Date: February 19th, 2018 8:07 PM
Author: titillating rehab
LINK:
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~corp1468/Writing_files/HarpersMagazine-2018-03-0086949.pdf?utm_content=buffer3a9a1&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
T
he Incest Diary is not an
abuse memoir, though it is
an account, a true one, of
sexual abuse. Its anonymous author
was first raped by her father when
she was three years old; they last
had sex (“consensual” sex, for what
it’s worth, though one thing the
book shows is just how little that
sometimes is) when she was twentyone.
During that final encounter, at
her childhood beach house, after
gin and tonics on the porch, she
“had an orgasm bigger than any
single one I had in my subsequent
twelve-year marriage.” Abuse memoirs
usually begin with childish innocence,
descend into a dark adult
world of sexuality and violence, and
end with some small, scrabbling
hope, a puncture of light. The Incest
Diary begins and ends in darkness.
There is for its author no self that
preexists the abuse, no self to be recovered
or redeemed. She comes
into existence as an object of her
father’s lust and sadism. She is, she
tells us more than once, his “creation”;
she was “born for him.” (Her
father’s diary entry from two days
after her birth ends, “Some day this
kid’s gonna fuck.”) There is no redemption,
only the cycling of desire
and loathing, a sickening repetition
that plays out across generations—
her father, we learn, was abused by
his grandfather in turn—and within
a single life. Near the end of the
book, we are given a description of
Carl, the author’s current partner.
He is charming and soft-spoken,
wears threadbare cardigans, reads
Kleist aloud to her on the porch,
and has a cock “just like my father’s.”
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3897912&forum_id=2#35440315)