Grey
EL James following Kant. You cannot accuse me of being highbrow after this one.
I'll start with an introduction to my experience of the 50 shades sequence. Some years ago, probably before you ever heard of James' books (unless you were an early reader), I was interested in BDSM books for a very simple reason: I think that novels are often a better way to understand human psychology than psychology treatises. Why BDSM? because it is so foreign to my experience that I could not even begin to phantom the reasons people might be into it. My curiosity was aroused by Sacher-Masoch's "Venus in Furs", which I'd read because I wanted to know what was so influential about it that it generated the word masochism (and it still surprises me that we didn't have a word for it until so recently!).
So I'd started reading, but did not finish because I'd got really bored with it, Ann Rice's Sleeping Beauty. I'd also began reading "The story of O", but the awful writing style (I suspect that a terrible translation was the main culprit for this) put me off after only a few pages. Here I must explain that I've got periods when I can read trash literature and others when I cannot tolerate it, otherwise you won't be able to understand how I quit the Story of O and went on to read the whole three loooong volumes of the 50 shades trilogy (even if with a lot of page turning without reading).
But I'm getting ahead of myself. After Sacher-Masoch, I went on reading half a dozen or so of these books, from fiction to pseudo-memoirs, before coming across EL James. I must say that after reading only a couple of them, it was not so much what they revealed about "the lifestyle" that interested me, but what they revealed about power in human relationships in general and how they enlightened me on the personality and behaviour of the people around me in particular. If there was need for a proof that BDSM is foreign to me, I'd say it is that only after reading these books did I begin to understand certain important aspects of the personality and behaviour of people who are very close to me and that I've known all my life.
Some of the books I've read were useless in this respect, and hence a waste of time. I'd say 50 shades was one of them, but Grey on the contrary was more revelatory. This is mainly because 50 shades was never a true BDSM book, there was plenty of evidence that Ms. James was very ill informed on the subject, but somehow she did seem to have gain some (minor?) knowledge on it in the meantime. Except for this, there is no evidence in the latter book that time has passed between the writing of this and previous volumes. The writing style is still awful, the editing ditto. But I must clarify that I say useless only from this perspective, but quite interesting from another point of view that I'll go into briefly in a while.
One of the consequences of lack of editing is that Grey is looooong: over 400 pages to say so little, just like the 50 shades trilogy, (even that didn't change!). I've always thought that the reason 50 shades was so terrible was that James had not expected to be read at all and hadn't wanted to invest too much time rewriting. From that perspective one would expect this book to be better trimmed, but this is not at all the case and some how I'm not surprised. Grey proves that Ms. James wouldn't know how to do it, she really is a terrible writer, and her amazing success was not conducive to it either. Again only a small part of the story is told, it will be a trilogy again!! Unbelievable and still... I'm not surprised. What surprises me is that this woman still describes herself as someone who 'continues to write novels' (note the plural), when she has written a single one and after all these years has only succeeded in retelling the same story with only minor changes to it. Does anyone in her publishing company have a sense of ridicule?
The experience of reading Grey was kind of funny (not funny ah-ah, funny peculiar), on the one hand it is horribly written and edited, on the other hand, I was again "gripped" by the story. I even woke up in the middle of the night thinking about it. In her obvious insanity (and despite the terrible writing and lack of psychological insight), James has a way of making the reader relive some ancient diffuse memories of past fear of rejection and exhilaration of new and young love. Grey's constant oscillations and mood changes, even though terribly described, left me in a very strange and intense state of mind. And somehow led me to interesting reflections and insights that make the two full days I've spent reading it not a complete waste of time. It is good evidence of James terrible writing ability that even though the book is way too long, I was left frustrated by the lack of development on some of the most interesting aspects of this novel.
What I find interesting about the whole 50 shades phenomenon, is not the books themselves but people's reactions to them. Most of it is proof of the extraordinary levels of prudery that still reign among common people, and by common I don't mean the low classes, but the middle class that includes the oh-so-educated class of journalist and intellectuals. The proof of this prudery is how almost everyone seems to be so dazzled by the explicit sex, that they find it impossible to go beyond it and have a logical, rational, and cold-minded critical approach to not only the books themselves but also the reasons behind their success (with the very honourable exception of Eva Illouz who has dared
writing a very insightful book on how 50 shades sheds light on many
important aspects of modern society, because in the end there must be an
explanation to why these books have been so successful beyond the reductionist most-people-are-retarded one).
This post is getting way too big, I'll stop here. Maybe I'll go on in a second post. After all, EL James is deserving of at least as much attention as Immanuel Kant. Wouldn't you say?
I'll start with an introduction to my experience of the 50 shades sequence. Some years ago, probably before you ever heard of James' books (unless you were an early reader), I was interested in BDSM books for a very simple reason: I think that novels are often a better way to understand human psychology than psychology treatises. Why BDSM? because it is so foreign to my experience that I could not even begin to phantom the reasons people might be into it. My curiosity was aroused by Sacher-Masoch's "Venus in Furs", which I'd read because I wanted to know what was so influential about it that it generated the word masochism (and it still surprises me that we didn't have a word for it until so recently!).
So I'd started reading, but did not finish because I'd got really bored with it, Ann Rice's Sleeping Beauty. I'd also began reading "The story of O", but the awful writing style (I suspect that a terrible translation was the main culprit for this) put me off after only a few pages. Here I must explain that I've got periods when I can read trash literature and others when I cannot tolerate it, otherwise you won't be able to understand how I quit the Story of O and went on to read the whole three loooong volumes of the 50 shades trilogy (even if with a lot of page turning without reading).
But I'm getting ahead of myself. After Sacher-Masoch, I went on reading half a dozen or so of these books, from fiction to pseudo-memoirs, before coming across EL James. I must say that after reading only a couple of them, it was not so much what they revealed about "the lifestyle" that interested me, but what they revealed about power in human relationships in general and how they enlightened me on the personality and behaviour of the people around me in particular. If there was need for a proof that BDSM is foreign to me, I'd say it is that only after reading these books did I begin to understand certain important aspects of the personality and behaviour of people who are very close to me and that I've known all my life.
Some of the books I've read were useless in this respect, and hence a waste of time. I'd say 50 shades was one of them, but Grey on the contrary was more revelatory. This is mainly because 50 shades was never a true BDSM book, there was plenty of evidence that Ms. James was very ill informed on the subject, but somehow she did seem to have gain some (minor?) knowledge on it in the meantime. Except for this, there is no evidence in the latter book that time has passed between the writing of this and previous volumes. The writing style is still awful, the editing ditto. But I must clarify that I say useless only from this perspective, but quite interesting from another point of view that I'll go into briefly in a while.
One of the consequences of lack of editing is that Grey is looooong: over 400 pages to say so little, just like the 50 shades trilogy, (even that didn't change!). I've always thought that the reason 50 shades was so terrible was that James had not expected to be read at all and hadn't wanted to invest too much time rewriting. From that perspective one would expect this book to be better trimmed, but this is not at all the case and some how I'm not surprised. Grey proves that Ms. James wouldn't know how to do it, she really is a terrible writer, and her amazing success was not conducive to it either. Again only a small part of the story is told, it will be a trilogy again!! Unbelievable and still... I'm not surprised. What surprises me is that this woman still describes herself as someone who 'continues to write novels' (note the plural), when she has written a single one and after all these years has only succeeded in retelling the same story with only minor changes to it. Does anyone in her publishing company have a sense of ridicule?
The experience of reading Grey was kind of funny (not funny ah-ah, funny peculiar), on the one hand it is horribly written and edited, on the other hand, I was again "gripped" by the story. I even woke up in the middle of the night thinking about it. In her obvious insanity (and despite the terrible writing and lack of psychological insight), James has a way of making the reader relive some ancient diffuse memories of past fear of rejection and exhilaration of new and young love. Grey's constant oscillations and mood changes, even though terribly described, left me in a very strange and intense state of mind. And somehow led me to interesting reflections and insights that make the two full days I've spent reading it not a complete waste of time. It is good evidence of James terrible writing ability that even though the book is way too long, I was left frustrated by the lack of development on some of the most interesting aspects of this novel.
What I find interesting about the whole 50 shades phenomenon, is not the books themselves but people's reactions to them. Most of it is proof of the extraordinary levels of prudery that still reign among common people,
This post is getting way too big, I'll stop here. Maybe I'll go on in a second post. After all, EL James is deserving of at least as much attention as Immanuel Kant. Wouldn't you say?
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