Our own Chelsea Summers (Or “Chelsea Girl” as she used to style herself at her Pretty Dumb Things blog) has written an eye-opening article at Filthy Gorgeous Things about some smutty letters penned by James Joyce, he of the notoriously impenetrable fiction so-often inflicted on young and bewildered students of English literature. His lustful missives have the virtue of being in plainer and more functional language than we usually expect from Joyce:

My love for you allows me to pray to the spirit of eternal beauty and tenderness mirrored in your eyes or to fling you down under me on that soft belly of yours and fuck you up behind, like a hog riding a sow, glorying in the very stink and sweat that rises from your arse, glorying in the open shame of your upturned dress and white girlish drawers.

I won’t spoil more of Chelsea’s article, which is necessarily sparing with its quotes due to the copyright status of the letters and the demonstrated litigiousness of the Joycean literary estate regarding them. You’ll just have to read it.