Hogg (novel)

Hogg
Dust-jacket from the first edition
Author(s)	Samuel R. Delany
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Novel
Publisher	Black Ice Books
Publication date	1995
Media type	Print (Hardcover & Paperback)
Pages	219 pp
ISBN	0-932511-88-0

Hogg is a novel by Samuel R. Delany, often described as pornographic. It was written in San Francisco in 1969 and completed just days before the Stonewall Riots in New York City. A further draft was completed in 1973 in London. At the time it was written, no one would publish it due to its graphic and copious descriptions of murder, homosexuality, child molestation, incest, coprophilia, coprophagia, urolagnia, anal-oral contact, necrophilia and rape. Hogg was finally published – with some further, though relatively minor, rewrites – in 1995 by Black Ice Books. The two successive editions have featured some correction, the last of which, published by Fiction Collective 2 in 2004, carries a note at the end stating that it is definitive.

Content

Preface

The preface to the novel is titled "The Scorpion Garden".

Text

As described in the book Inventory by The AV Club,

The plot features a silent pre-adolescent boy (called only "cocksucker") sold into sexual slavery to a rapist named "Hogg" Hargus, who exposes him to the most extreme acts of deviancy imaginable.

—Chuck Klosterman, The AV Club, 2009

These acts include a substantial amount of "rape, violence, and murder", such as "scenes of Hogg and his gang brutally raping various women" and other "extensive scenes involving consumption of bodily waste."

Characters

Franklin "Hogg" Hargus

Michael Hemmingson wrote in the journal The Review of Contemporary Fiction that Hogg,

"...is a thug, a "rape artist" and terrorizer for hire, with inclinations more homosexual than heterosexual. Hogg may very well be the most vile, disgusting personality to emerge from contemporary American fiction: he never bathes or changes clothes, urinates and defecates in his pants, eats his own various bodily excrete, drinks a lot of beer and eats plenty of pizza to "maintain" his large gut--he has worms and likes it--and enjoys bringing suffering to others, male or female, mostly for pay but sometimes for his own delectation. Yet he is also fascinating: the embodiment of what our society can turn people into, the decaying condition of the human soul."

Literary significance and criticism

Despite the book's pornographic surface, respected authors have given their endorsement. Norman Mailer, for instance, said "There is no question that Hogg by Samuel R. Delany is a serious book with literary merit." J.G. Ballard, prolific speculative-fiction author and elder statesman of transgressive literature, also praised Delany's work, citing the medium of pornography as being the most "socially urgent" form of art.^{[citation needed]}

Author Dennis Cooper said in his collection Smothered in Hugs: Essays, Interviews, Feedback, and Obituaries that "Hogg is tiresome and indulgent" and that the "pace is molasses-slow". However, he also goes on to say that "the book is a highly charged object...[and] that's reason enough to recommend it."

Jeffrey A. Tucker, associate professor of English at the University of Rochester, comments in his critical study, A sense of wonder: Samuel R. Delany, race, identity and difference, that Hogg "gave expression to the author's hostility toward a heterosexist society, an anger that had no socially constructive outlet prior to the modern Gay Rights movement."

Further reading

• Howard Freedman, Carl; Samuel R. Delany (2009). Conversations with Samuel R. Delany. Univ. Press of Mississipp. pp. 125–134. http://books.google.com/books?id=rU3xGSOsCv4C&pg=PA125&dq=%22Hogg%22+%22Delany%22#v=onepage&q=%22Hogg%22%20%22Delany%22&f=false. Retrieved December 26, 2010. 

External links

• Samuel R., Delany (1995). Hogg (1st ed.). Fiction Collective 2. ISBN 1-57366-049-3.