Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Jim Webb's Deviant Writing
The old saying that "would that mine enemy would write a book," has come back to haunt Virginia Democratic Senate candidate James Webb - his opponent Republican Sen. George Allen has unearthed examples of passages from Webb's novels that include graphic underage sex scenes and passages demeaning to women.
Adding to Allen's charges that Webb, who once questioned the ability of women to serve in combat and had been quoted as saying that women in the naval academy were "horny," the Virginia senator cited newly found examples of Webb's attitude about women as expressed in his novels.
A press release issued by Allen's campaign charges that some of Webb’s writings are "very disturbing for a candidate hoping to represent the families of Virginians in the U.S. Senate and that they dehumanize women, men, and even children."
Says the release: "Webb’s novels disturbingly and consistently – indeed, almost uniformly – portray women as servile, subordinate, inept, incompetent, promiscuous, perverted, or some combination of these.
In novel after novel, Webb assigns his female characters base, negative characteristics. In thousands of pages of fiction penned by Webb, there are few if any strong, admirable women or positive female role models."
Why, Allen asked, does Webb refuse to portray women in a respectful, positive light, whether in his non-fiction concerning their role in the military, or in his provocative novels? How can women trust him to represent their views in the Senate when chauvinistic attitudes and sexually exploitive references run throughout his fiction and non-fiction writings?
The press release then went on to detail shocking examples from Webb's novels which the senator said "most Virginians and Americans would find such passages shocking, especially coming from the pen of someone who seeks the privilege of serving in the United States Senate, one of the highest offices in the land."
Here are some examples:
From "Lost Soldiers," Bantam Books. The quote is from Chap. 34: "A shirtless man walked toward them along a mud pathway. His muscles were young and hard, but his face was devastated with wrinkles. His eyes were so red that they appeared to be burned by fire. A naked boy ran happily toward him from a little plot of dirt. The man grabbed his young son in his arms, turned him upside down, and put the boy’s [genitalia] in his mouth.”
From "Something to Die For," William Morrow and Company. The quote is from Chap. 2: "Fogarty . . . watch[ed] a naked young stripper do the splits over a banana. She stood back up, her face smiling proudly and her round breasts glistening from a spotlight in the dim bar, and left the banana on the bar, cut in four equal sections by the muscles of her [genitalia]."
From "A Country Such as This," Doubleday & Co. The quote is from Chap. 24: "[He] could see Jawbone and Ashley Asthmatic [two guards at a Vietnamese prison camp] napping together in the grass. They faced inward, their arms entwined. It looked like they were masturbating each other. It didn't surprise him . . . It was common to see men holding hands, embracing, playing with each other. Some of them [the guards] had wanted him. He could tell in those evanescent moments between his bao cao bow, the obligatory deference when a guard entered his cell, and the first word or blow that followed it . . . Quick, grinding voices, turgid with repressed passion. An exploratory reaching of the hand near his groin . . .”
From "A Sense of Honor," Prentice-Hall. The quote is from Chap.4: "Nurse Goodbody, dark and voluptuous (Lenahan had forgotten her actual name, it was something long and Italian), was a bedtime friend to many of the doctors in Bethesda. She had hinted to Lenahan that she simply could not contain herself. Doctors tending to patients, she explained, aroused her. Morphine Mary (again Lenahan could not remember her exact name) was a thin, nervous drill sergeant type, a disciplinarian who did not allow her patients even to complain. Lenahan was convinced that Morphine Mary did not even sleep with her husband. She wasn’t bad looking, he mused again, staring at her thin frame. If she’d just get laid every now and then she’d mellow out and stop being such a damn witch.” (Later, Lenahan brings Goodbody home with him and has sex.)
From "Something to Die For," William Morrow and Company. The quote is from Chap. 2: "[Fogarty] has been thinking of the firm, springy skin and the sweet smells of a young Filipina woman named Maria in whose bed he had spent three nights almost twenty years ago . . . She was a deliciously bad young woman . . . On the second night, he had brought her a box of Godiva chocolates . . . he had awakened to find her in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet with her knees underneath her chin, eating chocolates and counting her rosary beads as she prayed."
From "Something to Die For," William Morrow and Company. The quote is from Chap. 13: "We're on our way to becoming the world's recreational center, a nation [USA] not to be taken seriously. Where are we still the undisputed leader? Music. Movies. Fast food. Drugs . . . the billboards 50 years from now as you come over the bridge and stop at the tollbooths outside Manhattan: A smiling beautiful naked woman, and the sign saying AMERICAN ASS IS OUR MOST IMPORTANT PRODUCT."
From "Fields of Fire - Prentice-Hall," Bantam Books. The quote is from Part 1 "The Best We Have”, Section 1 (NOTE: Part 1 is after the Prologue): Snake (the protagonist) sees his mother on the bed: "She looked as if she were carefully attempting to re-create a picture from some long-forgotten men's magazine . . . She was naked underneath the robe . . . and the robe fell loosely away, revealing her. Snake shrugged resignedly."
From "Fields of Fire," Prentice-Hall. The quote is from Chap. 24: "He saw the invitation with every bouncing breast and curved hip. . . . He was thirteen. . . . She was fifteen . . . . In a few moments she drew him to her and he murmured in his quiet voice, 'I am still small.' 'You are large enough,' she answered. And he found he was."
From "A Sense of Honor," Prentice-Hall. The quote is from Chap. 7: ". . . that is, if you knew who your sister was, Brustein, and if she’d been born with anything between her legs except an [expletive], I’d be happy to bring some class to your low-rent name by knocking the bitch up.”
From "A Sense of Honor," Prentice-Hall. The quote is from Chap. 8: "You wouldn’t have believed it, Swede. She just dropped her britches and lifted up her skirt and pissed like a man. Didn’t lose a drop, either. Not a drop.”
The old saying that "would that mine enemy would write a book," has come back to haunt Virginia Democratic Senate candidate James Webb - his opponent Republican Sen. George Allen has unearthed examples of passages from Webb's novels that include graphic underage sex scenes and passages demeaning to women.
Adding to Allen's charges that Webb, who once questioned the ability of women to serve in combat and had been quoted as saying that women in the naval academy were "horny," the Virginia senator cited newly found examples of Webb's attitude about women as expressed in his novels.
A press release issued by Allen's campaign charges that some of Webb’s writings are "very disturbing for a candidate hoping to represent the families of Virginians in the U.S. Senate and that they dehumanize women, men, and even children."
Says the release: "Webb’s novels disturbingly and consistently – indeed, almost uniformly – portray women as servile, subordinate, inept, incompetent, promiscuous, perverted, or some combination of these.
In novel after novel, Webb assigns his female characters base, negative characteristics. In thousands of pages of fiction penned by Webb, there are few if any strong, admirable women or positive female role models."
Why, Allen asked, does Webb refuse to portray women in a respectful, positive light, whether in his non-fiction concerning their role in the military, or in his provocative novels? How can women trust him to represent their views in the Senate when chauvinistic attitudes and sexually exploitive references run throughout his fiction and non-fiction writings?
The press release then went on to detail shocking examples from Webb's novels which the senator said "most Virginians and Americans would find such passages shocking, especially coming from the pen of someone who seeks the privilege of serving in the United States Senate, one of the highest offices in the land."
Here are some examples:
From "Lost Soldiers," Bantam Books. The quote is from Chap. 34: "A shirtless man walked toward them along a mud pathway. His muscles were young and hard, but his face was devastated with wrinkles. His eyes were so red that they appeared to be burned by fire. A naked boy ran happily toward him from a little plot of dirt. The man grabbed his young son in his arms, turned him upside down, and put the boy’s [genitalia] in his mouth.”
From "Something to Die For," William Morrow and Company. The quote is from Chap. 2: "Fogarty . . . watch[ed] a naked young stripper do the splits over a banana. She stood back up, her face smiling proudly and her round breasts glistening from a spotlight in the dim bar, and left the banana on the bar, cut in four equal sections by the muscles of her [genitalia]."
From "A Country Such as This," Doubleday & Co. The quote is from Chap. 24: "[He] could see Jawbone and Ashley Asthmatic [two guards at a Vietnamese prison camp] napping together in the grass. They faced inward, their arms entwined. It looked like they were masturbating each other. It didn't surprise him . . . It was common to see men holding hands, embracing, playing with each other. Some of them [the guards] had wanted him. He could tell in those evanescent moments between his bao cao bow, the obligatory deference when a guard entered his cell, and the first word or blow that followed it . . . Quick, grinding voices, turgid with repressed passion. An exploratory reaching of the hand near his groin . . .”
From "A Sense of Honor," Prentice-Hall. The quote is from Chap.4: "Nurse Goodbody, dark and voluptuous (Lenahan had forgotten her actual name, it was something long and Italian), was a bedtime friend to many of the doctors in Bethesda. She had hinted to Lenahan that she simply could not contain herself. Doctors tending to patients, she explained, aroused her. Morphine Mary (again Lenahan could not remember her exact name) was a thin, nervous drill sergeant type, a disciplinarian who did not allow her patients even to complain. Lenahan was convinced that Morphine Mary did not even sleep with her husband. She wasn’t bad looking, he mused again, staring at her thin frame. If she’d just get laid every now and then she’d mellow out and stop being such a damn witch.” (Later, Lenahan brings Goodbody home with him and has sex.)
From "Something to Die For," William Morrow and Company. The quote is from Chap. 2: "[Fogarty] has been thinking of the firm, springy skin and the sweet smells of a young Filipina woman named Maria in whose bed he had spent three nights almost twenty years ago . . . She was a deliciously bad young woman . . . On the second night, he had brought her a box of Godiva chocolates . . . he had awakened to find her in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet with her knees underneath her chin, eating chocolates and counting her rosary beads as she prayed."
From "Something to Die For," William Morrow and Company. The quote is from Chap. 13: "We're on our way to becoming the world's recreational center, a nation [USA] not to be taken seriously. Where are we still the undisputed leader? Music. Movies. Fast food. Drugs . . . the billboards 50 years from now as you come over the bridge and stop at the tollbooths outside Manhattan: A smiling beautiful naked woman, and the sign saying AMERICAN ASS IS OUR MOST IMPORTANT PRODUCT."
From "Fields of Fire - Prentice-Hall," Bantam Books. The quote is from Part 1 "The Best We Have”, Section 1 (NOTE: Part 1 is after the Prologue): Snake (the protagonist) sees his mother on the bed: "She looked as if she were carefully attempting to re-create a picture from some long-forgotten men's magazine . . . She was naked underneath the robe . . . and the robe fell loosely away, revealing her. Snake shrugged resignedly."
From "Fields of Fire," Prentice-Hall. The quote is from Chap. 24: "He saw the invitation with every bouncing breast and curved hip. . . . He was thirteen. . . . She was fifteen . . . . In a few moments she drew him to her and he murmured in his quiet voice, 'I am still small.' 'You are large enough,' she answered. And he found he was."
From "A Sense of Honor," Prentice-Hall. The quote is from Chap. 7: ". . . that is, if you knew who your sister was, Brustein, and if she’d been born with anything between her legs except an [expletive], I’d be happy to bring some class to your low-rent name by knocking the bitch up.”
From "A Sense of Honor," Prentice-Hall. The quote is from Chap. 8: "You wouldn’t have believed it, Swede. She just dropped her britches and lifted up her skirt and pissed like a man. Didn’t lose a drop, either. Not a drop.”
