Goodbye, old friend

 A hot bubble bath, blissfully kid-free (at least for a few minutes), with a good book and a glass of rich, Spanish wine – sometimes life doesn’t get much better.

Until, that is, the glass topples, you reach to save the wine, and in your haste, what once was a good book becomes a soggy mass as it sinks slowly into the sea of bubbles.

By the way, it turns out you can’t just place the sodden book on the edge of the tub to dry out.

The truth is, though, I really wasn’t enjoying Delta of Venus all that much. I had purchased it in college on a whim after stumbling across an Anaïs Nin display in the campus bookstore. Amazed to find erotica displayed prominently alongside all of the, well, non-dirty books, I picked up both Delta of Venus and Little Birds. (Along with a pile of textbooks, odds and ends of school supplies, and a Go Bucks tee so I didn’t look like a total perv.)

I must’ve enjoyed reading the book at one point because it was still on my shelf after all these years. But with the passage of time and life and whatnot, I found that I wasn’t liking it much at all any more.

That’s not entirely true. I love the actual writing - beautiful, almost poetic prose (despite Nin’s instructions from her benefactor to “leave out the poetry”); vibrant imagery and rich texture.

But the subject matter? Oy, oy, oy. Pedophilia, rape, incest. About as unsexy as it gets.

Yes, I know Nin wrote the bulk of these stories for a private collector (for a dollar a page) and they weren’t published for the masses until after her death. Still doesn’t mean I have to like them.

Now granted I only read about 5 stories before dropping the book (but saving the wine – I chose wisely, as it were), and I do recall them getting less icky (i.e., consensual sex between adults) as the books progresses. But I still have zero desire to re-read Delta of Venus.

I won’t be replacing this book in my collection.

Not tonight, Josephine, I'm in a Onesie

Unlike Jay, I haven’t read Fifty Shades, but I do find it interesting that the book that made erotica mainstream, however temporarily, has themes of S&M. 

Historically, browsing books at stations and airports in the UK, one has always been confronted with a sorry selection of “bestsellers” (which I’m sure only get bought because they’re “bestsellers”, rather than being any good) and a disproportionately large section of “erotica”. The covers would feature a lingerie-clad buxom hottie, and a surprisingly large number of them would feature ropes and/or whips and rather impractical-looking rubber underwear (try taking that to the dry cleaners). The cover blurb would always tell a tale of slavery, domination and subjugation. So I’m told, by, ummm, people who do extensive research into this sort of thing.

Well, I was never tempted to buy one. Somehow the thought of the whips and the slavery cut across any spicy erotic stuff and cancelled it out. Why, I thought, aren’t erotic books just about people having sex and enjoying it?

Like I said, it’s interesting that Fifty Shades is just the sort of book I didn’t want to read, but it’s what everyone else is grabbing by the million.

But let’s come back to the covers, and the sexy undies. If a writer is going to dress a female character for sex, then there’s a whole panoply of stockings, suspenders, hold-ups, basques, scanties, thongs, and filmy nothings to play with. All the male needs is a zipper that can be caressingly or desperately undone.

So what happens when erotica collides with modern fashion horrors? One of the latest crazes is the “onesie”: effectively a baby-gro for adults. The thought of having to integrate this into an erotica-themed book is too dismal for words. The author would just have to give up in disgust and change the plot. Wrestling out of one of the bloody things to go to the loo takes long enough, sex is completely out of the question.

"Come here", she breathed. "I need you now."

"Don't be stupid", he replied. "I'm in a onesie, you're in a onesie, and we have an early start in the morning."

On the many layers of communication in Fifty Shades of Grey

Dear Loyal Readers (or Reader, as the case may be),

Please accept my utmost apology for my slipshod review of Fifty Shades of Grey. If you haven’t read it, swing by now and take a peek. Click here. I’ll wait.

OK, back? Great.

As you’ve seen, in this early review, I mocked Ms James outright for her gross overuse of certain phrases: “cocked his head” (24 times), “Holy ___” (153 times), etc. While I stand by these statistics and the accompanying bar chart, I realized this morning over a cup of subpar coffee that I was grossly amiss in alerting you, Dear Reader(s), of the real horror that lies await ‘twixt the pages of Fifty Shades. 

I’m so sorry. Let’s delve deeper.

1. Nonverbal communication:  Referring to Figure 1 below (did I mention I minored in mathematics?), we see that the Fifty Shades crew seems to have an entire secret language made up of frowns, smirks, shrugs, scowls, groans, glares, and gasps. With a blanch and a whisper here and there to mix things up. 

Statistically, this equates to about 7 nonverbal messages for every 5 pages throughout the almost 400-page book, or on average, about 1.4 transmissions per page. 

Figure 1: Nonverbal methods of communication in Fifty Shades

Looking at the pie chart in Figure 2, which breaks down this grunt-speak (pause while I check if anyone actually grunts in Fifty Shades. Nope, nary a one), by percentage, we see that frowning is a clear leader, coming in 25% of the time, followed by snapping and groaning that together make up the next 30%. 

Figure 2: Nonverbal communication (by percentage) in Fifty Shades

2. Undertone communication: With so much groaning and smirking going on, it’s something of a wonder that the characters need to verbalize their thoughts at all. But in those rare instances where, for reasons unbeknownst characters can’t simply talk with a normal speaking voice, Ms James has created yet another layer of communication, this one made up of whispers, mumbles, and mutterings (see Figure 3 below). 

Figure 3: Methods of undertone communication in Fifty Shades

Similarly to the usage of nonverbal communication, this undertone dialogue is used about 7 times across every 5 pages. However, this language of whispers isn’t nearly as diverse as the bodily quirks and jerks (see Figure 4), with murmuring and whispering making up 2/3 of all occurrences. Breathing their words, which I’m not really sure how one doesn’t do this, is used 17% of the time, muttering is at 9%, and mumbling and grumbling together make up the bottom 3%.

Figure 4: Distribution (by percentage) of undertone comm in Fifty Shades

3. Scatological communication: We know from my last Fifty Shades review that Ana uses the expression “holy crap” 39 times throughout the narrative and “holy shit” 59 times. But if we account for the 90 additional secular scatological references (Figure 5), we see that mentions of feces occur so often (about once every other page), they’re practically another character!

Figure 5: Poopy-talk in Fifty Shades of Grey

Also interesting (I’ll restrain myself from charting this), is that while 61% of the time “shit” is elevated to Holy status, “crap” doesn’t seem to share the same prestige  - only 43% of the craps are deemed worthy of holiness. Who knew?

4. The big picture: Combining these keen observations with their accompanying statistics gives us a holistic view (backed by sound mathematical analysis) of the deep and intricate layers of communication in Fifty Shades. Here’s the bottom line:

On the average, nonverbal gestures, spoken undertones, and poop-talk appear three times on every page. Three times. Per page. For almost 400 pages. 

Egads.

Fifty shades of dismay

Literary opinion aside for a moment, I’d like to commend Ms. James for her truly amazing accomplishments – she’s published three novels in two years, all of which have leapt to the tops of bestseller lists worldwide.  Her savvy understanding of both the female reader and the influence of e-readers on the book market, along with her creative (and successful) approach to publishing has truly earned her a top spot.

But as for her books…let me start with a couple of caveats. First, romance novels are not really my thing, never have been. I don’t have the patience to follow through the standard formula of boy meets girl, events conspire to keep them apart – oh no, will they get together? – all works out, happy ending. Second, I read Fifty Shades of Grey (discreetly on my Nook) very, very quickly.  Speedreading, actually, in about four hours total, so I admit that I might’ve missed some of the finer points (if there are any).

Bottom line up front: Although I admire the author, I didn’t like Fifty Shades. For quite a few reasons, but I’ve narrowed it down to my top three:

•  Not enough sex. Specifically, not enough raunchy sex.  With all the media hype, I expected Fifty Shades to be teeming with literary porn. After all, the book’s been attributed to saving thousands of marriages as horny housewives reignite their suppressed sexuality, right?  But Ana doesn’t even get her ass slapped until more than halfway through the book and the unhappy couple really only engages in the all-out nasty a handful of times. To me, that’s hardly Mommy Porn (or Mummy Porn, as Nik would say, although I’m having a tough time visualizing exactly how mummies do pornography what with all those bandages).  The characters certainly talk about sex quite a bit, droning on and on about their sex contract, but when it comes to bumping uglies, Fifty Shades is really nothing more than a formulaic romance novel with spicier sex scenes.

As a side note, throughout the entire 391 page book, Christian manages to bonk Ana without ever using his “penis” or even his “cock.” He gets by merely with his “erection,” which may or may not be a bad thing, depending on one’s taste in literary descriptions. But for something touted as porn, I expected a little more graphical imagery.

• Tiresome repetition. And speaking of cock, a quiz question: How many times does Christian Grey “cock his head”? Did you guess 24 times? Correct! So about once every 16 pages, almost makes one wonder if he’s got some sort of nervous affliction.  (The characters also drink cocktails (6 times) and fuss about in a cockpit (8 times) - not-so-subtle innuendo or the product of a limited vocabulary?) Christian also purses, twitches, quirks, or arches his lips at least 33 times, which to be fair, could be part of the same physical condition.

Even more tiresome, however, are Ana’s frequent and recurring exclamations of surprise, dismay, disgust, the weather, you name it.  Referring to the bar chart below, we see that she invokes religious defecation a whopping 93 times and “Holy ____” another 61 times, resulting in an average use (or overuse) of about once every two and a half pages. Holy Repetition, Batman! 

• Ludicrous writing: The proof of the pudding...

“He’s my very own Christian Grey-flavored popsicle….My inner goddess is doing the merengue with some salsa moves.”

            Worst. Blowjob scene. Ever.

“My insides practically contort with potent, needy, liquid, desire.”

            Is she turned on or is this the onset of dysentery?

“He smiles his dazzling head-cocked-to-one-side smile, and my stomach pole vaults over my spleen.”

             Stomach pole? This left me speechless and in tears.