Men and women couple like machines. Love for them is a tingling in the epidermis, a surge of liquids, a rush of particles through the fibers, and nothing more. (Thérèse Philosophe)
(2) Formal and structural simplicity? Pornography of the enlightenment era also serves to tackle another misconception. It has been argued that, because the main aim of pornographers is to sexually arouse the audience, they are forced to include as many sexually explicit scenes as possible, leaving precious little room for plot development or formal intricacies. The pornographer “concocts no better than a crude excuse for a beginning; and once having begun, it goes on and on and ends nowhere”. Pornography lacks the beginning-middle-end form characteristic of literature. Yet, again, this gives us far from a waterproof criterion for distinguishing erotic literature from pornography. For instance, the structural complexity of the pornographic novel, Histoire de Dom B… Portier des Chartreux (1741), with its embedded stories and variety of narrators, has often been noted by scholars . The careful composition of Thérèse, where the author has arranged the parts to maximize the refraction, so that wherever the reader turns he seems to see throbbing sexuality, provides another counterexample.
(3) One-dimensional in its effect on the audience? It could be thought that sexual arousal is such a powerful, bodily state that it must block out all other functions, most notably our cognitive faculties. The philosopher Levinson claims that this is precisely what distinguishes sexual arousal from sexual stimulation, which he thinks is not incompatible with the cognitive activity required for aesthetic appreciation. Other philosophers have challenged this controversial distinction. Moreover, even if one were to accept the animal-like nature of sexual arousal, that does not mean that it cannot be cognitively rewarding and artistically appropriate. As one commentator of Cleland's Fanny Hill notes:
The stimulus of reading a scene in Fanny Hill makes in the reader's own nature the point made in the text. The reader may be moved to reconsider the merits of stoicism, revaluate the powers of the mind to control the body, reread his Descartes and think again of the dividing line between mind and the bête-machine. (Braudy 1991: 85)
(4) Simple to interpret? While questions of interpretation arise frequently in relation to works of erotic art, people rarely seem to have interpretive qualms where pornography is concerned. Indeed, if an interpretation typically attempts to account for those elements in a work whose presence is not immediately obvious to the target audience (Carroll 2009), there may seem no need for an interpretation in the case of pornography since it is all too obvious why such films or novels include one sexually explicit scene after another. Still, here too it is important not to jump to conclusions. There are (at least) two different kinds of interpretative projects one could engage in, each with its own set of lead questions. “What is the work about?” is one question one could ask. Another question is “What does the work reveal about the author or the time, place, culture, society in which it was made?” While the former is central to the discipline of art criticism, the latter question will usually be the starting point of interpretations offered by cultural historians, sociologists, psychoanalysts. These latter interpretations, where pornography is concerned, will be everything but simple given the incredible complexity of the pornographic landscape with its huge catalogue of taboos, body types, sex acts, and other things that get people's blood flowing. The other question—What is the work about?—seems less pertinent, especially in relation to the formulaic and repetitive video clips one finds on porn websites. Nevertheless, there are other types of pornography where issues about meaning and “aboutness” do seem highly relevant, such as the philosophical pornography mentioned above and the feminist pornography (especially in recent decades).
All the above being accepted, it is still the inescapable case that PORNOGRAPHY is erotica which is not to the taste of the person perusing it. Pornography is "stronger" than that which the person considers erotic. That, obviously is based in the person’s personality, sexual orientation, education, culture, sociological stratum, age, etc. Think, for instance that it is quite probable that homophobes consider a man having sex with a woman merely erotic, while finding two gays kissing pornographic.
The question, then is this: are Ted Mark’s romps pornography?
When they were published (late sixties, early seventies), they most probably were considered such. Today (2018), most readers would probably consider them erotic and parodic in their depiction of sexual prowess.
Ted Mark is careful in avoiding the description of genitalia (both male and female) otherwise than by using metaphors (except for breasts and nipples, which had become more or less acceptable at the time of publication).
His depiction of sex acts and willing females follows clichés that pervade the espionage genre since the Bond novels. They use the trope of the willing and highly-performant (often multi-orgasmic) woman in situations of high action or high danger situations, thereby making the whole sex performance totally acceptable, even unavoidable. The male partner, therefore, is not to be seen as an abusing person, just as an opportunistic one.
Where Mark’s prose rejoins pornography is in the somewhat lengthy description of sexual congress scenes and some repetitive rather visual adjectives such as quivering, bobbing, jutting breasts and pulsating bellies. But this then is the cliché lingo that also fits parody.
In conclusion, Mark’s novels are erotic-parodic pastiches which surf on the sexual revolution of western society during the 60’s.
THE NINE-MONTH CAPER
CHAPTER ONE
THE CHARTERED plane set me down in Miami at 2:30 P.M. By 3:30 the taxi had taken me to my hotel on the beach and I was registered. At 4:30 I was lolling beside the pool when I spotted the bikinied redhead turning a somersault off the high board. By 5:30 we’d gotten to know each other, 6:30 I picked her up for cocktails, 7:30 we had dinner, 8:30 we had an after-dinner drink, 9:30 we hit the first night spot, 10:30 the second, 11:30, 12:30 and 1:30 dittos. At 2:30 I made love to her in her room—-3:30 likewise, after which I left her. At 4:30 I was surprised to see her wander into the sleazy after-hours joint where I’d stopped for a night- cap. At 5:30 I was trussed up and spreadeagled with her half-naked and kneeling on my chest, holding a needle-sharp knife-point against my throat. The question was, would I still be alive to watch that tropical sun come up over Miami Beach at 6: 30 A.M.?
A good question. But before it’s answered, before that knife turns me into a jugular bleeder, or, hopefully, fate ties a tourniquet, I guess I’d better sift the hourglass for the pertinent sands. Fill in the spaces, as it were.
When the plane landed, somebody forgot to notify my stomach. It stayed 50,000 feet up, filled with nose-bleeding butterflies. They finally swooped down to join the rest of me, though, weighted, undoubtedly, by a combination of too much saki and sukiyaki. I’d left Tokyo in a hurry, you see, and my last Japanese dinner was still very much with me.
The Japanese pilot of the private plane must have appreciated this. The farewell grin he shot me was a denial of Oriental inscrutability. But he wasn’t altogether unsympathetic. In flawless English his parting words to me were a recommendation that I stop off for a bromo2 before I grabbed a cab to my hotel.
I followed his advice. It might have worked better if the damn cab hadn’t bounced around so much as it pogo-sticked down Collins Avenue that the bromo started effervescing all over again inside my stomach. It was a relief when I was finally ejected at the hotel.