Resumo de The Devil At Large: Erica Jong On Henry Miller

Sex : Conflicting Paradigms Erica Jong's The Devil at Large is a fascinating book. Her treatment of the most sensitive of all subjects, sex, in a language which only she is capable of writing, is both shocking and enlightening. It is a book on Henry Miller who, according to Gore Vidal, is the archetypal sensualist whose notorious Tropic of Cancer changed the boundaries of literature. But, the Devil is also a book on writers like D.H.Lawrence whose pagan attitude to Sex had influenced Miller. This volume is also about various conflicting paradigms on sex. The Devil at Large is Jong's first full-length non-fiction. Her realization that Miller's message has not been heard is the reason for this bold venture. She thought if young writers can pick up the mantle of Miller, the terrible boredom in fiction would come to a stop. Erica Jong makes a sincere attempt to remove all doubts about Miller. Is he a pornographer, or a prophet, or a perverter, or sexual liberator? All these questions are discussed with strong arguments, and, finally, she projects him as the liberator of sex. According to Jong, Miller saw sex in a cosmic sense, not in a genital sense.She pleads in her book not to equate sex with narrow promiscuity, but to learn to see it in a cosmic Millerian sense. It should be an attitude, an openness to the world, to the cosmos beyond. In fact, Miller is more a mystic than a pornographer, argues Jong. He uses the obscene to shock and to awaken. But once we are awake, writes Jong, he wants to take us to the stars. Erica goes at the root of Miller's predicament as a writer. The real problem in this world is that, she says, when a writer says sex, the reader projects his own view of sex upon the world. All misunderstandings about Miller crops up from the fact that there is no one definition of the word, sex. The irony seems to be that it is not Miller who should change his outlook, but the readers wo maintain a distorted view of life and the world. Sex, once upon a time, was a natural act. But, as Christianity overtook the pagan world, writes Erica, it became a shameful performance in privacy. Man and woman were seen as two natural halves of an organism that could, in harmony, produce and sustain life. So Miller's crusade was against the notions on which the patriarchial societies were formed. The basic argument is whether we should have a society in which our teenagers are compelled to hate or suppress their own most powerful urges, their own bodies, their own strong desires. Jong finds that the Hindu attitude to sex is more sensible. She is in search of a new paradigm in sex. I strongly suggest that everyone should read this book and join Jong in her search for the hidden cup of paradigm.

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