Cocozziello 1

Jenna Cocozziello
AML 3311
Matt Dauphin
7 December, 2015
Hookup Culture and American Literature
For the last century, the influence of sexual relationships in American literature and
American society has grown to be a very prominent topic. While sex used to be stronger and
more accepted in the marital sphere, casual sex is becoming a stronger, recurring theme in
popular culture, and is also generally more accepted in society. In the last 10 years alone, casual
sex with friends, acquaintances, and just random hookups have become more common than
marital sex (Vrangalova). This rise of promiscuity in real life America has also made its mark in
fictionalized America-that is, American literature-in novels such as Gore Vidals The City and
The Pillar, Don DeLillos White Noise, and Junot Diazs The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.
In each of these books, sex is a very common theme, but the main characters handle sex in very
different ways. By analyzing how sex and relationships are approached in each of these novels, it
is easier to make connections to the everyday lives of Americans and how casual sex is becoming
a more frequent occurrence as a whole.
Julianne M. Serovich's article An Intervention To Assist Men Who Have Sex With Men
Disclose Their Serostatus To Casual Sex Partners: Results From A Pilot Study focuses on the
costs and benefits of homosexual males disclosing to their hookup partners that they have HIV or
AIDS. This study was performed to help suppress the spread of sexual transmitted diseases and
to encourage men to talk about safe sex with their partners either before or after disclosing that
they have HIV or AIDS. In the end, approximately 43% of the total variation in disclosure

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behavior scores was due to changes within the individual, suggesting that the individual scores
were significantly affected by time, (Serovich) and based on the novel The City and the Pillar,
it is easy to see why some men would have issues in disclosure.
Gore Vidals The City and The Pillar has its claim to fame by being the world-famous
novel of unconventional love, and main character Jim Willard devastatingly supports this claim.
Taking place in 1940s war-torn America in cities ranging from Hollywood to New York City, the
novel focuses on Jim slowly becoming sexually aware of himself as he denies his homosexuality
in a heterosexual dominate world. After a teenage homosexual experience with his best friend
Bob Ford, Jim felt that Bob was his twin or his mirror, and Jim set off on a Great American
Adventure to find Bob and to be his partner for the rest of their lives. Bob was Jims only real
friend back at home, so this sexual relationship heavily influenced Jim to want to be with Bob
forever. Through Jims multiple sexual relationships, he was able to see that no man, or woman,
would ever be able to satisfy Jim in the same way that Bob did. His narcissistic tendencies were
strong enough to let him reject sex, but they were weak enough for him to continue having
hookups with people who werent 100% up to his standards. Jim was obsessed with his own
physique, so he looked for that mainly in his partners, but he still chose to have casual sex with
men who didnt fit his Greek Godlike mold, such as Ronald Shaw. Even though Jim proved to
not be very picky with his hookups, he did enjoy to refuse casual sex. Vidal detailed: Finally,
one tried to seduce him. Jim was quite unnerved, and violent in his refusal. Yet afterwards he
continued to go to their parties, if only to be able to experience again the pleasure of saying no,
(Vidal, pg. 60). If Jim Willard was a member of Serovichs pilot study, he would have been part
of the group that had a bad attitude about disclosing details about their past hookups. The
members of this control group were part of a wait-list, so they never got the intervention that

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the other two groups of men had in order to feel comfortable telling their partners about their
sexual history. The study showed that
Odds of UAI (unprotected anal intercourse) were higher at 3 months postintervention in
cases where the partner had knowledge of the participant's serostatus. This finding
suggests that although the intervention may be effective in reducing the odds of engaging
in risky sexual behavior overall, the act of disclosure may result in increased participation
in risky sex. (Serovich)
While statistics always have a possibility of being skewed, there is proof that many men
dont care about past hookups. Jim had sex with multiple people in a very short amount of time
and never thought twice about who he may be harming in the processincluding himself. The
only person that Jim truly cared about in the novel was Maria Verlaine, who apparently
specialized in seducing homosexuals: She knew when to leave without inflicting pain. So they
allowed her a temporary visa in their world, and she enjoyed being a tourist (Vidal, pg. 104).
The difference with Maria to Jim versus other women is that he felt vaguely attracted to her, and
was perhaps one of the only characters in the book that Jim actually cared for, but he was
completely unable to perform sexually. Jim was able to be completely passive to his sexual
partners, but he couldnt bring himself to do the same to Maria. While, as readers, we are not
sure if Vidal meant this because Maria was a woman, or because Jim felt something more than
just sexual desire for her. Jims unceasing passiveness culminated in the brutal raping of his best
friend, and at the end of the novel, it is uncertain if Jim will feel comfortable having sexual
relations ever again. The uncertainty Jim feels can be paralleled to Serovich's studies in that most
men who disclosed their past continued to have risky sex, so it is likely that Jim will continue to
use his past as a guideline for his future.

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Because of the setting The City and The Pillar in the 1940s, it is also interesting to
examine Jims narcissistic tendencies along with the social norms of the time. During this time,
many women had husbands going off to war, and the ideals of love and waiting for their love to
come home were very strong. Jim is seemingly incapable of loving: he wants to find Bob and be
with him because he sees himself in Bob, and Jim doesnt care much about the men he has sex
with along the way. Whenever one of his partners had a new venture and invited Jim, he would
go along with them because of the sole fact that it could possibly lead him back to Bob. Love
doesnt affect Jims casual sex life, and even though his partners Ronald Shaw and Paul Sullivan
claimed to love him, Jim ultimately was only looking out for himself.
For Don DeLillo and his 1986 novel, White Noise, sex has lost all meaning in a modern,
small-town world where humans are willing to trade their bodies for money or medication. While
other aspects of human life rely on exposure to media, such as the Gladney familys addiction to
natural disasters as seen on their televisions, Heinrichs general spewing of strange philosophy
and theories that he collects from the radio and books, and Babettes reading of tabloids and
coupon books to the blind, sex is not affected by the exposure to media in White Noise because it
keeps traditional associations such as intimacy, jealousy, ego, and power. A family friend to the
Gladneys, Murray, is very open about sex and having it casually. He can be quoted talking about
the different things he likes about women and their bodies by saying, The irony is that I love
women. I fall apart at the sight of long legs, striding, briskly, as a breeze carries up from the
river, on a weekday, in the play of morning light, (DeLillo, pg. 11) which is interesting because
it shows a kind of love/hate relationship with hookup culture because he loves women and casual
sex so much, but is eager to get away from the women in small-town Blacksmith.

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Because of the time period that the novel is set in, the theory that the humans in the book
are thinking about sex for the sake of sex over romance needs to be looked into. Barry Reays
article Promiscuous Intimacies: Rethinking the History of American Casual Sex searches to
prove that what is now called casual sex or hooking up has been something that has, historically,
always been around, but just not always called the same thing. Reay explores the broader history
of casual sex, finding that
When in 1968 Albert Ellis wrote about what he termed sexual promiscuity in an article
for the American Academy of Political and Social Science, he named his subject variously
as plural sexuality, nonmonogamous indulgence, sex-love affairs, sexual
varietism, those who have many sex partners, sexual experimentation, and
promiscuous sex-love affairs. Such were the practitioners and practices of what Ellis
called sex affairs on a rather casual basis. (Reay)
In going back to White Noise, DeLillo is very careful in distinguishing between Murray, Jack,
and Babette when talking about sex. While Jack has had multiple wives and children with them
all, he remains 100% loyal to Babette and doesnt even think about other women. The pretty
little ideal of sex goes bad when Jack finds out that Babette has been sleeping with a man in
order to get pills called Dylar that were supposed to eliminate the fear of death in the human
brain. Babette and Jack were both afraid of death because they were afraid of losing each other:
not for love, or for their children, but for the sex and the pleasure and comfort they gave each
other. Now that Jack has felt betrayed by Babette in that she is selling her body and sex casually
for medication, Jack goes homicidal, and not-so-elaborately plans to murder Mink, the
mysterious Dylar dealer, and ultimately fails to do so. Barry Reay describes the meanings of
casual sex to be slippery, which is how Babette felt in selling herself for drugs. Jacks only

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having marital sex contrasted with Babettes hooking up with a stranger while being married
plays on the diverse and slippery definitions of casual sex in the 1900s, and at the end of the
book, it is like nothing even happened: "What is there to say? The sunsets linger and so do we
(DeLillo, pg. 308). This essentially shows that casual sex is one of the few things that hasnt
changed in a modern culture that corrupted every other aspect of life. Jack and Babette go back
to loving each other and their strange children, Murray still sniffs items in the grocery store, and
the question of Who dies first? still rings in everyones ears surrounded by the white noise of
life.
2007 Dominican-American novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
essentially revolves around the theme of casual sex and family relationships. The narrator of
most of the book, Yunior, is obsessed with having casual sex, even if he has a girlfriend, and in
order to fit in with the hyper-masculine stereotype that Dominicans hold, one has to have that
kind of hit-and-run personality when it comes to sex. The main character of this book, Oscar,
fails to live up to this stereotype. The entire book is about Oscars quest to not die a geeky,
overweight, ghetto virgin, but over and over again he fails to secure a girl to have sex with. Oscar
wants to be able to experience sex as a beautiful thing rather than a harmful thing (as his sister,
his mother, and all the girls raped by Trujillo experienced it), but as he gets older he seems to
realize that finding someone to love isnt as easy as it looks. Katherine M. Klipfels article
Interpersonal Aggression Victimization Within Casual Sexual Relationships and Experiences
shows that casual sex can have way more than just a physical impact on a person. Oscar tries and
fails in a continuous cycle to find a girl to have sex with, but he doesnt want to be with a
whore but instead wants to find a girl to love. Unfortunately, for the other characters in this
book, love wasnt the case. Klipfels article states that across relationships/experiences,

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emotional and sexual aggression were more common than physical aggression. The findings
from this study indicate that emotional, physical, and sexual aggression occur across types of
relationships and experiences, which was very present in the strong women characters in the
novel. Both Oscars mother Beli and his sister Lola had very traumatic, emotional experiences
with sexual aggression. Lola lost her virginity at a young age and was raped when she was only
eight years old, with the only consolation being her mother telling her to close her legs and forget
about it. Beli had casual sexual relations with a middle-aged man we came to know as the
Gangster, and because of these hookups in love motels, Beli was beat nearly to death by the
Gangsters wife and her goons, and Beli never wanted to see him again.
In an article titled Attitudes Toward Marriage, Divorce, Cohabitation, and Casual Sex
Among Working-Age Latinos: Does Religion Matter?, authors Christopher G. Ellison, Nicholas
H. Wolfinger, and Aida I. Ramos-Wada explore the dimensions between religious beliefs and
casual sex in Latino men. Oscar Wao focuses on the conjunction of Pagan mythologies with
Christian religion, but does not connect it explicitly to Yunior and Oscar as Dominican men.
Oscar believes he is cursed and is bound to never have sex, while Yunior's curse is that he has
casual sex with girls all the time. It isnt until the end of the novel that Yunior views this as a
curse (Couldnt keep my rabo in my pants, even though she was the most beautiful fucking girl
in the world, (Diaz, pg. 311)); however, Ellison, Wolfinger, and Ramos-Wadas article can help
show some insight on how religion really plays a role in casual sex:
On one hand, Catholic and perhaps, especially, evangelical religious cultures tend to
oppose sex outside of marriage. In the general population, religiousness reduces the odds
of cohabitation and the experience of cohabitation reduces subsequent religious
involvement. On the other hand, as noted earlier, approval or at least tolerance of

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cohabitation appears to be widespread among most Latinos. (Ellison, Wolfinger, RamosWada)
The occurrence of casual sex in Oscar Wao shows readers a first-person point of view on casual
sex and relationships as a whole. Lola gauges the success of intimate relationships by the
physicality of two people, which is something that Oscar tries desperately not to do. The siblings
discuss sex very freely with each other, and after Oscar comes home from hanging out with a
girl, the following conversation happens between the two:
When [Oscar] returned to the house his sister said, Well? [Oscar:] Well what? [Lola:] Did
you fuck her? [Oscar:] Jesus, Lola, he said, blushing. [Lola:] Dont lie to me. [Oscar:] I do
not move so precipitously. He paused and then sighed. In other words, I didnt even get
her scarf off. [Lola:] Sounds a little suspicious. I know you Dominican men. She held up
her hands and flexed the fingers in playful menace. Son pulpos. (Diaz, pg. 39)
Oscar developed crushes on girls almost the minute he saw them, (It wouldve been one thing if
like some of the nerdboys Id grown up with he hadnt cared about girls, but alas he was still the
passionate enamorao who fell in love easily and deeply, (Diaz, pg. 23).) and all he really wanted
out of life was a girl to love. To Yunior, sexless relationships are bleak, and anything other than
having sex plopped Oscar right into the deadly friend-zone. Oscar, unlike Yunior and many of
the other characters in the novel, wants to fall in love and have sex, not just one or the other. At
the end of the book, Oscar finally has sex with the woman he loves, but because of it he is
murdered by her (ex)boyfriend and his goons, and Yunior saved everything Oscar had for Lolas
daughter to one day see.
The concept of sex itself changes in relationship to not only who is having sex, but also
who is pursuing it, and who is denying it. While The City and The Pillar, White Noise, and The

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Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao are all connected by casual sex itself, the characters in each of
the books are affected very differently by hookup culture. In their article Sexual Hookup
Culture: A Review, Justin R. Garcia, Chris Reiber, Sean G. Massey, and Ann M. Merriwether
suggest that researchers must consider both evolutionary mechanisms and social processes, and
be considerate of the contemporary popular cultural climate in which hookups occur, in order to
provide a comprehensive and synergistic biopsychosocial view of casual sex among emerging
adults, and that all sexual encounters are different. The open acceptance of sex without promise
or desire of a romantic relationship is important to Jim in The City and The Pillar, to Babette in
White Noise, and to Yunior in Oscar Wao. Jim also had the privilege of repeatedly denying casual
sex from the wannabe actors in Hollywood and accepting it from people who he deemed fit to
hookup with. Jims main pursuit was for Bob Ford, and in the end Jim got what he wanted, much
to the suffering of Bob. Babette sold sex for drugs in White Noise, which is something her
husband never imagined she would do. Even after Jack attempted to murder the man Babette was
having sex with, she felt no pity or pain from selling her body. Babette wanted the drugs to
eliminate the fear of death that gripped her everyday, and she also hoped that it would help to
suppress Jacks fear of death. She justified her casual sex by convincing herself that it would
help her family in the end. In Oscar Wao, Yunior was incapable of not having casual sex, even
when he was in a relationship. He loved Lola and wanted to be with her, but he just couldnt help
having girls on the side, so he had to see Lola move on from him, and eventually marry and have
a child of her own. He pursued sex for the sake of sex, and he also was able to have sex with
girls without thinking about the repercussions. Oscar, on the other hand, wanted to be like all
other Dominican males, so he tried endlessly to flirt with girls and be a romantic. He wasnt the

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one denying sex like Jim, or using sex to attempt to fix something like Babette, but he was being
denied sex and love for almost his whole life.
Everyday we are surrounded by corruption, even down to the natural, beautiful thing that
makes us human, and the corruption of sex in making it more casual is prominent in books as
well as society as a whole. While casual sex may be on the rise, The City and the Pillar, White
Noise, and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao show that it has always been a part of our
society in smaller ways, and that it is just now coming out from the dark it previously slept in.
The City and the Pillar is based on homosexual, unconventional, sex that was very taboo in
America at the time, White Noise places emphases on marital sex just for it to be trampled by
casual sex and the overall corruption of sexual acts, and Oscar Wao shows how dominate casual
sex is not only for Dominican-Americans, but for all American society. American literature has
grown to portray casual sex as boundless suffering, an enjoyable getaway from the present, and a
physical need that humans have trouble breaking away from. While the implications,
mindfulness, and reactions to casual sex change from person to person, the act of sex itself
remains relatively constant throughout time. Risk, desire, and the appeal of not needing to be in a
relationship has become a more frequent occurrence in American life and American literature,
and it continues to grow as hookup culture becomes a more prominent part of society.

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Bibliography

DeLillo, Don. White Noise. New York: Penguin, 1986. Print.

Diaz, Junot. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. New York: Penguin, 2007.
Print.
Ellison, Christopher G., Nicholas H. Wolfinger, and Aida I. Ramos-Wada. Attitudes To
ward Marriage, Divorce, Cohabitation, and Casual Sex Among WorkingAge

Latinos: Does Religion Matter? Journal of Family Values 34.3 May

2012:

295-322. Sage Journals. Web. 30 Nov. 2015.

Garcia, Justin R., Chris Reiber, Sean G. Massey, and Ann. M Merriwether. Sexual
Hookup Culture: A Review. Review of General Psychology 16.2 June

2012:

161-176. APA PsycNET. Web. 28 Nov. 2015.

Klipfel, Katherine M. Interpersonal Aggression Victimization Within Casual Sexual Re
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557-569. Sage Journals. Web. 30. Nov. 2015.

Reay, Barry. Promiscuous Intimacies:Rethinking the History of American Casual Sex.
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Sons.

Web. 28 Nov. 2015.

Serovich, J. M., Reed, S., Grafsky, E. L., & Andrist, D. (2009). An Intervention To As
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ners: Results From A Pilot Study. AIDS Education and

207-19. Web. 29 Nov. 2015.

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Vidal, Gore. The City and The Pillar. New York: Granada Publishing Limited,
1972. Print
Vrangalova, Zhana. Is Casual Sex on the Rise in America? Psychology Today.
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