings, the fields all cool and quiet, the great viaduct still. Everything is white, everything empty, everything except the earth itself which seems to have awakened. There is an odor in the air that means France still lives.” – A Sport and a Pastime
“With the close of day, pain rising like a mist from the earth, sorrow closing in, shuttering the endless vista of sea and sky. Two waxen hands lying listlessly on the bedspread and along the pale veins the fluted murmur of a shell repeating the legend of its birth.” – Tropic of Cancer
On coupling:
“The trees above them are rich with silence. From the radio stations of Europe music pours forth faintly in the cheapest rooms. Her portable is on the floor. The dial is illuminated. It glows mysteriously. Luxembourg is on. Geneva. The orchestras of the world beat softly. The muscle in her behind is tight. It feels like a string around the shaft.” – A Sport and a Pastime
“Suddenly, out of nowhere, two lovers appeared; every few yards they stopped and embraced, and when I could no longer follow them with my eyes I followed the sound of their steps, heard the abrupt stop, and then the slow, meandering gait. I could feel the sag and slump of their bodies when they leaned against a rail, heard their shoes creak as the muscles tightened for the embrace.” – Tropic of Cancer
On places far older than America:
“In the morning it is calm. He awakens as if a fever has passed. Europe has returned to its real proportions. The immortal cities swim in sunlight. The great rivers flow. His prick is large and her hand moves to it as soon as her eyes open.” – A Sport and a Pastime
“The sun is setting. I feel this river flowing though me – its past, its ancient soil, the changing climate. The hills gently girdle it about: its course is fixed.” – Tropic of Cancer
Fixed, indeed.
– GUTFIRE!
