Events Feedback
New This WeekAround TownMusicFilmArtTheaterNews & FeaturesFood & DrinkAstrology
  HOME
NEW THIS WEEK
EDITORS' PICKS
LISTINGS
NEWS & FEATURES
MUSIC
FILM
ART
BOOKS
THEATER
DANCE
TELEVISION
FOOD & DRINK
ARCHIVES
LETTERS
PERSONALS
CLASSIFIEDS
ADULT
ASTROLOGY
PHOENIX FORUM DOWNLOAD MP3s



Hot in here?
PEN New England gets down and dirty



Dennis Lehane is one of the hippest names in mystery writing; he’s just finished overseeing a Clint Eastwood–directed film version of his Mystic River that will star Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon, and Laurence Fishburne. But as someone known for a grainy, hard-boiled realism, he’s probably not the first author who leaps to mind when the word "erotic" comes up. Erotic fiction, after all, has become an intellectually fashionable subgenre, with its own gatekeepers (say, Suzie Bright) and fetishistic focus groups (see The Best American Erotica 2003, The Best Women’s Erotica 2003, The Best Lesbian Erotica 2003, The Best Gay Erotica 2003). But that doesn’t mean Lehane doesn’t do sexy. And along with several other novelists and poets whose names aren’t necessarily associated with lascivious literature, he’ll be offering up some of his juicier prose next Thursday for PEN New England’s saucy annual fundraiser, which is titled "The Erotic Pen: Passion, Eros, and Naked Lust."

Erogenous zones get a lot of attention this time of year, but at this reading, some of the area’s finest scribes — including Lehane, Catherine Parnell, Lise Haines, and Karl Iagnemma — will fondle the imagination and stimulate the mind’s eye with their most salacious stories. Forget any assumption that author readings are genteel gatherings. Members and friends of this reputable writers’ organization are out to prove once and for all that smart is sexy.

Lehane, for one, has always taken his literary cues from a school of mighty epics he deems "bawdy, funny, lusty, and adventurous. I don’t think it’s remotely old fashioned or prudish, but what I find sexy is not putting gauze over the camera lens and shooting some surgically enhanced body double. There’s something sexy about letting your imagination run as opposed to having it all spelled out."

Imagination, after all, is the core quality of the erotic. For all the glut of quick turn-ons that fly off television and movie screens and resound from the radio these days, there remains something irrefutably sexy about being read to. Especially, according to the event’s originator and mistress of ceremonies, Elizabeth Searle, in frosty February, when folks are inclined to huddle together for warmth. "It’s not about the airbrushed scenes, it’s gritty real life," says Searle, the author of A Four-Sided Bed and Celebrities in Disgrace. "It’s showing that these writers can take up a subject like sex and really do it justice."

That’s not to say that there won’t be visual encouragement. Past years have witnessed readers in black velvet and corsets and slinky vinyl get-ups. Even Sue Miller (author of the Parkinson’s-disease novel The Distinguished Guest) has been known to slip into satin for the occasion. And speaking from experience, Searle notes that boas add "a nice touch."

The true challenge here is that each reader gets just 10 minutes to take listeners on a randy romp across the landscape of desire. In past years, such concentrated doses of aural pleasure have given the evening a marked intensity. "People get this real church silence," says Searle. "My husband says he can hear people’s mouths getting dry. There’s a very personal feel. And it helps so much to be in this dark setting in the theater. It’s much more a pillow-talk kind of thing than porn. You’re finding out all these intimate feelings these characters have. I like to be in a character’s skin when I’m reading fiction. What better time is there to be in someone else’s skin than in their most intimate, luminous, physical moments?"

PEN New England’s "The Erotic Pen: Passion, Eros, and Naked Lust," with readings by Dennis Lehane, Lise Haines, Scott Heim, Karl Iagnemma, Afaa Michael Weaver, Catherine Parnell, and Naomi Myrvaagnes, takes place next Thursday, February 13, at 7 p.m. at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, 949 Commonwealth Avenue. Tickets are $5 at the door; call (617) 499-9550.

BY LIZA WEISSTUCH

Issue Date: February 6 - 13. 2003
Back to the Editors' Picks
table of contents.

home | feedback | about the phoenix | find the phoenix | advertising info | privacy policy | the masthead | work for us

 © 2003 Phoenix Media Communications Group