The popular media has adopted the name Lolita to describe any sexually precocious young woman with a penchant for twisting older men around her finger. The original Lolita, however, was a more mythical creature, a "nymphet" (Nabokov coined the word especially for her), who at a mere 12 years of age c

Charming, Dense, Elegant, Erotic, Lush, Post-war literature, Witty

The poet Karl Shapiro, in his introduction to the 1961 American publication of Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer," said, "Morally I regard Miller as a holy man'Gandhi with a penis." This was Miller's first book, and its pages were rife with full, frontal descriptions of sexual joy and despair. He ha

Beats, Bombast, Ebullient, Ecstatic, Erotic, Improvised, In-your-face, Manic, Modernist literature, Overflowing, Perverse, Post-war literature, Sincere

A protege of dancers Eubie Blake and Noble Sissel, 15-year-old Josephine Baker began her career on the vaudeville circuits, touring with Bessie Smith as a chorus girl. After Broadway appearances in "Shuffle Along" (1921) -- which marked the advent of the black theatrical renaissance, and "Chocolate D

Elegant, Erotic, Feminine, Harlem renaissance theater, Kinetic, Sexy, Tribal

Reality is a little less rigid in the stories of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Blurring the lines between belief and possibility, Garcia Marquez uses Magical Realism -- which presupposes the existence of a kind of supernatural order of things -- and a mythological style of storytelling to celebrate the inc

Elegant, Epic, Erotic, Fantastic, Magical realism, Polychromatic, Repetition, Surreal