Fiction International 22: Pornography and Censorship

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The body is in pain. The collective body is in agony. As much as the isolated inner cities, as much as U. S. foreign policy, as much as institutionalized voodoo economics, it is the flesh and blood body which is a site of oppression and potential rebellion in the United States.

Consider this image recalled by Dennis Barrie, director of the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati. One day in 1990, while the Center was displaying Robert Mapplethorpe's "The Perfect Moment," about forty uniformed police officers walked into the Center and forcibly removed the patrons simply because they were looking at Mapplethorpe's photos. It is that image, Barrie says, "that's going to haunt me for the rest of my life. Because that isn't our country, or it shouldn't be our country."

Contents of issue #22:

Inscribing the Body: An Introduction
Jennifer Lane / “Girl Talk”
Barbara O’Dair and Abby Tallmer / “Sex Premises”
Dion Farquhar / “Pure Porn”
Forum
Edith Wharton / from “Beatrice Palmato”
Marc Cholodenko / from “The Story of Vivant Lanon”
Lisa Duggan, Nan D. Hunter, Carole S. Vance / “False Promises: Feminist Antipornography Legislation”
Chris Martin / Transsexual Interview / “World’s Greatest Cocksucker”
Matias Viegener / “There’s Trouble in That Body: Queer Fanzines, Sexual Identity and Censorship”
Andrea Slane / “Unconventional Weapons”
Ennio Flaiano / “1963”
Marianne Hauser f “Scandal at the Bide-A-Wee Nursing Home for Mature Seniors”
Mira-Lani Oglesby / “Henry and Ray and the Old Guy in the Wheelchair and Two Cops and Me and Sean Penn”
Kathy Acker / from The Fall of the United States, “Murder”
Mel Freilicher / “Fight the Power: Diseased Pariah News, etc.”
Samuel R. Delany / from Citre et Trans
Raymond Federman / “Once Upon a Time in the Grass”
Carole S. Vance / “The Pleasure of Looking: The Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography versus Visual Images”
John Greyson / from “The Making of Monsters: A Musical About Anti-Gay Violence”
Barbara Henning / “Resumé”
Karl Keller / “What It’s Like to Grow Up in Manti, Utah”
Cris Mazza / “Hesitation”
Joyce Carol Oates / from “Martyrdom”
Rob Hardin / “Still”
Mark Wisniewski / “Full Circle”
Kevin Ray / “Obvious Advertisement: Robert Duncan and The Kenyon Review”
Mel Freilicher / “Prolog”
Edward Field / “Sex in Poetry, A Meditation On My Poem, ‘Triad’”
Greg Boyd / “Horny”
Roy Schneider / “Pubic Skies”
Richard Kostelanetz / “Flirting”
Tom Jurek / from Straight Fiction
Stephen-Paul Martin / “Double Bed”
Lyn Butler Oaks / “Twins”
Ronald Sukenick / “The Flood”
Jean Mainil / “Pornography and Academe: Compulsory Introduction”
Ben Marcus / “Urinating, A Forceful Endeavor”
Michael Brodsky / from * * *
Rikki Ducornet / “Picotazo and Extravaganza,” from Birdland
Pasquale Verdicchio / “Censoring the Body of Ideology: The Films of Pier Paolo Pasolini”
Stephen D. Gutierrez / “Wartime in Fresno”
Robert Coover / from The Adventures of Lucky Pierre, “Man Walking at 24 Frames per Second”
Harold Jaffe / “F2M”
Art:

Joel Lipman / “Jesse Helms’ Body” Chris Martin / “World’s Greatest Cocksucker” Tuli Kupferberg / “The Old Fucks at Home” M Rat / Three Polaroids Greg Boyd / Two Linocuts Gail Schneider / Acrylic on paper Tuli Kupferberg / “Some Kinda Asshole” Derek Pell / from “The Elements of Style” Contributors’ Notes cover design by David Quattrociocchi