“Phaedrus Pron” Is Plato Made Obviously Filthy

Using his brilliant cache of dirty/sexy fonts, Paul Chan transforms Plato's "Phaedrus" from a discussion of love and rhetoric into a wet, hot, pleading, begging, humping, squirting, moaning fuckfest between Socrates and the young Phaedrus.

Which is, when you think about it, what Plato was really about. Remember "Symposium"? Even that Aristophanes stuff was steamy.

Anyway, ancient geekery aside, "Phaedrus Pron" is more of an art project or conversation piece than it is a book, in that all the denotative meaning of "Phaedrus" gets vaporized as the sexual subtext goes supernova. If you're not familiar with Paul Chan's fonts, just know that every letter turns into something dirty. In one of these fonts, Socrates's opening line of Phaedrus, "My dear Phaedrus, whence come you, and whither are you going?" turns into this:

SOCRATES: The cum dwells, in god O being in sin, The feeling knows, being O in god in sin, becomes new oh lord spiritual knows, O in flesh, delicious, O delicious, ye the good, O dwells oh lord being in flesh, in god spiritual knows, and not in law, knows, O in sin, being in sin, O dwells, ye becomes in death, ye and not in flesh, in death, just

And that's just in the font Oh Romans, one of eighteen used in "Phaedrus Pron." Great big sections of the book use the font Oh Troll, which makes everything come out as, "moar moar moar moar moar," or Oh Narcisse which looks like, "slrcch oho oho ohhoo mhn ahhh... mn sssh mmm mn..."

This might not be the kind of thing you can read cover to cover, but it's marvelous to have around the house, and should you ever want to stage a dramatic reading at an open mic night or open mic orgy, we here at Fleshbot would certainly attend. Paul Chan, you're amazing, and you've finally made all that Western canon reading pay off for us.

· National Philistine (nationalphilistine.com)
· Buy the book or e-book "Phaedrus Pron" (badlandsunlimited.com)

[Thumbnail via GinaLynn.com (promo.premiumpass.com)]