The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The Sexual Avant-Garde

Posted on | December 1, 2012 | 10 Comments

From the Wall Street Journal:

Writing to James Jones in 1965, [novelist William Styron] describes a weekend visit to the Vineyard by Jackie Kennedy: “We swam around quite a bit on the ocean beach and I rubbed a good deal of Sea n’ Ski foam on the widow’s thighs. . . . I hate to make it sound like such a sexy weekend . . . but our baby sitter got laid by one of the Secret Service.”

Instapundit linked that, although not under the category of “21st-century relationships” because, quite naturally, the decadent elite got there about a half-century ahead of the rest of us.

Category: History, Sex

Comments

10 Responses to “The Sexual Avant-Garde”

  1. Esau's Message
    December 1st, 2012 @ 3:19 pm

    I’m not sure they did get there early. The experimentation among the elite has been there since the days of Hammurabi. In fact, I think they are a little bit behind the times. I, for one, moved way beyond Sea ‘N Ski on the the widow’s thighs about two decades ago to things I will not describe here. Since the 1970s, the commoners have moved beyond the elite, at least in our sexual experience.

  2. K-Bob
    December 1st, 2012 @ 7:15 pm

    Ughh. I got as far as Styron’s “writing for me is the hardest thing in the world…”

    Obviously not engineering material. Wonder how he’d do working on a crab boat?

    I liked the movie version of Sophie’s Choice. And by “liked” I mean I was both horrified and mesmerized by such a dark story, and I never want to see it again. (That of course doesn’t mean it wasn’t well crafted.)

  3. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    December 1st, 2012 @ 8:21 pm

    The rich have always been more randy–I blame it on idle time. This seems like a good time to stick in Mary Woronov who was there in the sixties, seventies and eighties and of course still today…

  4. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    December 1st, 2012 @ 8:22 pm

    I think I have ready stories not too far off of this in the several books of the bible.

  5. Adjoran
    December 1st, 2012 @ 9:05 pm

    Sometimes you can understand a writer better by actually reading what he wrote instead of the movie version.

    For instance, while I like Bill Murray, the movie version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas doesn’t do the book justice. And Thompson wasn’t qualified to take a class from Styron.

  6. Adjoran
    December 1st, 2012 @ 9:10 pm

    Interesting that this single anecdote is all most seem to want to discuss about Selected Letters. But it was “the elite” of a previous generation who are morally suspect, of course . . .

  7. K-Bob
    December 1st, 2012 @ 9:32 pm

    Funny guy. The movie is about as close as I would get to bothering reading the man’s books. I don’t read dramas. Not even historical ones.

  8. Bob Belvedere
    December 1st, 2012 @ 11:32 pm

    NSFW.

  9. M. Thompson
    December 2nd, 2012 @ 1:10 am

    When you (or your good friends) have money, you can afford to play around. The rest of us are closer to the gods of the copybook headings.

    (A good friend in this case is one that would help you hide a body)

  10. K-Bob
    December 2nd, 2012 @ 10:29 am

    But I do read history books, and biographies. I highly recommend the early chapters in Manchester’s two volumes on Churchill. It describes the Britain of Churchill’s youth, and what the bluebloods got up to (IYKWIMAITTYD).