Saturday 18 August 2012

A question of modern etiquette

How does one tell friends that one would rather dig one's eyeballs out with a spork than read Fifty Shades of Grey without implying that one thinks (and one does) that their taste in reading is abysmal? I've tried 'I think it might upset me as I don't have a boyfriend' and have had that excuse tossed back in my face.

Also, it's prominently displayed at the Book Festival bookshop. This is wrong. WRONG. The Book Festival Bookshop is a place for the entire oeuvre of Canongate, for small hardcore Scottish publishers who wouldn't deign to sell in England, for children's books, for poetry and for small run hard to find non-fiction about history, philosophy and the like, not for softbound signs of the apocalypse and insults to proper authors.

14 comments:

  1. I'm tempted to read it simply so that I can hold an informed opinion on its ghastliness. I did this with The Da Vinci Code, which was not a pleasant experience, but it was mercifully brief, because it's very easy to read. But at least I knew *why* and *how* it was shite.

    Ah, that's it. When someone hymns the praises of a bad book, just say "Yes, it's very easy to read, isn't it?" If they don't pick up on the veiled insult, there is no hope.

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  2. "I actually think it might be a bit tame after the Marquis de Sade and Edith Templeton's Gordon"

    Or... ask them if they'd still fancy Mr Grey if he looked like William Hague.

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  3. If your friends are reading Fifty Shades of Grey, you should tell them that their taste is abysmal. (She said, not having read it). I think you don't necessarily have to read a book to know it's not going to be your thing, just as you don't have to watch films like The Hangover to look down on people who do ;-)

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  4. Tim, I have thought about this approach but I am damned if that woman is getting any royalties from me and I don't fancy the idea of a second hand copy of this particular book. So that leaves shoplifting.

    Also, as someone who does sometimes enjoy easy to read stuff but also as someone who has been in an abusive marriage, I suspect that I'm going to find the book extremely triggering. I've tried that explanation too but all I get is 'oh no, it's looooovely'.

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  5. I am waiting for the Reduced Shakespeare Company shortened stage version to come out.

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  6. Tell them that you'd prefer to spend your cash on a subscription to kink.com

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  7. Oh, and don't read Edith Templeton's Gordon. Really. It's S&M with no cosy safe words and the only way I can describe it is consensual abuse.

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  8. >>>consensual abuse.

    An oxymoron, surely?

    *Wanders off to find a copy*

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  9. Depends how you define abuse I guess and whether it extends to the spirit as well as the flesh. I've done some reading about consensual S&M (the banker was interested) and it does nothing at all for me. But I do make a distinction between that and what seems to be going on in 50 Shades which appears in some senses to be a lot closer to the Rihanna / Chris Brown dynamic where the abused feels sympathy for the abuser's background and earlier trauma and thus puts up with and makes excuses for what is not truly consensual in order to 'rescue' them. I know because I do that. Did that. Won't be doing it again.

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  10. Gordon = zero safe words. It's really not the cosy S&M with everything well organised and kinky and fun. Templeton was terrifying.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003/apr/06/fiction.features3

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  11. I saw that article. Now this kind of intrigues me, not in an erotic sense but in the same way that I find personality disorders etc interesting. Is it in any sense portrayed as something to aspire to or more as this is something I did that I don't really understand and won't be doing again and nor do I recommend it. Because that's what bothers me about 50 Shades - being abused seems to be being shown as something to aspire to.

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  12. That's kind of what I was getting at. Not everybody likes their fun to be well organised and too safe - it takes some of the edginess away. I say as long as it's consensual, it's not abuse, it's just taking the water-wings off.

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  13. where does that leave that German case of consensual cannibalism? Was that OK? After a certain level of violence or whatever, can we assume that consent is actually valid? The point of safe words is that if you start with 'even if I say no, ignore me, that's part of the fun' and then you REALLY want to say no, there needs to be some mechanism to enforce a stop. That's not taking water-wings off if you omit that, that's bloody stupid.

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  14. That's the problem - you can't legislate for a) sexual preferences, b) lunacy. Killing people is wrong, but telling people what they can and can't do in bed is wrong too. Not sure there's an easy answer to be honest - apart from not killing people even if they ask you to.

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