Hogg [Hardcover]

Samuel R. Delany (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1995

Acclaimed winner of the William Whitehead Memorial Award for a lifetime's contribution to gay and lesbian literature, Samuel R. Delany wrote Hogg three decades ago. Since then it has been one of America's most famous 'unpublishable' novels. The subject matter of Hogg is our culture of sexual violence and degeneration. Delany explores his disturbing protagonist Hogg on his own turf--rape, pederasty, sexual excess--exposing an area of violence and sexual abuse from the inside. As such, it is a brave book.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Hugo-and Nebula Award-winner Delany?whose early books were fascinating but whose recent efforts have grown increasingly obtuse?has been trying to get this pornographic novel published since 1973. The main narrator here is an 11-year-old boy who joins up with a raping, murdering pederast named Hogg. Coprophiliac Hogg violates women for pay. He enlists the help of other pedophiliac murdering rapists?Nigg, Dago and Denny?and the group sets off to perform acts of hideous violence. After the attacks, a biker friend of Hogg's sells the boy into sexual slavery to dockyard slum resident Big Sambo, who keeps his 12-year-old daughter for prostitution and his own perversions. The traumatized little girl is gang-raped by Hogg's crew as well. Meanwhile, teenaged Denny goes on an insane mutilating and mass-murder spree, eludes the police and finally returns to Hogg and the hopelessly confused narrator, who has been "rescued" after Hogg murders Big Sambo. Gang-rape attacks and criminal sex orgies are detailed at excruciating length, with photographic realism. This potent emetic is all the more disturbing for want of modulators of honest outrage. In other works, Delany has examined the role of the criminal within society; with Hogg, he apparently was content merely to inhabit the criminal mind without exploring it.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Hogg is a truly significant book. It is distasteful, raw, and upsetting; it also treats some of the sexual taboos that Americans do not want addressed in either art or politics. Hogg is an artistic triumph, as well as a political one." -John O'Brien, Dalkey Archive Press

"There is no question that Hogg by Samuel R. Delany is a serious book with literary merit."
-Norman Mailer

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 219 pages
• Publisher: Talman Co (March 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0932511880
• ISBN-13: 978-0932511881
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,562,993 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Mailer states it has merit . . ., December 28, 2000

By 

Mr. Egregious - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hogg (Hardcover)

yet he seems to be giving accolades to most everything these days so we'll discard that.

I view it as an endurance test that is heavily laced with black humor. Yes, it is a sign of the times and a reflection of the cutlture that produced it, yet Delany knew this would be said of the work when he was writing it. Next. We have four paid-for-hire rapists that committ any and all acts within the slim volume. By the end we have a serial killing spree that blows Ellis' AMERICAN PSYCHO clean out of the water. In between we witness a character urinating upon another's leg. When the latter inquires what the formering is doing, he replies, "Pissin' on ya' knee." Simple enough. This along with the title character going throughout the course of most of the novel with only one shoe--remember he's involved with vile killings, heavy ethical philosophizing, and sodomistic acts.

To end, I must quote the librarian whom I returned the text: "It's like a car wreck, you can't help but look," as she flips through the pages while eating a candy bar.

15 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the ultimate shockudrama, October 28, 2004

By 

Oroboros (Muspellheim, Ragnarok) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hogg: A Novel (Paperback)

A literary professor declared it the most shocking book of the 20th century. Another amazon reviewer claims it blew American Psycho clean out of the water. Those high praises persuaded me to include it on the recommended list, and after reading the book, i must say that Samuel Delany is a great writer, for his meticulous attention to detail firmly establishes a powerful, stylish narrative that is also very flat and cold, almost dispassionate and quite amoral. While the book is truly moral, for it does consistently test the conditions of morality, it does not demand a moral judgment from the reader, because the true testament of a writer's skill is the ability to present a story without prejudging it for the reader.

The book itself is, in a word, relentless: it spares nothing in its brutal portrayal of a nameless, silent, 11 year old protagonist whose experiences with the scum of the earth (pedophiles, rapists-for-hire, crooked cops, remorseless pimps) illustrate the unsightly underbelly of our culture. The boy's silence signifies his powerlessness, yet however, it is not a symptom for those without power demonstrate their rebellion by a complete refusal to speak.

In essence, if i am permitted to espouse essentialist overtones, the book is little more than a love story, where the man meets the boy, falls in love, loses the boy, and finds him again. And this 'man' is Hogg, a disgusting sadistic misogynist whose articulate insights belie his apparent one-dimensional raison d'etre. Hogg is the "nightmarish Other" who embodies the irrational truths of the world.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magnum Opus, September 16, 2010

By 

M. G. Moseman "anarcho-ecdysiast" (Boston) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hogg: A Novel (Paperback)

This is, without a doubt, Delaney's greatest sexual work. It is hard to say whether it surpasses Dhalgren, which is probably going to be remembered as his best and probably is, but Hogg, overall, is the purest expression of his exquisite sadean heart. If you liked The 120 Days of Sodom, then you will love this!!!