Tuesday, February 19

Pornography on the autobus

Picture a bus packed with white collar workers tapping away on their laptops, getting a head start on the workday. Then picture me, wedged betwixt two such laptop tappers, doing my best to conceal the pornographic text of Michel Houellebecq's Elementary Particles.

I knew the book had "caused an uproar in France" and I gleaned from the back cover that one of the characters was a "raucously promiscuous hedonist." Even so, I could not have been less prepared for the events that begin in a jacuzzi, continue with discussion of Krause's corpuscles, and conclude with talk of saggy labia. I'm enjoying the book, but gawd damn it makes for uncomfortable bus reading. The wandering eyes of strangers, they make me nervous. To say nothing of the potential for embarrassment when I rise to exit the bus...

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