Tickling in literature

[outspacer11]

Inspired by the earlier thread about tickling in some R L Stine book, I thought I'd ask whether anyone could remember tickling in any other books.
First of all, I remember the "ticklish torture" bits in at least two "Where's Wally" books (in the US, I think it's "Where's Waldo").
Also from childhood, there was a bit on the front cover of "Little Dracula's First Bite" featuring a character ("slave" - m) being tickled under the arms so he moves around, while blood comes out of a tap attached to his neck and into the bathtub of Dracula (something for the s&m inclined out there, I guess).
And I remember a book my high school library had called something like "Allen and Unwin's 14th Book of Monster Stories" (might have been another publisher, might not have been 14th) which featured a story (by the guy who had edited the book) called "Bigfeet", about a dragon which is defeated by the central character tickling the hell out of him on his feet (seriously, half the story was the tickling bit, and even though I don't get into m/m this was the most intense mainstream tickling story I've ever seen - kind of makes you wonder...)
Finally, in Grade 5 I was forced to read a book called "The Power of Three" about children switched at birth or something, which featured one of the kids involved having his feet tickled by his supposed sister in order to get him to admit that he would never lose touch with them or something.

(Any theories on why so much of this is */m? It's not what I'm into personally, so I don't know why I've encountered so much of it in books)

Moving on to more adult readings, Louis Nowra's "Abaza: A Modern Encyclopaedia" features people "dying laughing" by being tickled to death on their feet by the country's rulers (it is only described in detail once, but is hinted at a number of times that this is a standard practice; Nowra is gay, which explains the m/m nature of the whole thing, although there is a bit early on about a schoolgirl who accidentally kills another girl by tickling her during a "laughing epidemic" - not much detail is given).
In fact, in adult life I haven't really encountered a great deal of tickling in books. I remember someone posting a section on a Charles Dickens novel at one point about a maid tickling another maid on the ribs, and suggesting that she would tie the other girl down and tickle her feet with a feather if some condition wasn't met - can't remember the details now, and haven't read the book myself. Also, I remember reading someone else's post about a horror story (maybe by Steven King, or someone similarly famous?) about an old man who is tickled into telling his wife (?) something - can't remember what (this was a long time ago, and again, I haven't read the book myself).
That's all that comes to mind at the moment - can anyone think of any others?

 

[theshire]

There is a scene in Stephen King's 'Wizard and Glass' where the character of Susan Delgado is having her virginity checked by an old witch, who is inspecting every inch of her naked body to see if she's fit for the town Mayor. At one point the old woman runs a finger down her sole and Susan utters 'a nervous, screamy laugh'. That's all I can think of right now, but I remember the Goosebumps books I read as a kid had quite a lot of tickling.

 

[maxamum_sumthin1]

which R.L Stine books have tickling in them? i only ever read one 😛

 

[theshire]

LOL, I can't remember most of their names. There was one called Ghost Beach which had a brother/sister tickle fight, and there was one called Revenge of the Lawn Gnomes where at the end the living gnomes threatened to tickle their victims to death. Oh, and one called Night of the Living Dummy III, where the main character threatens her younger brother with tickling to see whether he's asleep.

There are more, but as I said, I can't remember them. I'm amazed I remembered those three. I'll try and think of some more examples, though.

 

[maxamum_sumthin1]

Oh, and one called Night of the Living Dummy III, where the main character threatens her younger brother with tickling to see whether he's asleep.

that one i remeber now you mention it 🙂 i'l have to check out the others 🙂

 

[theshire]

A-ha! There was also a tickling scene in The Cuckoo Clock of Doom!

 

[Yet_One_More_Idiot]

I remember reading those in secondary school - everyone thought I was a bit odd for reading books that are meant for much younger kids. 🙂

The best tickling scene that I can remember from any of those book (apart from those scenes already mentioned, was in the book "The Beast from the East", where some kids get caught in a deadly game of Tag. One of them is attacked by a tree, and his older brother saves him by tickling the tree into letting him go.
Strange, but also surprisingly well written. How often do you come across b/tree tickling scenes? 😛

 

[theshire]

If you read them now, you'd probably think they were pretty rubbish, but for kids I think they're excellent books. I'll have to dig one out and try reading it. 😉

 

[Ticklers_dream]

That is quite funny. So many tickling scenes in the R. L. Stine books. To think thoses books were the ones that I learned to read on.

 

[Ticklers_dream]

There was 2 books that had tickling scenes that I know of. Though the names are on the tip of my tongue i know the scenesw quite well even from years of not reading them. One was a flashback of a girl at a pullparty having her toes nibbled on. The girl giggled , said "it tickles" and dismisses the idea thinking it is the dog. It turned out to be a toe monster that ate toes.
Anotgher was m/m where two brothers tickle each other after turning invisible.

 

[chickles_:)]

Hiya 😎
Hmm, yeah, i've run across several tickling moments in literature. 😀 Though to be honest i've seen many more scenes, especially in romance novels, where you'd think, "She's for sure going to tickle him" and then - she doesn't!! :grind_tee *laughs*

But lets see if i can recall three in the SF/F genre at least. One i remember actually featured the main character heroine (second in a duology, whose name escapes me 🙄 😛 ) who actually encourages an 8 year old boy who's been grabbed by a hostile cat-like alien (known as an Oph) to tickle him! "Do you know the tickle game?" she asks the boy. "Let's play, and he's it." The sequence goes on for about half a page.

The second are the references in Kristen Briten's two books "Green Rider" and more so in the sequel "First Rider's Call" While the sequences are not long there are several one-two sentence references.

Elisabeth Moon has a few such sequences in her "Once a Hero"

Third and Queen for me remains the foreplay scene in Mercedes Lackey's "By the Sword". Here our heroine, Kerowyn, gets into a play fight with her co-trainee Daren (i think it is). Realising that to beat him she would have to use tactics that would spoil the mood, she decides instead to exploit a certain weakness she discovers in their play. 😀
Ms. Lackey does a truly wonderful job spinning out the tickle fight. My only complaint is, of course, that she ends it too soon. 🙁 Waaaah!

Hope this helps any who are looking! Tickle tales in post-teen literature is a rare and wonderful occurrence! 🙂

Many blessings,

 

[Ayla ny]

There is a scene in Stephen King's 'Wizard and Glass' where the character of Susan Delgado is having her virginity checked by an old witch, who is inspecting every inch of her naked body to see if she's fit for the town Mayor. At one point the old woman runs a finger down her sole and Susan utters 'a nervous, screamy laugh'. That's all I can think of right now, but I remember the Goosebumps books I read as a kid had quite a lot of tickling.

I’d forgotten about that scene (yuck… that witch gave me the creeps). another King Novel scene is in The Shining. Jack gets his wife (I can never remember her name) on the stairs of the Inn. before he starts losing it.

 

[Ticklers_dream]

The book and movie "the shining" are excellent though I do not recall the scene between the husband and his wife.

 

[melbournianguy]

In the novel, "Christine" by Stephen King I vaguely remember the main character Arnie tickling his friend's sister in the ribs, but I read that when I was a kid myself so I can't really remember the exact details.

 

[nessonite1]

hmmmmm....
Well....a few that I remember coming across that I can share.
Though not literature per se I found a psychology book that was all about laughter at Borders one day. It had an entire chapter dedicated to tickling. I shall try to find it again tomorrow so that I can fill in a title and author here.
One of the first I remember was reading the Princess Bride when I was 10 or 11. There is a lengthy (or I thought so at the time anyway) conversation between Indigo and Miracle Max about bringing people back to life by tickling them...explaining how the one man said he hated it so much that he came all the way back from the dead to tell him to stop. Pretty funny actually 😛 However they did not attempt this cure on Wesley.
hmmm...
Ah yes...It seems that most of these occur in teen and pre-teen literature so I'll throw another in. "Tiger Eyes" by Judy Blume (I think that's the title) mentiones various people tickling the lead character's little brother intermittently throughout the entire book.
I think that's all I can come up with that's worth mentioning for now.

 

[MistressValerie1]

I recall a brief F/M tickling scene in Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress." I was also entranced by a graphic discussion of tickling paraphilia in an old psychology text (I don't remember the name at the moment), complete with a detailed and steamy case history of an obsessive-compulsive tickling fanatic 😀

 

[Ignatz]

Just a Few

I don't recall any extensive tickling occurring in the literature I've absorbed over the years. Some brief mentions include:
1. "Madame Tellier's Excursion" by Guy de Maupassant. In this short story by the French master, a garter salesman sharing a carriage with a group of prostitutes tickles one of the girls on the leg after attaching a sample of his wares to her thigh.
2. "Teibele and Her Demon" by Isaac Bashevis Singer. This story is about a man who seduces a gullible peasant woman by pretending to be a demon who appears to her at night. In the course of events, he tells her what it's like in Hell and mentions that tickling is the worst torture inflicted on damned souls. He identifies a particular demon who is in charge of this and says, "When he tickles an adultress on her soles or under the arms, her tortured laughter rings all the way from Hell to Madagascar." (I'm quoting from memory.) The story was made into a stage play, but I don't know if that line survived the adaptation. (It would be entertaining if it were enacted rather than simply described!)
3. "Something Wicked This Way Comes" by Ray Bradbury. At the climax of this novel, the Dust Witch tickles the young hero's helpless father and inadvertently seals her own doom, for laughter of any kind proves to be fatal to her.
That's all I can think of at the moment. Pretty slim pickings, I know.

 

[outspacer11]

I recall a brief F/M tickling scene in Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress." I was also entranced by a graphic discussion of tickling paraphilia in an old psychology text (I don't remember the name at the moment), complete with a detailed and steamy case history of an obsessive-compulsive tickling fanatic 😀

Is there any way to get the name of that psychology text? I've looked into this a little and have never found any specific mention of tickling paraphilia in psych books - I'd be fascinated to have a look at it. Have you come across any others that mention it?

 

[quillman0071]

tickling in fiction

From the adult erotic scene; try the series entitled 'A man with a maid'. These texts contain very graphic scenes of erotic tickling.

 

[sole seeker1]

Jean Auel, used foot tickling as foreplay in the third novel of her Clan of the Cave Bear series. The main character (female) is a cave-woman. It's been a long time since I read the books but if memory serves, a lover "scratches" at the sole of her foot, which she finds pleasant.

 

[knismo1]

In the L. Frank Baum book "Rinkitink in Oz," there's the threat of tickling used by the evil Queen Cor, who "loves to tickle fat men and see them jump," as Rinkitink is told by a guard. When she captures him and his friend Prince Inga, she alludes to this, but sadly, it never occurs:

Then she turned to Rinkitink and said:

"As for you, I cannot decide how to make you useful to me, as you are altogether too fat and awkward to work in the fields. It may be, however, that I can use you as a pincushion.

"What!" cried Rinkitink in horror, "would you stick pins into the King of Gilgad?"

"Why not?" returned Queen Cor. "You are as fat as a pincushion, as you must yourself admit, and whenever I needed a pin I could call you to me." Then she laughed at his frightened look and asked: "By the way, are you ticklish?"

This was the question Rinkitink had been dreading. He gave a moan of despair and shook his head.

"I should love to tickle the bottom of your feet with a feather," continued the cruel woman. "Please take off your shoes."

"Oh, your Majesty!" pleaded poor Rinkitink, "I beg you to allow me to amuse you in some other way. I can dance, or I can sing you a song."

"Well," she answered, shaking with laughter, "you may sing a song -- if it be a merry one. But you do not seem in a merry mood."

"I feel merry -- indeed, Your Majesty, I do!" protested Rinkitink, anxious to escape the tickling. But even as he professed to "feel merry" his round, red face wore an expression of horror and anxiety that was realty comical.

knismo

 

[Ignatz]

In "A Voyage to the Moon," a 17th Century science fiction story by Cyrano de Bergerac, the Moon Maidens entertain him and his fellow travelers by tickling their feet. But since he speaks of being lulled to sleep by this treatment, I have to assume that either "tickling" is a mistranslation for "massaging," or else old Big Nose just wasn't ticklish. Anyone who's read it in the original French might have a clearer take on it.

 

[Yet_One_More_Idiot]

If you read them now, you'd probably think they were pretty rubbish, but for kids I think they're excellent books. I'll have to dig one out and try reading it. 😉

Actually, I wasn't that much younger; I was reading them in college, whilst I should have been doing my A-Levels (so I was about 18 at the time). 😀

 

[gila67]

Here's some I've come across:

Another Isaac Bashevis Singer story, "The Black Wedding": a woman is being tortured by demons and it mentions tickling as one of the tortures.

There was a m/f tickling scene in this horror novel I once read; I can't remember the title, but the author's name was William Relling.

"The Screaming Laugh", short story by Cornell Woolrich: a man is tickled into revealing the location of some hidden loot, then the guy tickles him to death.

 

[Ignatz]

In Charles Dickens's "The Old Curiosity Shop," one of the exhibits in the traveling wax museum is a notorious wife murderer named Packlemore who tortured his wives by tickling their feet. He is depicted with his finger curled as if to tickle the onlooker. Later, Little Nell has a nightmare in which Quilp, the novel's villain, approaches her in the guise and attitude of Packlemore.