It seems like Danielewski has been very deliberate about everything he uses in the text, which makes me wonder about all the sex.\u00a0 I’m thinking back to when Professor Sample discussed an interview with the author.\u00a0 Danielewski said that nobody could think of anything about the text that he hadn’t already thought of.\u00a0 So clearly, he is aware of most of the elements in his text and has used these elements intentionally.\u00a0 This whole mindset seems the opposite of postmodern, but I digress.\u00a0 Back to the point – if everything is so deliberate, then what is Danielewski’s intention with all the vivid sex scenes?<\/p>\n
I don’t think that he is doing it just to be vulgar and off-putting, however a case could be made for that.\u00a0 Most of the book, starting from “this is not for you,”\u00a0seems meant to stop the reader from getting through to the end.\u00a0 With all the lengthy footnotes, references to appendices, and switches in narration, it seems obvious that he has intentionally made this book a difficult read.\u00a0 So I think an argument could be made that the detailed sex scenes are just another way to hinder the reader’s progress.\u00a0 But the harder he makes it, the more I want to get to the end.\u00a0 I wonder if he anticipated this reaction in his readers (I’m sure that he would claim he did), but I digress again.<\/p>\n
Anyway, although that argument could be made about the sex scenes, I plan to suggest something slightly different.\u00a0 The French refer to the refractory period after orgasm as “La petite mort,” which means “the little death.”\u00a0 This phrase is meant describe fatigue, spiritual release, melancholy, and other symptoms that\u00a0result after orgasm.\u00a0But it gets even weirder.\u00a0 A study published in the European Journal of Neuroscience <\/em>found that this is actually a fairly accurate term: “To some degree, the present results seem to be in accordance with this notion, because female orgasm is associated with decreased blood flow in the orbitofrontal cortex, a part of the brain that is crucial for behavioural control.”<\/p>\n Keeping this in mind, what can we make of all the sex and, more specifically,\u00a0after-sex experiences in the text?\u00a0 Well, to start with, I might argue that “the little death” represents a loss of self that happens during sex, which results in meloncholy.\u00a0\u00a0Death is the greatest representation of losing one’s self. \u00a0If we approach\u00a0the sex scenes\u00a0in these terms, it becomes easy to see why Johnny gradually becomes more depressed and, well, lost.\u00a0 Just like the labrinth, the vivid sex scenes seem to work as yet another metaphor for losing one’s self.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It seems like Danielewski has been very deliberate about everything he uses in the text, which makes me wonder about all the sex.\u00a0 I’m thinking back to when Professor Sample discussed an interview with the author.\u00a0 Danielewski said that nobody could think of anything about the text that he hadn’t already thought of.\u00a0 So clearly, … Continue reading Why so much sex?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[39,32,50,49],"class_list":["post-339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-week-6-mzd","tag-danielewski","tag-house-of-leaves","tag-la-petite-mort","tag-sex"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=339"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":344,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions\/344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}