BDSM MEDIA NEWS!!!!
October 23, 2012
50 Shades of Grey: Novel a hit in Quebec, too
Source: Thestar.com. - The Star - Canada
CANADA - MONTREAL - It sits high on the bookshelf along with the other bestsellers. Another stack of books is arranged in the form of an eye-catching pyramid at the checkout counter of a busy downtown bookstore.
To its right is the English version of the dirty novel that has taken the world by storm. A little to the left is what we might now call the grandmother of mommy porn, The Story of O - the subversive product of longing and desire in postwar France.
Now critics and cultural observers in Quebec are trying to divine exactly where 50 Shades of Grey, published for the first time earlier this month under the French title 50 Nuance de Grey, fits in the cannon of French-language erotic fiction.
The story by British author E.L. James of an affair between a troubled sadist, Christian Grey, and a reluctant college graduate, Anastasia Steele, who falls under his sway, was already a popular purchase here when it was only available in English.
The new translation has also topped the bestseller charts with Quebec’s two most popular outlets, Renaud-Bray and Archambault.
“The craziness has already started. We have many orders and many women coming into our boutiques looking for it,” said Cindy Cinnamon, owner of Boutiques PlanetX, a chain of sex shops in and around Quebec City.
“Here in Quebec, people are very titillated by erotic literature. It sells very well.”
The marketing trick to the book is the same in French as it has been in English. Add a healthy dose of hardcore erotica to the Harlequin-style romantic storyline, but not so much as to shock the average reader who might decide to peruse the pages. It is for those who would rather read about bondage than allow themselves to be bound and put under a lover’s control.
“It’s been a long time since we’ve had such a success,” said Roxane Lalonde, Renaud-Bray’s director of marketing, noting that sales are as strong in the big cities as in Quebec’s regions.
What is surprising to literature professor Antonio Dominguez Leiva of Université de Québec à Montréal, is the degree to which people are sucked in an and intrigued by what he classifies as a “diluted” version of the erotic novel.
It’s not thanks to the critics in Quebec, who have noted that the book is filled with clichés and, on top of that, is poorly written.
“The real torture in this book,” Chatelaine’s Quebec edition wrote this month, “is to take it in your hands and read it.”
The Marquis de Sade’s 1785 tome 120 Days of Sodom is perhaps the most outrageous example of explicit fiction, but James’s novel is also much softer than 1954’s The Story of O, the tale of a French woman who submits to various indignities to win the favour of her lover, Rene.
Its release resulted in obscenity charges being brought against the publisher and restrictions on its sale. The author, Dominique Aury, published under the pseudonym Pauline Réage and her contribution to the cannon of French erotic fiction was unknown until the final years of the century. Yet Aury’s contribution to that subversive world continues to be one of the bestselling books at Renaud-Bray.
The sales figures for 50 Shades, Dominguez Leiva suggests, could also provide a clue as to whether Quebec’s French-speaking minority really has a culture that is distinct from the Anglo-Saxons surround the province.
If Cinnamon’s judgment is accurate, the book that has taken western culture and its women by storm is not likely to survive the rigours of time. It may not even be on the shelves of her sex shop after the buzz has faded.
“Here in Quebec, with erotic authors that we have, we’ve gotten used to something a lot more spicy, a bit more kinky. In many of them, you’re on the first page and already you’re into the sex,” she said, pointing to writers like Julie Beaulieu (Un Peu Après Minuit) and Mary Gray (Histoires à Faire Rougir).
50 Shades, though a bona fide cultural phenomenon, spends more time setting the table than it devotes to the meal, she said.
“We put the plates out slowly, we prepare the wine, we prepare the food,” Cinnamon said. “Maybe that’s why I’m seeing that the women looking for it tend to be a little more mature.”
And she has yet to witness the carefully concealed book covers and bent book spines of English Canadian readers eager to hide what they are perusing from passersby. That may be another of the big differences in a province that carries the reputation of being more sexually liberated than its Canadian counterparts.
“I haven’t seen any shyness. I’ve seen amusement and, how should I say it? Curiosity.
