Violet Malice takes a second bite of the cherry. On the hunt for a HOT and STIMULATING bedtime read. Violet has consumed another work of erotica this week. As she attempts to answer that yearning question: can a good book ever be as unputdownable as a good fuck?
Book title: Screen
Author: Barry N. Malzberg
First published: 1970
THE RAUNCH REVIEW: Violet’s Verdict
Quick synopsis: An everyday office pawn called Martin, who works for the New York City Welfare Department, goes to the cinema to get off. He steps right through the screen and is transformed into a film star who gets lots and lots of hot sex action. In just one weekend he finds himself married to Sophia Loren, romping with Elizabeth Taylor in a budget hotel after they escape from a half-cut Richard Burton and seduced reluctantly by Brigitte Bardot. He then decides to put it to the test: is real-life sex with an average woman better than his masturbatory escape hatch? The answer obviously (1. the author is a man; 2. who also happens to have worked in the NYC Welfare Department in real-life) is a resounding NO. The book ends with him fucking Doris Day, just so you know.
Front cover: Nice. Arty. Tits. Plus cinema ticket. (I suspect the author might like melons: a large slice of the book is focused on what you can do with a pair of tits and a match-fit tongue.)
Best two-word phrase in the book: Turgid genitals and/or directorial scrotum.
Best sentence in the book: (Please note the book is full of very very very long sentences.) And yet it does not stop there; this is Elizabeth Taylor and for her I carry on the longest sustained orgasm I have ever had in my life; far, far longer than the ten or twenty-second specials which I have managed for Sophia; it is as if the mysterious hidden triggers are blocked inside me on OPEN and I hang at the very crest of it for an incredible, for an almost frightening extension of time, feeling that because this is Elizabeth Taylor herself this time, I may literally never stop coming and my hands reach again for the remote hugeness of her breasts and I subside finally, breaking upon her, all sobs and shouts, mingled in the warm sheltering spaces of the room.
I also very much liked some part sentences including: I tried to listen to the spang of urine in the bowl; and throw my load all the way into her.
Sexual content: Packed with back-to-back fucking. The erotic descriptions are fantastic and funny. However, I do have a boner to pick! Our floored narrator is forever complaining about having to have sex with beautiful actresses. He paints women as horrifying sexual predators. Stunning women hideously jealous of each other. Most of the bonking he has is to placate these monsters. Obviously, this is his fantasy so he must like that sort of thing, but it does continue that worrying trend of men resenting and being threatened by women’s sexuality.
The bitterness/hatred really does jar in the end – our Martin does appear to really detest women. And like wanking. In equal measure. This is brought into sharp relief when he sets up a few out-of-office sessions with a real-life woman that also works at the NYC government department, who he cruelly describes to himself and the reader. He has sex with this 3D woman more out of boredom and because he can rather due to a genuine desire to feel someone else’s breath on his head. It is in this part of the book that the narrator betrays himself as wholegrain mustard misogynist outside the possible kink of his ruminating on Hollywood’s screen sirens.
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Overall conclusion: 7 out of 10. Fucking fantastic book. Brilliant writer of erotica. Despite the massive issues: the misogyny and the lazy fall back to weak man being hunted down by a pack of insatiable women, who just want to lie back and be fucked. Please note not all women want this. Not all women are greedy and selfish. It is not comfortable to be presented with the views of a narrator however flawed who vehemently dislikes and resents women, particularly women he finds attractive. The rules say that if you like someone, you should be nice to them.
Titillation station: Four fingered sausage roll (lubricated)
Food for thought: Finally, an interesting book given the rise in porn addiction and society’s obsession with the motion picture. Our collective loneliness and frustration. Maybe we should all give up on real-life sex. It’s much less stressful, less effort, less unpredictable and less risky to turn inwards and let the person that knows us most intimately give us exactly what we want. Ourselves. The question is how much of our sexual fantasies are within our control? Or how much cum does it take to satisfy a tractor?
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