After a few action-packed high-culture days in Toronto at
the
Canadian Creative Writers and Writing Programs biannual conference, I
arrived back in Montreal to familiar familial bedlam, co-starring my favourite
swisster-in-law and the youngest of her brood, twin two-year-olds, gorgeous
and--oh so luckily for all concerned,
not
mine--at a Mother’s Day barbeque.
Perhaps that’s why I felt no guilt on choosing Fifty
Shades of Grey as my next great gulp of prose for ingestion, selected for
its “tastes good” rather than “good for you” value.
I was choosing for fun,
I was choosing for play,
I was rationalizing that, to stay
in touch with readerland,
I simply must read Fifty Shades
of Grey.
Also, I’d given it to the hubster 10 days or so earlier; far
as I was concerned, I’d already gotten my money’s worth, even before cracking
its spine.
The book’s, I mean.
A couple of weeks back, the
New York Times reported that over 10 million copies of the
Fifty Shades trilogy had been sold in
the USA
in the preceding month and a half.
YIKES!
There’s something in these books, like the Twilight series that seeded them, that
touches that WWW sweet spot.
Not the World Wide Web, but What Women Want. And if we have
any respect for women at all—and we do!—aren’t we are obligated, honour-bound,
in fact--to try to figure out what, exactly, is going on here?
At least, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Am I embarrassed or ashamed to admit I enjoyed the first two
novels, number one especially? Would I be telling the world if I was?
Let me put it this way: does it make sense to arbitrarily restrict
one’s dietary consumption to caviar, watercress sandwiches, and champagne? Wouldn’t
that be a bit…limiting? Some days, I might hanker for
filet mignon, other times
a greasy hamburger. Doesn’t mean I don’t know that meat isn’t—necessarily—good
for me, or that a steady diet of it alone might make me ill.
Well, filet mignon
it’s not: Fifty Shades of Grey is the literary equivalent of the popcorn
and cotton candy diet, this year’s Thelma & Louise and Twilight,
all rolled up and…er, bound together. Another chance for the moralizers among
us to throw up their hands in horror at The Turn Today’s Woman has taken, for
the gatekeepers of Serious Fiction to turn up their noses at our lousy choices.
Another chance for the snooterati to patronize us, the women who make their
livings for them. Because the vast majority of books are purchased and read by
women. And yet many of our fictional tastes are considered slightly…malodorous.
FSoG is only marginally about BDSM. In essence, it’s
an old-fashioned love story, with a few licks of the switch thrown in. The
hero—Christian Grey--is brilliant, handsome, young, and rich beyond the dreams
of avarice. He flies helicopters, sails, owns multiple homes, cars, and
businesses. But he is also hugely flawed—abused and neglected as a child—and he
re-enacts this damage in the boudoir. He meets Anastasia Steele, the girl-of-the-dreams-he-hardly-knew-he-had,
by accident: Ana’s roommate, Kate, is scheduled to interview Grey for the
university paper, but Kate comes down with the flu and Ana steps up to the
plate for her friend.
Vintage romance. Almost, dare I say it, Shakespearian.
Grey is mesmerized (shades of Twilight) and hopes to
entice Ana into becoming his BDSM submissive. Ana, quickly (but luckily, not too quickly!) seduced, is ready to sign
up for a three month contract as a submissive to Grey’s Dominant.
Until she faces the fact that, delightful as all this sex
is, she wants…More.
Of course, Grey also falls for Ana, and much of the first
two books are about establishing their relationship, and working out the…er,
kinks.
But eventually, Grey is ready to abandon all his “kinky
fuckery,” as they take to calling it. Until Ana tells him, essentially, not so
fast, buster.
Having read the first two books of the trilogy, let me break
it down for you: Fifty Shades of Grey is all about erotic tension, the
threat of discipline and punishment more than the actual acts themselves. Like
all romance, it’s most potently about the yearning, with the usual massive
dollops of needless complication thrown in.
It is also clearly based on Twilight, the residue of
which remains in repeated corny references to blood—throbbing, pulsing, singing
through veins, heating up, etc. Not to mention the endless self-analysis, which
can get old pretty quick. At least in James’ version, the reader is frequently
distracted from the “whatever shall I dos?” by sex, much of it “vanilla,” in
the characters’ words.
FSoG is a sometimes hilarious melange, an homage to
the work of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum1, Stephenie Meyers’ Twilight
series 2, and Helen Fields’ Bridget Jones
Diary3.
It’s also often incredibly shallow and occasionally
dumbfounding to this long-married middle-aged woman (what is she on about with
all this talk of the way Grey’s jeans hang from his hips?? If anyone out there
has half a clue, would they please enlighten me? Please send pictures!)
As well as Twilight, I kept thinking Taming of the
Shrew, though it’s a good long while since I’ve seen or read the
Shakespeare. There is a Katherine in FSoG, but she isn’t the heroine. Besides,
Ana isn’t a shrew. A beautiful twenty-two year old virgin, in this day and age,
who not only has never had sex, but has never even held hands with a man
before? Most surprising of all perhaps, in this Apple-heavy escapade, is her
lack of a laptop. But perhaps even the oft-repeated Apple references are symbolic
rather than product placement.
Or maybe not. (Maybe they're just symbolic of Twilight, come to think of it!)
If I had to pick a fairy tale that FSoG most
resembles, I’d choose Beauty and the Beast. And what a mouth-wateringly
lovely Beast he is, if you’re into the young, drop dead gorgeous, self-made millionaire
type, trying simultaneously to feed Darfur and
wrestle a Tragic Secret Past to the ground. Is it any wonder complications
ensue? Fifty Shades is nothing if not formulaic romance, albeit with a
riding crop and a couple of pairs of lined handcuffs thrown in for frissons.
Oh and clambering. Lots and LOTS of clambering. I start
tracking the word after it appears twice on p. 177 in book one, underlining recurrences
on pages 353, 355, 361, 368, 444, 455, 469, 476, and 491.
Note to fledgling authors: avoid this and similar marquee
words—“clattering” is another that comes to mind--like the plague.
Also, train yourself to avoid clichés such as “like the
plague” like the plague.
E.L. James employs numerous literary references, perhaps to
trick us into imagining this is higher-brow fiction than it is. Sort of like
giving the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles the names of Renaissance painters. Or
maybe this is just more of the Twilight fan fiction motif, with Tess
of the d'Urbervilles subbing for Romeo and Juliet.
It is often guffawingly funny, sometimes unintentionally, as
with Briticisms like “rucksack” and “sidelight” (which I think might mean night
table lamp), which are corrected in the second volume in the series, as is the
clambering, unfortunately. But there are many times when, I am convinced, James
is intentionally hilarious.
“Grey—you’re on my shit list and I’m watching you,” BFF Kate
at one point hisses at our gorgeous but sadly warped stud muffin.
Then there’s this moment near the end of the first book, as
Christian prepares Ana for her sophomore sexploits in the Red Room of Pain
(p.487, James’ emphasis):
“I am going to tie you to that bed,
Anastasia. But I’m going to blindfold you first and,” he reveals his iPod in
his hand, “you will not be able to hear me. All you will hear is the music I am
going to play for you.”
Okay. A musical interlude. Not what
I was expecting. Does he ever do what I expect? Jeez, I hope it’s not rap.
It is to laugh out
loud.
There’s even a character introduced as Mr. J. Hyde near the
end of book one.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” snaps my inner cynic. “Mr. Jekyll N. Hyde, I presume??”
Mercifully, though, the character’s name is Jack, sans N. I know immediately we’ll be hearing
more of him in book two (he’s Ana’s new boss, an editor at the small literary
publisher where she’ll be a paid intern. Another joke, methinks). And I can’t
quite put my finger on it, but something
tells me he may be a bit of a villain.
Bottom line: it may lead to a smidge more sex in
suburbia—and who could really be against that?—but I’ll wager Fifty Shades
of Grey isn’t nearly the threat to the morals of America some are suggesting. Given
the mainstreaming of porn the past couple of decades and that our kids witness tens of thousands of violent fictional murders before attaining the age of
majority—Brad Pitt recently saying he’d have a harder time with his kids
seeing him portray a cinematic racist, “than someone who would shoot a guy in
the face”--it seems a little weird to be “oh my-ing” about a smattering of soft
core sex.
E.L. James clearly had fun putting it together, so why can’t
we simply just lie back and think of England? Why can’t we just swallow
it all down in the spirit in which it is offered: as a bit of a lark, Ana in
chains having a wee bit of a romp with her Sir Galahad, aka the King of Pain?
If my own experience is anything to go by, what these
millions and millions of mostly married North American women may want is the
opportunity to read, talk about, and experiment with the more than fifty shades
to please your lover.
Notes
1Joe vs. José, Taylor vs. Tank, the feistiness
and clutziness (but no cars are destroyed in the commission of this novel), the
many cars in the condo garage (visions of Rangeman enterprises), all that body
wash talk--Ranger uses Bulgari
2All the talk of alabaster skin, the references
to blood e.g. singing in the veins, the deep dark secret, the hero’s father’s
name: Carrick vs. Carlyle. The fact that one of his parents is a doctor.
3That email really boosts the page count, doesn’t
it?
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Want more Bev? Watch this interview about her book,
The Meaning of Children, now available on
Amazon.com:
