Story of O
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Product details
- Hardback | 208 pages
- 137.16 x 210.82 x 22.86mm | 362.87g
- 01 Jun 1970
- London, United Kingdom
- French
- 0700400001
- 9780700400003
Review Text
O ..... Oh! She appeared in Paris ten years ago and as one of the several prefatory pieces (when there are several, one becomes suspicious) explains, O contains many of the "devices" of any one of a number of books sold under the counter years ago. Only this one has no pictures. Only a bridal white jacket with the title fore and after and the injunction "The sale of this book is limited to adults." All kinds of claims are made by M. Paulhan, her sponsor (editor of the NRF: one of the sacred brotherhood - the Academic Francaise); it is a "mystic" book; it has a "ruthless decency"; it has "spaciousness." In the good old days, one could attach a single word to it, pornography, without being guilty of a parochial prudery. Actually O is old-fashioned erotica based on an old-fashioned premise: the function of the woman is sublime submission and O achieves her ennoblement through defilement. She is taken to a chateau, a sort of gothic maison close by her lover, trussed up in all sorts of positions and hardware, assaulted from all directions. Her vassalage continues when Rene, her lover, turns her over to his older English brother (he has riding whips in his golf bag) who exercises his droit de senior. Finally she is commanded to proceed through further supremely supine indignities in what can only now be a state of cataleptic exhaustion........ O. (Kirkus Reviews)
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