ABSTRACT
Hogg’s main character, who gives Samuel R. Delany’s 1969 novel its title, introduces himself to the reader, leaving little ambiguity about the nature of the story about to unfold. The novel tells the story of Franklin Hargus, better known as Hogg, who earns a living by working, as he calls it, as a “rape artist”. Given the fact that the rest of Hogg continues in a similar vein to its introduction, it is not surprising that the novel was controversial before it even got published. Hogg seems to invite a definition of transgressive fiction as nothing but marginalization, violence and radicalism conceived in opposition to, and even in search of destruction of, regular social order. The anger that permeates Hogg is not an isolated literary device. Even though the novel may appear to be a straightforward attack on social order, its content and style are not without precedent.
