"Is there anything we really shouldn't write about? I take a look at a list of the verboten and conclude that depending on how you tackle it, nothing is taboo. Except perhaps sex between seniors (and even that features in one best seller...)"

Originally posted on booklikes by TheREDBooks

That is the question.

In my response to this provocative post, which was itself a reblog from http://litreactor.com/columns/eating-babies-boundaries-for-writers-in-fiction, I referenced my new novel, Spunk, a Fable.  Spunk features infanticide, cannibalism, tribadism, and heterosexual intercourse between two gorgeous young people, and heterosexual oral copulation between two amazing old people, and some lesbian oral copulation that takes place largely offstage. Also rape, and murder. None of it is gratuitous, all of it drives events and/or reveals character. I'm not conversant enough with the tropes of homposexual male union to attempt to write well about it, or it would have been in there, as well, if it had served the plot.

It is both the skill and intention of the author that makes the great difference. The first time I read Lolita I was half-way through the book before I realized that Humbert was a pedophile, and all the way through before I understood that Nabokov had made me sympathize with him. Now THAT'S writing.