If you want to speak about sex in a novel or any "ambitious" writing, today, in the 21st century, you must be explicit. The French author Catherine Millet wrote: "For me, a pornographic book is functional, written to help you to get excited. James's sex scenes are not incidental, they are the meat of the plot, the crux of the conflict, the key to at least one of and possibly both the central characters. In the very act of describing sex as an incidental, you create an excruciating sex scene.
That's why the Bad Sex Award exists, and is so easy to bestow. It is extremely difficult to write a regular story spliced with sex, just as it would be difficult to tell a story interspersed with explicit sexual detail. First, the reason sex scenes are so difficult to write is the gear change, rather than the sex itself. By this reckoning, Fifty Shades is just Mills & Boon for the generation that would once have been embarrassed to be seen reading Mills & Boon. Because erotica is niche to start with, this revolution took longer to reach it, and only now have we loosened up a bit. It's long been acceptable to read the Financial Times and also watch the Eurovision Song contest, read Philip Roth as well as Marian Keyes. Maybe people do that all the time.Ĭonsider, furthermore, the way high culture and low culture have collided. After lunch? When the sun goes down? It seemed a bit random, yet I can see why he'd query the wisdom of summoning a sustained erotic vignette on one's way into work. Where do you stand on erotica in public spaces? Someone in a tube carriage last week with three people reading the paperback (and God knows how many reading it on their Kindles) tweeted, "isn't it a bit early for that sort of thing?" – as though there were an erotica yardarm, and we all knew when it was. It was word of mouth that launched the paperback version on the back of the ebook. The unexpected element is that the shame of erotic fiction is largely in the imagination, and once people had read it, they felt happy to discuss it openly. People who like to trace all new trends back to new technology have offered this explanation – that women who wouldn't be seen dead reading smut on the tube could read it on their Kindle, and this launched a whole world of sales. It must be a bit like being married to someone for 20 years, and suddenly finding out they like fisting. Its popularity has come as a bit of a surprise to publishers, who thought they knew what women wanted. There is a little light spanking in Jilly Cooper ( Octavia, Rivals), and the romance genre (as distinct from chicklit) would be many pages lighter if nobody ever got tied to a bed with a scarf, but this is in a different league.
After 1,600 pages of the stuff, you will too. I've been infected by James's ominous, staccato delivery. This is Fifty Shades of Grey I'm talking about. Steele just wants a regular boyfriend (or does she? Yik yak yik yak). Here, her voice is quite different: meticulous, inventive, radical and conflicted Grey is only interested in a dominant/submissive relationship (with these "hard limits" – no fire, no faeces, no blood loss, no gynaecological instruments, no children or animals, no permanent disfigurement, no breath control and no direct electricity – I paraphrase for brevity). James writes as though she's late for a meeting with a sex scene. In normal circumstances, it would be lazy, but here, it is more like a shorthand. Is it his looks? His civility? Wealth? Power?" Yuh huh.
Third 50 shades of grey book drivers#
The narrative drivers are pretty slack – improbable dialogue ("I'm a very wealthy man, Miss Steele, and I have expensive and absorbing hobbies") lame characterisation irritating tics (a constant war between Steele's "subconscious", which is always fainting or putting on half-moon glasses, and her "inner goddess", who is forever pouting and stamping) and an internal monologue that goes like this … "Holy hell, he's hot!" "No man has ever affected me the way Christian Grey has, and I cannot fathom why. The trilogy features Anastasia Steele, who falls in love with Christian Grey, a troubled young billionaire who likes sex only if he can accompany it with quite formal, stylised corporal punishment. But its content is, of course, rather adult. By which they mean "it's the fastest-selling novel of all time that isn't Harry Potter". It's the fastest selling adult novel of all time. There's just been an extra print run for the UK market, to meet demand: 2.75 million copies. In the UK, it's the fastest-selling book ever in both physical and ebook incarnations.
I t's pointless to deny that there's something going on here: EL James has now sold 4 million copies of her Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy via her UK publisher, Random House, to add to the 15 million (it beggars belief) that have been shifted in the US and Canada.
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