My Life and Loves

"I only included this book to show that cocks went in cunts before 1961. That’s all it’s there for. It’s a dreadful book. Appallingly written. But the great virtue of Harris is that he fucks a lot, and talks very explicitly about his fucking in a way that is totally believable. When you were young, you would read 19th century novels and sit there thinking: Are they fucking? Aren’t they fucked? Does that mean they fucked? There are children, but where’s the fucking? The conventions were so absolute about the representation of sex that you are always slightly confused about whether characters actually had sexual intercourse. Frank Harris is there to clear it up. All that, and there’s plenty of shagging."