the most horrifying thing Piers Anthony has ever written

[hradzka]

Some of you folks may recall that a while ago I mentioned that the curious thing about Piers Anthony, to me, is that while people often dump on Anthony for being weird, skeevy, disturbing, and that sort of thing, nobody doing so ever mentions the stuff that *I* find to be really disturbing. (And remember, when we say "Piers Anthony" we're talking about the guy who wrote protoplasmic sex scenes and a story with a dude boinking a mentally retarded woman who was hooked up to a milking machine.) This is odd as hell, because I remember glancing at the book when it first came out, doing a massive double-take on reading that passage, and thinking, "Holy dogshit, this'll get him run out of town on a rail." Curiously, that never happened.

I'm referring to TATHAM MOUND, in which Piers Anthony's hero boinks a ten-year-old girl, using honey for lube.

Thereafter he had the favors of many maidens, some quite young. In the Castile tribe a girl was not supposed to indulge in sexual activity until she was married, which could be some winters after she was fully developed. Here she was free to do it the moment her breasts formed, or even somewhat before, if she felt inclined. Already he had learned enough to know that age was not the criterion; the will of the maiden was. A man could not force a woman, unless he was married to her; he could only do what she wished. Among them was one who seemed to be hardly ten winters old, and her body was not yet developed. She had no prior experience. But she desired the favor of the handsome visitor, and he was obliged to render it. She alone came to him purely for love; she was smitten with him, and afraid he would depart before she grew old enough to attract him, so she came now. It was his first conquest of a genuinely inexperienced girl, and he had the wit to proceed with caution, so that she would not be hurt. In fact, he moved so slowly that she grabbed his penis impatiently and crammed it into her cleft, which was overflowing with honey. In her naïveté she had used too much. Honey squeezed out and got all over everything, but it did make the penetration easier. He was afraid that it was hurting her even so, but she seemed not to care. Everything was clumsy. Evidently he succeeded in initiating her appropriately, despite his misgivings, for the following evening Mouse Pelt returned, and expressed her pleasure with him in a most thoroughgoing manner. What a difference experience made!

AUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH. OH PIERS ANTHONY NO.

ETA: it has been brought to my attention that this is far from the worst thing Piers Anthony has ever written. In his novel FIREFLY, Anthony wrote a detailed thrust-by-thrust (or, to be more precise, wriggle-by-wriggle) pedophilic sex scene, described by a five-year-old girl, who is depicted as quite literally asking for it. The five-year-old is being interviewed for the trial of the guy who was molesting her. She is eidetic and demonstrative, even to the point of having the (female) interviewer act out positions. At the end, the child realizes that her molester is In Major Trouble and starts crying, because she knows that telling the truth has gotten the guy sent up the river. She says she wishes she'd never done this, that she's sorry and such is the depth of her True Love that --

"So am I, dear," the interviewer murmured, wiping her eyes. "I wish I had
never done this."

* * *

The courtroom was quiet as the videotape ended. The Jury sat stunned. Several
jaws hung slack. One jury woman was openly weeping. No one had anticipated a
story like this.

The Judge refocused his eyes and mopped his brow with a handkerchief. "Is—is the
Defense ready to proceed?"

"We are, Your Honor. We believe that this poignant tape establishes that though the Defendant may be technically guilty of the charge against him, he is not morally guilty. He did not seek the girl, he did not force his attention on her. He demurred at every stage, by her own testimony. It was entirely voluntary on her part. In fact, they were lovers, in the truest sense, age no barrier. The law may say he is guilty, but the law is sometimes an ass."

Several members of the Jury nodded their agreement.

Then he turned to the Jury. "If there is guilt here, then surely it is that of the father, who set her up by incestuously toying with her. And of her brother, who practiced sodomy on her with a candle. Remember, it was to escape that abuse that she first fled and found the Defendant. The Defendant never hurt her. He did only what she asked. He gave her what no other man did. He loved her. We may take issue with the manner of the expression of that love, but we cannot deny its reality. She came to him of her own accord, again and again, because what he offered her was so much better than what she received at home. Her family should be on trial!"

Spoiler: the dude goes to prison anyway.

Incidentally, when the little girl (who goes by "Nymph" in the story) tells the molester about her home life, he explains, and that explanation leads into their sex scene. Thusly:

"Your father wants to have sex with you, but doesn't dare, and your brother wants to, but doesn't know how."

"What's sex?"

"That's when a man and a woman—a grown man and grown woman—get together and do it. Children aren't supposed to.'

She didn't know what he meant. A look of great perplexity showed on her face.

"What do they do?"

"They take off their clothes and lie on a bed and, well, they do it."

"What do they do? I don't understand!"

"Well, he puts his—I guess you don't know the words—his thing in her thing."

"Why?"

"Because it's a hell of a lot of fun, kid!"

"You mean like when Daddy plays with me?"

"Yes, only more so. A lot more so."

"I want to do it!" she told him.

I refuse to transcribe any more of it.

Comments

[sharpest_asp]

I hated that book with a passion.

Thank you for reminding me.

[niqaeli]

...her naivete was not in using too much honey, I would say. (Seriously? Honey's sticky. How is this a lube source anyone would think of?)

Also, jfc, Piers Anthony's id is a creepy place. That he has much displayed to the world many times over. *grabs for brain blaech*

[cheyinka]

AUGGGGGGGGGGH why did I click :( :( :( :( :(

[staranise]

...Well, that was traumatic.

[mllesays]

Ew ew ew ew ew ew.

[saralakali]

Yeah, I recently culled two boxes of paperbacks from my collection. Everything I had of his (except a volume of short stories that he edited) went. None of it was a creepy as that, though I did think his Tarot trilogy was just an excuse to hit every trigger he could think of.

[finch]

a mentally retarded woman who was hooked up to a milking machine

... okay, I've got to ask if there's context for that.

[rydra_wong]

Not really, no. IIRC, the premise of the story is basically "Wouldn't it be horrific yet sexy if there was an AU where women were treated like domesticated cattle!" Hence, kept in a barn, bred into profound mental disability, hooked up to a milking machine, etc.. Under these circumstances, our AU-hopping hero is naturally overcome by the urge to fuck her.

I believe this was the point, in my early teens, when I realized there was something deeply wrong not only with Anthony but also with Harlan Ellison's editorial choices.

[finch]

Sometimes I think I'm lucky that I just never came across any of his books for until I was in college...

[shadowvalkyrie]

Holy shit, EW! (I have no idea where I'd go for permanent trauma if I didn't have your book, er, un-recs.)

[cheyinka]

Wow, your second and third excerpts are even worse than the first.... they're not as icky, but they're horrifying in a whole different kind of way.

I know I read some Xanth books years ago, I don't remember any of them being quite this..... auuuuugh-tastic.

[niqaeli]

No, your memory doesn't fail you: Xanth is at least more subtle in its creepface. Well, the first fifteen or so, anyway. I can't speak past that, I stopped reading. I was admittedly 15 and much less educated and aware of various issues but I still had a decent creep-meter and they basically were pinging me on a subconscious level rather than an overt one. It didn't help, but I gave up on Xanth really because dear god they all had the same fucking plot.

(I love puns. But I will not read the same plot a hundred times over just because you wrote a lot of puns. [Spider Robinson, I'm looking at you too, so's you know. Your id doesn't disturb me nearly as much, but I could've lived without seeing so much. And, getting telepathic to Save The World gets old after the second novel with that plot.])