Two quotes about ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’, that rather amused…
First, Shirley Conran, author of (now I think of it) so many books on my parents’ bookshelves in the 80s:
“I don’t want to slag another writer off, but basically, it took until page 100 for her to be whacked with a hairbrush and until page 400 for her to be hit with a belt.”
(She added: “A favourite erotic fantasy of British women is sex with a schoolmaster in a corn field.” Really, British women?!)
And then a 40-something woman to her husband, standing near me in an airport bookstore the other day, pointing out to him that it was (still) top of the bestseller list:
“I said to my mum, I wonder if I could write it, ‘cos it’s an S&M thing. She said I’d need a lot of imagination.”
Her comment suggests rather that it was the mother who (perhaps not surprisingly) didn’t want to imagine what her daughter gets up to…
It’s interesting to note, in passing, that Fifty Shades is now the bestselling novel in UK history. Despite my reservations about it, I do think that for a fetish-themed book to take such an accolade really does have to be fundamentally A Good Thing.
Well yes, very probably a good thing. Has anyone read “Filthy Shades of Gray” by Steve Roach? It is a parody, very vulgar, but also laugh our loud funny in places.
oops, laugh ouT loud…
I think it’s a very good thing that a book about BDSM, however poorly written, is encouraging people to talk about TTWD in normal voices. Spanking has become an acceptable conversation topic, as long as it’s prefaced by “Have you read…”
Oh man, I laughed WAY too hard at that first quote.
*ahem* Yeah… I’ve had that fantasy. Schoolmeacher… corn field. Mmm… But I did go to school in the country.