Pornographic narrative overflows the reader's imagination, reaching down at least as far as the hand that's not turning the pages. And conversely, pornographic writing captures intimate activity in written text, making fleeting images and intense sensation less a matter of the intimate moment and more a matter of public record. Porn inspires strong, diverse, and sometimes totalizing arguments. Members of sexual minorities credit it for their first moments of meaningful sexual education. Pro-censorship feminists insist that it's not representation at all but the practice of male domination.
Historians find materialist philosophy in the dirty books of the eighteenth century.
And literary critics fastidiously trace the balletics of text in the Marquis de Sade. My primary purpose in compiling this bibliography was to chart my own course through the welter of commentary and invective. I've been reading porn for much of my adult life, and, a few years ago, to my complete surprise, started writing it as well. Which caused me to wonder exactly what I thought I was doing. And who else was doing it.