EROTICA: LITTLE BIRDS
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In a 1976 preface to one of her collections of erotica, Nin recounts, “I realized that for centuries we had had only one model for this literary genre–the writing of men. I was already conscious of a difference between the masculine and feminine treatment of sexual experience. I knew that there was a great disparity between Henry Miller’s explicitness and my ambiguities–between his humorous, Rabelaisian view of sex and my poetic descriptions of sexual relationships.”
Just how inspired Nin was by the challenge of writing as a woman in a genre so long dominated by men is apparent in the beautiful, sensual stories collected in Delta of Venus and Little Birds. The stories are sexy without falling into the sort of obsessive moment-by-moment description of the sex act that turns erotica into soporific porn. Nin, with her love for interesting, quirky people, turned her erotic stories into intricately detailed character studies, making them stand out in a genre filled with faceless couples and social stereotypes.
Goodman’s skill as a director is most clear in the final story of the evening, “Little Birds,” about a pedophiliac painter who uses his collection of caged birds to befriend a pair of schoolgirls he lusts after. In lesser hands, such a story might be too perverse to be fully appreciated. But Goodman allows the gifted Patrick Towne plenty of room to develop both the attractive and unattractive sides of the painter, both his whimsical playfulness and his sexual perversity, without violating Nin’s spirit by forcing the audience into a moral judgment. Ultimately this suspension of judgment allows us to come to a fuller understanding of the predicament of this isolated and pathetic creature.
