{"id":1794,"date":"2010-08-23T12:02:13","date_gmt":"2010-08-23T19:02:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/2010\/08\/supervert_gets_into_her_head\/"},"modified":"2010-08-23T12:02:13","modified_gmt":"2010-08-23T19:02:13","slug":"supervert_gets_into_her_head","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2010\/08\/supervert_gets_into_her_head.html","title":{"rendered":"Supervert Gets Into Her Head"},"content":{"rendered":"

The last time I mentioned Supervert, the nom de plume<\/em> of a writer I know, the headline, Better Than a Review<\/a>, referred to a YouTube video<\/a> that a fan made about Supervert’s latest book, Perversity Think Tank<\/em><\/a>.
\n<\/a>The other day, an interview with Supervert<\/a> showed up on the Web site Dark Markets<\/a> that led me to a review of Necrophilia Variations<\/em><\/a>, his previous book, about death, desire and deviance, which puts the lie to that headline. The reviewer writes:<\/p>\n

Every once in a while, I find a book that affects me so greatly that it lingers long after it’s been devoured and placed back on the shelf.\u00a0 I have a feeling that SUPERVERT’s collection will be with me forever, worming its way deeper and deeper into my brain until its presence is untraceable.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Is there a writer alive who wouldn’t kill for a review<\/a> like Jessica Brown’s? I don’t know who Brown is. But she’s one smart critic. Her interview with Supervert is terrific, too. Here’s a sample:<\/p>\n

<\/a>Have you always been interested in things that are generally seen as depraved?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, always. When I was being pushed out the birth canal, I managed to lift my head and give my mother a chomp on the clitoris. Nothing has changed since.<\/p>\n

Of all unusual and unpopular practices, why did you choose exophilia and necrophilia?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is difficult to articulate the “why” of a choice to write about something. A few nights ago I had a dream in which a friend confessed to some eccentricities in her sexuality. She was seeking some sort of approval, which I gave her. I then informed her about a sexual pathology called “anusitis diametes” — a made-up condition, fabricated in the workshop of sleep. When I woke up, I marveled that my brain had invented this scientific-sounding term without my having the slightest idea what it meant.<\/p>\n

Writing is a similar process. Something appears in my head and a book is the record of my attempt to fathom it. This was especially true of Extraterrestrial Sex Fetish<\/em><\/a>. I didn’t choose the subject so much as it forced itself on me. I made up the term “exophilia,” but it was to describe something already flourishing like a tumor in my brain.<\/p>\n

Is there anything that does personally offend you?<\/strong\n\n<\/p>\n

Bad manners. Nietzsche defined philosophy as the ability to reverse perspectives, and the same could be said of courtesy. It is a matter of thinking the thoughts of others — the people around you, their needs, their movements, their reasons for doing what they do. A philosopher who lacks such an ability to get outside his own head can’t be much of a thinker, thus courtesy is a good indicator of a genuinely philosophical temperament<\/p>\n

What do you think about the American culture of celebrity worship? Would that be classifiable as a perversion?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Celebrity worship is very much the norm. Perversity is to turn away from it, to eschew the spotlights in favor of the obscure and the shadowy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s my kind of writer.
\n(Crossposted at HuffPo)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The last time I mentioned Supervert, the nom de plume of a writer I know, the headline, Better Than a Review, referred to a YouTube video that a fan made about Supervert’s latest book, Perversity Think Tank. The other day, an interview with Supervert showed up on the Web site Dark Markets that led me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1794","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-sW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1794\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}