This was also a kind of literary rehabilitation since Sade was now blamed for every kind of fascist atrocity and genocidal excess. Paulhan considered Sade to be the greatest of French writers. When the Second World War ended, Paulhan decided to publish the complete works of the Marquis de Sade. Reage (I’ll use Desclos’s pen name hereafter) was the lover of her employer, the publisher Jean Paulhan. As John Updike sardonically quipped, “Its courage has preceded its commercialism it pioneered in the territory it now so cheerfully exploits with its black-mass version of Book-of-the-Month Club, its roguish get-with-the-sexual-revolution ads, its stable of PhD’s willing to preface the latest “curious” memoir or “underground” classic with admonitory sermons on the righteousness of fornication.” Story of O is one of those books. Once again, Grove Press became the delivery vehicle for sophisticated titillation. The History: Written in 1954 by Pauline Reage, the pen name for the novelist Anne Desclos, it became a literary sensation in Europe and the United States. This essay series gave me reason to read and analyze the novel, determining if Sontag was correct about assessing it with literary value. Up to this point, I had never read the actual novel. In her groundbreaking essay, “The Pornographic Imagination,” she wrote about Story of O.
Some time later I became a fan of cultural critic and essayist Susan Sontag. Then I imagine I exited the store, simultaneously curious and horrified at humanity’s darker nature. Needless to say, since I was in high school, I didn’t really dwell on the text of said comic. While there I happened upon Story of O by the comics artist Guido Crepax. On one of those occasions I wandered into the comics and graphics novel section. Before the emergence of omnipresent Barnes & Noble, I hung around the various different sections of the rather smallish bookstore. Back in those days it would have been Scribner’s at Mayfair Mall in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. Personal History: During my high school years, I spent most of my time at the bookstore at the mall.
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