Godbody

The minister of a small congregation in a small New England town is driving home through the countryside when he notices a naked young man sitting by the side of the road. Every physical aspect of the young man is a shade of red, but not unpleasantly so. The colors blend together nicely, The idea of cinnamon comes to the minister's mind. He stops and asks the young man if he needs any help. The young man, unashamed and natural in his nakedness, approaches the minister's open passenger side window and asks, "Who are you?" The minister replies, "My name is Currier." The young man places his hand for a moment between Currier's neck and shirt color then replies, "Yes, you are." When asked for his own name, the young man replies, "Godbody." He turns down a ride, and Rev. Currier goes home, carries his wife into the bedroom, and they have the best sex either has ever experienced.

So begins Theodore Sturgeon's final novel, published posthumously in 1986. (Sturgeon died in 1985 from lung fibrosis, possibly contracted by working around asbestos in the merchant marines.) Robert Heinlein wrote an introduction for the novel's initial publication, both as memorial to his friend and to get a jump start on what he expected would be a protest against the books graphic sexual passages and profane language. You would think that sexual barriers would be pretty well broken down by 1986. John Updike wroteCouples and Philip Roth wrote Portnoy's Complaint in 1969. Erica Jong'sFear of Flying came out in 1973. From its pulp beginnings, SF had been a hotbed of repressed, adolescent male sexual fantasy, but there is a frankness to Sturgeon's book unlike anything I have ever encountered in SF from that period. The sex is graphic and varied, including deeply felt encounters, violent attacks, and the comically grotesque.

The book concerns the effect Godbody has on a half dozen or so characters during a single autumn day in this New England town. Sturgeon tells each chapter in a different voice, ranging from Currier's to that of the town's gossip columnist, and including that of the town's resident sexual predator among others. Sturgeon liked this sort of experimental approach to his narratives, and he pulls it off better here than in any of his books I have read other than the very early More Than Human. The plot itself takes fairly predictable turns, but the storytelling it topnotch. Godbody is both a peculiar cultural artifact and an entertaining evening's read.