Staring into the abyss

To celebrate the launch of Bookkake, we're considering the rise and fall of the literary nasty from Sodom to the Third Reich over on Dogmatika.

The well of transgressive literature is deep and, like the human psyche it reflects, bad things lurk there. Fiction that dares to broach the subjects others flinch at (whether to locate a greater truth, as an act of attention-seeking or just for the hell of it) has a rich if often concealed history. We live in an age where supposed sin is omnipotent, our senses have numbed to it and everything, no matter how debauched, is for sale.

We can look back with a certain grave smugness upon our primitive ancestors who were sheltered and oversensitive enough to be outraged by the likes of Tess of the D’Urbervilles or Molly Bloom’s fantasies. The fact is our liberal assumptions are not as solid as we would like to think and every now and then a work can come along that slips under our guarded sense of irony and seen-it-all-before complacency, books that question the consensus and test how genuine our devotion to free speech really is. Admittedly, in the past creating mass outrage was an easier thing to achieve. Deconstructionism, postmodernism, whatever you want to call it, came around and it was hip to exhibit any emotion except shock. For a time, disgust was the only sin left. But if the last decade has shown anything it’s that the old reactionary bastions of Church and State were written off much much too prematurely and they’ve awoke full of storm and thunder at their funerals. Now free speech is not something to be taken for granted, whether you're a children's writer or a "lyrical terrorist". There aint no doubt about it - battle has resumed.