This book studies the literary and cinematic functions of the pornographic as a development from a poetics of obscenity. It focuses on the developments of French, British, and American artistic pornography since the eighteenth century. Discussing female literary figures including Hall, Wharton, Nin, "Reage," Jong, and Shulman; such men as Cleland, Sade, Beardsley, Lawrence, Joyce, and Miller; and film makers such as Brakhage, Jack Smith, Bruce Conner, Bertolucci, Oshima, and Wertmuller; Michelson analyzes both the use of aesthetic pornography and the philosophical, cultural, and legal implications of its use. He proposes that realizing the obscene --in the sense of speaking the unspeakable-- is the principle aesthetic function of pornography.

'A hilarious book of bad times, bedtimes and benders. It is a kind of cool parody of On the Road.' New Statesman No Particular Place to Go (first published in 1981) relates Hugo Williams's journey across the USA on a three-month poetry-reading tour wherein he also hoped to discover some of the America he had imagined for so long on the strength of its all-consuming popular culture. ' No Particular Place to Go isn't a book that you'd take on a visitor's itinerary of the States . . . But the journey it describes is a potent one . . . It offered a poet's eye on modern culture, a cool, sideways perspective on its consumers and an enviable traveller's voice - not just unafraid of meeting the locals but positively keen to jump in and grab whatever was on offer.' John Walsh, Independent

An examination of the motives for murder from the bestselling author of The Outsider—“Colin Wilson puts the Manson murders in coldly sharp perspective” (Evening Standard). Why is the “motiveless” murder an increasing phenomenon today? What is the mentality behind the Manson massacres and other shocking cases of brutal killing—too frequent to be written off as isolated cases? In his penetrating exploration of murder, Colin Wilson suggests that the apparently meaningless violence so frighteningly prevalent today is the result of boredom and frustration induced by a repressive society. Particular individuals of high creative potential are thwarted in their natural drives and ambitions and are forced to tread the deadly path of homicide. Colin Wilson traces this path, describing in detail many instances of violent crime, and provides valuable insights that may point to an explanation.

Styles of Radical Will, Susan Sontag's second collection of essays, extends the investigations she undertook in Against Interpretation with essays on film, literature, politics, and a groundbreaking study of pornography.

This is the first book to explore the English-language literary scene in Paris after World War II, including the intersecting lives of Richard Wright, Samuel Beckett, James Baldwin, and Maurice Girodias.

This Companion offers an introduction to key topics in the study of erotic literature from antiquity to the present.