Kicks by Vincent Clasper (Clinicality Press)

The question of what is ‘art’ is pretty passé these days in many circles, and yet it’s a debate that never goes away. On the face of it, Vincent Clasper’s pamphlet isn’t art or literature, it’s porn. Plain and simple.  But of course, nothing’s ever so straightforward in this po-mo world, and this is exactly the kind of debate Clasper’s work is designed to provoke.

The cover alone cannot fail to raise an eyebrow: a montage of naked breasts, seemingly appropriated from various porn sites, adorns the front, while a massive, veiny and slightly distorted looking penis, tinted a lurid red (I assume it’s tinted or the owner of said appendage has serious problems and should be taking it to a doctor, not a photographer). Blatant shock tactics? Indubitably. Still, I only take issue with the employment of shock tactics when there’s no point behind it, and Kicks is clearly not just some pointless toss-off of a publication. Others may disagree, but then, that’s the point, right?

Kicks contains ten short stories. Some of them are very short indeed, running to roughly half a page. The entire book is only 42 pages in length. And frankly, that’s quite long enough. I don’t mean this disparagingly: it’s simply testament to the lurid intensity of the pieces contained herein. The stories are all thematically linked, and, perhaps not surprisingly, are all concerned with sex. Graphic, gratuitous, onanistic, frequently perverse and prosaic, occasionally pretentious and puerile, Clasper hits the reader with an orgiastic onslaught. The effect is cumulative, and by the end, you’re left wanting to take a wash rather than a cold shower. Is it intended to be erotic? I really couldn’t say. I rather hope not. Kicks certainly didn’t give me the horn. It did make me laugh, however.

‘Corporate Ties,’ a ludicrous tale of blackmail and lesbianism in the workplace, has a Lesley Bien as its central character, and reminds me of Stewart Home’s early works in it brazen trashiness. It can’t be accidental, and to this end, find myself compelled to hail Clasper as a genius. It takes immense balls to produce writing that’s so blatantly ‘bad’ by ‘literary’ standards. With phrases like ‘she badgered away at the eager beaver,’ there’s no way this can possibly be taken seriously.

Yet Clasper can clearly write. There are some keen turns of phrase to be found across some of the other stories, coupled with some astute observations on human behaviour and interaction. This is precisely why Kicks is a work of literature, and is the height of postmodernism: literature engages with the world around it, the culture that it is borne out of. Postmodernism holds a mirror to that culture, absorbing everything, a sponge. So if the society out of which the literature emerges is sick, perverse and sex-obsessed, what can we really expect in return? It would be unjust to demand something ‘higher.’ Nevertheless, Clasper does offer something more.