Books that depend for their sense of opposition on the straw man of a presupposed bourgeois mentality outside the fiction itself — on shock value, in other words — are working in conditions of profound safety disguised as risk.

This article (via Maud Newton) articulates so well many of the problems I have with "shocking" books, but I also think it fails in certain ways to appreciate how powerful a force anomie is. I can think of wicked things I have done just because I have been bored and sexual acts done out of boredom. So Dee's quick dismissal of Homes and Cooper for that reason troubles me, but it is understandable and an interesting argument to read, especially because it is so readable.