Matthew’s first, rough, and unpolished novel nevertheless delivers all the salacious thrills for which Matthew’s work is known. In addition, this novel, melded into all the pure fiction, contains several “true stories,” however much disguised. The pacing is rapid, slowing only for the sex and, in the novel’s early stage, for descriptions of the narrator’s geopolitical work. The story is utterly implausible. The Chinese will employ and pay the narrator for his geopolitical opinions. In addition, they wish to involve him in certain sex experiments. The reason for the sex is eventually revealed—no, it’s not what you think. The reason for the Chinese interest in his geopolitics is never revealed, despite the narrator repeatedly asking for clarification on that subject.
All the women in the novel are painted sympathetically with a broad brush, but they are the novel’s rounded characters. About himself, the narrator says a lot in the opening chapters, and his character becomes more fleshed out as we see him react to situations arranged entirely by others. There is no transformation here. He goes along with everything. He is the man who “cannot say no to a woman.” Not until the last chapter does he act independently, and that to protect the women who have put him through this adventure.
This is not a book of art. There is no deep truth to be discerned, no cogent observations of the human condition to be found, its cunnilingual lessons and observations notwithstanding. Foreign Agent is not a commentary on real life, but something more like a game or rollercoaster ride enjoyed for nothing more than the experience of playing or the thrill of riding.
When Foreign Agent first appeared, I wrote a much longer review to be found here. Matthew told me this was to be his only book, and I thought a chapter-by-chapter summary would stimulate scholarly work. Luckily for the world of pornographic literature, Matthew found a second book—Foreign Agent, the Last Chapter—embedded in the first—my short review linked here.
In 2025 there are four novels. Foreign Agent and Foreign Agent, the Last Chapter, are closely related. The geopolitical question is answered. The third novel, Cult of Aten, takes up a riff opened in the second book, but is otherwise a story that stands by itself, as does LoveMe Inc., Matthew’s fourth novel. There are links to all their reviews and Amazon connections here in “My Fiction,” a blog page explaining how all of this nonsense came about.
Book one (Foreign Agent) and book two (Foreign Agent the Last Chapter) are closely related. The final setting in the first book (Bangkok), and its characters, carry through the entirety of the second book. The “Cult of Aten” is introduced in the second book where its infrastructure begins to be built, but the novel ends before it is finished and launched.
Book three takes us back to the U.S. where its author, having published the second novel, receives a thumb drive from Bangkok containing the code for an elaborate website along with an image. As with the other novels, Cult of Aten is written in memoir style, this time explicitly as a diary begun in 2028 while Matthew lies in a hospital bed recovering from an assassination attempt–no spoilers here, this fact is noted in the first chapter. The bulk of the novel (everything through Chapter 19 of 22) is Matthew catching the reader up to all that happens from the autumn of 2023 when he launches the Cult of Aten, to his present–in the hospital–in 2028.
Except for five chapters in its middle covering a single [important] week spent in Mexico the pacing of this novel is much faster than the first two. This is necessary because the third novel spans five years compared to two years for the first and only one for the second. It is also consistent with Matthew’s claim (in 2028) that this catching-up was drafted in two weeks from his hospital bed. It is a result of this “catching-up” and explanation that Cult of Aten can be read as a stand-alone novel. Yes, the story is enriched by the first two novels–especially the second–but they aren’t strictly necessary. The reader is not lost without them.
What would a novel from Matthew be without sex? It’s here in plenty, but there is a change, Matthew says a “literary advance” on his part. While still explicit, the sex (with one exception “because it was unusual compared to the rest”) is softened around the edges. The exceptional detail Matthew is otherwise known for is absent, most of the time. Interestingly, this is also consistent with the story’s pacing.
So how does a text written in 2028 come to get published in 2023? Two words: time travel! You’ll just have to read the story!
All in all, in my opinion, this is the best of the three books. I asked Matthew what gave him this idea. What he said was: “The first novel’s insight was ‘what if the Chinese offered to pay me for my opinion.’ The second novel’s was ‘what if there was more than one alien spaceship and the other didn’t crash?’ This novel, the third was ‘what would happen if the Cult of Aten (first invented in novel number two) and the books really took off and became a global phenomenon?’”
In September 2022, the anticipated Foreign Agent the Last Chapter arrived on the scene! Sequels are often formulaic and dull compared to first books, but this one is an exception to the rule. By comparison, the original Foreign Agent becomes a prequel –albeit a necessary one. Foreign Agent the Last Chapter is the real story; a masterwork of surreal, absurdist fiction!
I asked Mr. Rapaport how this chef-d’oeuvre came about. I quote his reply in full.
“I hadn’t envisioned any sequel to Foreign Agent, but besides geopolitics, there were two other broad topics I’d always wanted to get into a novel, and for which there was no room in Foreign Agent: religion, specifically the religion of The Urantia Book, and an unusual (I think) take on an alien invasion of Earth.
About four months after the publication of Foreign Agent, while taking a shower (these ideas always seem to hit me in the shower), it suddenly occurred to me that a line in the last chapter of Foreign Agent [Chapter 20 ed], the 1976 crash of an alien ship in Xinjiang (leading twenty years later to the Chinese genetic experiments), along with the fact that the narrator of Foreign Agent is never told, despite his asking several times, exactly why his geopolitical opinions were so valuable to the Chinese, could be the two keys to a new novel.
There remained several problems. How to merge these ideas with all the sex, and how to get the aliens to Earth in a reasonable time. The Urantia Book is not anti-sex, even sex for fun. It is, however, anti-obsession of any kind, including sex, and no one is more obsessed with sex than the novel’s narrator. One of the essays on my blog, Prolegomena to a Future Theology, in which I describe the three pillars of reality, provided the key to solving both problems. Of course, the solution is ridiculous, even absurd from a Urantia Book viewpoint, but other ridiculous ideas have been linked to that book by others so I don’t feel too bad about it.
When I stepped out of that shower, I had the basic idea for the first half of the novel, the buildup to the scene where all the main characters come together. Beyond that, I had no idea what I would do, but I started writing anyway. When I reached that middle, chapter 11, I knew what the end had to be, but still not how to get there. Chapter 12 followed naturally from 11. In chapter 13, I put six words into the mouth of one of my characters (no spoilers). When she spoke those words, I knew how the chasm would be bridged. The rest is history.”
Bearing in mind what Mr. Rapaport says above, there is a shift in the story exactly where he indicates. Chapters 1 through 11 proceed naturally. Beginning in chapter 12, the story becomes a bit unfocused and soon splits into three separate threads. Besides the main line involving the alien invasion (I hope that is not a spoiler, Mr. Rapaport mentions it above), two subthreads appear. Both begin naturally enough rooted in the main thread but end up having little to do with it or with one another except that the narrator must repeatedly traverse all three as the story, memoir-style, moves forward in time. Little is not nothing, however. The effect of each thread on the others is felt through their effect on the narrator, and Mr. Rapaport deftly uses this part of the book to expand on the subject of sex and drugs, in particular opium, introduced in Foreign Agent.
Yet while these chapters are not wasted, indeed they are the novel’s most literary, there is one rather long section, I’ll call it an infrastructure description, that takes up a few pages but ends up not being used anywhere else. I asked Mr. Rapaport about this and he told me those passages begin elevating the significance of two minor characters first introduced in Foreign Agent. He admits he might have done a better (read shorter) job with that section.
I’m not going to do a chapter-by-chapter review as I did with Foreign Agent. That book was a flat story, a single exciting thread from beginning to end. Foreign Agent the Last Chapter is more textured. Even the first eleven chapters describe multiple events occurring in parallel.
This novel, like Foreign Agent, ends with two epilogs, one by Mr. Rapaport and another by two new characters who are instrumental in the main thread. As in the former book, Mr. Rapaport tells me these epilogs are analogous to the photographs displayed at the end of the two movies “Hangover” (2009) and “Hangover 2” (2011). Their purpose is not so much to add comedy, though they are funny, rather to re-highlight comedy already encountered.
I dare not, however, close this review without mentioning the novel’s seminal contribution to literature. Throughout the book, beginning in chapter 1 and in many, though not all, subsequent chapters, Matthew Rapaport himself is discussed in third-person by the narrator and other characters! In short sections of two chapters, Mr. Rapaport speaks to the narrator in the form of replies to emails! Both of these little sections serve to enhance the contrast between Mr. Rapaport’s ideas and what the narrator experiences. There are, Mr. Rapaport keeps reminding me, “no rules in the novel.” I know of no other novelist who embeds him or herself into the novel in this way. In my humble opinion, some significant literary prize, perhaps a Pulitzer, is due Mr. Rapaport for this innovation.
In Foreign Agent the Last Chapter, Mr. Rapaport promised us a more complex and more ridiculous story, exceeding even the absurd limits of Foreign Agent. He has succeeded beyond my expectations on both counts!
Erotica: Literature or art intended to arouse sexual desire
Pornography: Printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of … activity intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings.
On various social media platforms I am in touch with writers, many of them, and a not insignificant portion of them (mostly women) write what they call “erotica”. I’ve read a smattering of these books, and what I have found was erotic certainly, but also pornographic. I do not mind pornography, though, like all other art, I think there are better and worse examples of it. I thought it would be interesting to set down what I take to be the difference between the two. Perhaps some interesting discussion will ensue.
There are, of course, many sorts of both erotica and porn, divided largely along the lines of who the characters are. I happen to be heterosexual, and so my focus throughout will be books of that sort, but there is also some great lesbian erotica (and porn) with which I am familiar, and also male homosexual erotica (and porn) with which I am not. There must be, I assume, bisexual and transsexual variations to be found. The distinction between erotica and porn set out below applies equally to all of these.
Erotica is the broader term. “Erotic literature” is literature in which the story revolves around the characters having sex. In pure erotica (see note on Don Juan below), there is always some story through which the sex is threaded because the sex, while it happens throughout the tale, is not described in any detail and so cannot be the story as such. The story’s power to arouse emerges through the connection between the sex and the story’s other action. Fifty Shades of Grey contains some minimally explicit sex—and so to some qualifies as porn—but the story is about much more than the characters having sex. It is arousing because the sex, wherever it appears, is made to serve the wider story and not be the story. I would call it erotica with pornographic highlights.
Pornographic literature (some would say that no porn is literature, but I beg to differ, though there are lesser and greater examples) is descriptively explicit. Like erotica, there is often both sex and a story, but typically, the story is threaded through the sex rather than the sex through the story, as in non-pornographic erotica. There is, however, also pornographic literature in which sex is, essentially, the story, something that cannot be pulled off in erotica. Explicitness, and not sex-in-story-context, is the titillation mechanism of pornography.
In the better pornography, the first few sex acts are described in considerable detail, while the description of later acts is shortened. There is less detail, but also back references (there are various literary approaches to this) to prior, more detailed descriptions, with the link between them left to the reader’s imagination. This device prevents the reader from becoming overwhelmed by repetitive description. There are many variations in the sex act, but by and large, they usually come down to the same few core activities. Literally describing that same core over and over becomes redundant. As it progresses, the story’s explicit description restricts itself to what varies between sex acts.
I’ve read many of both types of books, but I will leave you with a few recommendations. On the erotica side, The Education of Don Juan by Robin Hardy (1985) is the greatest purely erotic, not pornographic, novel I’ve ever read. There is sex in every facet of the story, but the sex acts, marvelously composed, are never explicitly described. A close second is not strictly a novel but an autobiography of one very sex-filled year in the life of Anaïs Nin. Henry and June stretches the erotic/pornographic envelope here and there, but by reference to sex that has already occurred and ended, never in progress. Sometimes, only a single sentence touches the explicit.
Examples of “pure erotica” are harder to find than porn. In the 1950s, a few lesbians began writing erotica, material lost for decades, but recently republished and available on Amazon. In those days, homosexuality was literally illegal (it may become so again if American Republicans get their way) so these women wrote their stories without any explicit sexual description. They are erotic, but like Fifty Shades, the stories, and not the sex, are dominant. Good examples include: I Prefer Girls by Jessie Dupont, Women’s Barracks by Tereska Torres, The Girls in 3B by Valerie Taylor, The Price of Salt by Claire Morgan, and the Beebo Brinker Omnibus by Ann Bannon. I should also mention the Marquis de Sade’s Justine. Pornographic when it was written in 1791, it is purely erotic in the modern vein.
On the pornographic side, I think much of the better literature was written in the late 19th and early 20th century, though much later examples also exist. Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (John Cleland), known also as Fanny Hill was published in 1749 and is considered the first great English pornographic novel. But the best, in my opinion, is The Black Pearl by Anonymous (not the famous one by Scott O’Dell).
Written in the late 19th or early 20th centuries, its real provenance is difficult to determine. The Black Pearl follows many characters who, at the beginning, have sex (the women) with the main protagonist (Horby, a man) and then go off on adventures across Europe, reporting back to him on their exploits via letters. Horby has his own adventures as well, and there is a raft of other characters who were famous artists, playwrights, and others of the English upper classes in the 1880s and 90s. The description of these characters by the protagonist (the story is told in first person) suggests that he was, in fact, a real person of substance and knew these people intimately.
My favorite line in pornographic literature comes from this book. One of the women finds herself embroiled in a Satanic cult. Having described (in a letter) in luscious but shortened detail her liaison with the cult’s high priest (witnessed by a circle of initiates, and in which she is a willing participant), she makes perhaps the most pragmatic assessment of Satanism I have ever read: “Oh Horby!” she declares, “This Satanism is just fucking with frills!”
Other examples of good porn include The Story of O by Jean-Jacques Pauvert (1954) and Enrolling Little Etta by Alta Hensley (2016). I leave off by mentioning the four-volume BDSM set Sleeping Beauty by A. N. Roquelaure (Ann Rice 1983-2015). The sex in this last gets a little boring, but it is explicit.
I suppose you want a few examples now? Here are two
Erotica: Clothes shed they embrace. Falling on the mattress, entangled in one another’s bodies, he enters her…
Pornography: … entangled in one another’s bodies the tip of his tumescent gourd finds the moist outer petals of her flower and buries itself to the root in her soaking wet volcanic channel…
You get the idea?
This all leaves me with one further question. Why do women seem, at least in this time of global social media, to be more often successful authors of erotica and pornography than men? But I take leave to address it another time.
Ruminations 