Implosions, interpenetrations, and dramatic shots abound in Emily Clayton’s risograph-printed How to Write an Erotic Novel, a perfect-bound collection of black-and-white drawings made by the NY-based artist over a year while writing an erotic novella. More concerned with tickling the boundaries of sexual representation than achieving purely pornographic effect, How to Write an Erotic Novel draws out the pleasures and discomforts of bodies and body parts as they overlap, break apart, and sometimes rattle into outright scribbles of frenzied energy. Drawn in graphite strokes that alternate between scratchy and sensual, How to Write an Erotic Novel visualizes the imaginative, unanchored brainstorm prelude to an erotic account rather than any fixed act itself. A quirky ekphrastic exercise, with a nod to Claude Cahun.
