Hogg (novel)
First edition
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| Author | Samuel R. Delany |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Black Ice Books |
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Publication date
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1995 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
| Pages | 219 pp |
| ISBN | |
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 descriptions of murder, 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.
The preface to the novel is titled "The Scorpion Garden".
As described in the book Inventory by The A.V. 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.
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." Every chapter in the novel contains graphic sexual or violent acts.
The main events of the novel take place on June 26, 27, and 28, 1969, in an unspecified city. The narrator mentions various nearby areas—"Crawhole," "Frontwater," and "Ellenville"—apparently fictional neighborhoods. The nameless city could be described as an industrial wasteland. The events take place at docks, garbage barges, truck-stops, bars, as well as within Hogg's truck. Many of the characters are described as workmen or wear work clothes.
In an interview with TK Enright, Delany states "[Hogg's] action takes place in Pornotopia—that is the land where any situation can become rampantly sexual under the least increase in the pressure of attention. Like its sister lands, Comedia and Tragedia, it can only be but so realistic." In the same interview Delany also states, "Hogg is another of my stories that takes place in the city of Enoch." Delany's Neveryóna takes place, in part, in Enoch.
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