Plot: Decorated war veteran, suffering flashbacks, kills wife, fucks maid, takes up with lounge singer, etc.

Why it's on the list: First published as serial fiction in a national magazine, Mailer's classic has the tension of a cliffhanger. His sexual language is robust, the lust literary and effusive. There's no room for foreplay (unless you count homicide). The kinds of sex the narrator has seem entirely in keeping with his character: Pure male or malice? Kate Millett read the three-page sex scene (hero having just killed wife, fucks maid) and was inspired to write her 1970 feminist manifesto Sexual Politics, finding it a microcosm of oppression.

Excerpt: I lay back like a king lion and let her romp. She had a gift. I was off on the nicest dream of Berlin nightclubs with their telephones and queer shows, of bal musettes and twisterias, she was giving a short lecture with her tongue on the habits of the Germans, the French, the English (one sorry bite indeed), the Italians, the Spanish, she must have had an Arab or two. All the tars and scents were blending into the one full smell which always makes you begin. I was ready to take the roller coaster, but I didn't want it to end, not this one, not yet, her greed was riding through me, I wanted more and more, and so I slipped free of her mouth and put her on her back.