The nothingness of obscenity can’t be subjected to anything. The fact that it’s not a cancellation of existence but only a notion, and one resulting from contact, far from alleviates, and actually increases the disapproval generally felt. It is unrelated to value. It is not as if the erotic summit is something heroic attained at the cost of harsh sufferings. Clearly, the results bear no relation to the efforts
“A person who is doing literary writing must deal in emotion-charged symbols – and so you end up writing about things like death and lions and sacramental meals, perhaps because those are emotional things that wake certain feelings in the deep spring of the individual. I’m using it as I have to, to engage and stir the reader’s emotions. And if fiction doesn’t do that, then it’s failed. That’s the purpose of fiction.”
Gene Wolfe