Beating Off In Mexico

Thank you for your eloquent request for more funding for your magazine. Unfortunately, your letter follows Issue 186 too closely for me to take your request seriously. I found Ignacio Schwartz’s obsession with the act of masturbation [“Beating Off in Mexico”] devoid of any literary, philosophic, or aesthetic value. His article may hold some esoteric appeal for psychologists, but if I were looking for that sort of writing, I would have subscribed to Psychology Today.

I think it’s very nice that this chap has such an uncomplicated and uninhibited relationship with his reproductive apparatus. He obviously feels so comfortable about his incessant monkey-spanking that he believes it merits some sort of literary effort. Perhaps he feels so superior in his lack of inhibition to all the hordes of closet-jackers that his little literary adventure stands as a monument to himself. His piece is an exercise in solipsism.

I object to this essay for the same reason I once objected to a New York art gallery’s starkly realistic rendering of a collie standing next to a fresh and steaming pile of shit. I found this painting and its subject utterly devoid of aesthetic value. If the artist’s intention was simply to shock, he failed; he simply sickened.

This was also my impression of Schwartz’s piece: its only real value would have been to shock; unfortunately, it only sickened. I must say, I did read it closely, if only in the manner that one is somehow compelled to study detailed accounts of aberrant human psychology. If Charles Manson or David Berkowitz ever publish their diaries, they will probably sell millions of copies — not, however, based upon any intrinsic aesthetic or literary value. People also slow down to leer at the roadside carnage in the wake of an automobile accident.

I do not want to know about this fellow’s love affair with his penis for the same reason I do not want to hear about his bowel movements — no matter how grandly satisfying or surreal they may have seemed to him. To those who wish to serenade us with detailed accounts of their masturbatory adventures: save them for your psychiatrist.