books
Fade to Black
Fucked by Fifty Shades of Grey
I
n the age of the quick fi x and pop-up
porn, you gotta hand it to E.L. James for
hoodwinking the hoi polloi into dicking
around with something as atavistic and
temperate as on-the-page erotica. Fifty Shades
of Grey — the fi rst installment in a trilogy of erotic
novels that started online as Twilight fanfi ction
— sold more than 10 million copies in six weeks in
the U.S. alone. This, despite repeated assaults by
high-brow literary critics as well as pop sexpert
Dr. Drew Pinsky, who found the book’s themes of
violence and domination “disturbing” and “the
fulfi llment of a pathological fantasy.”
The fact that James, a British woman who
is now very, very wealthy, can’t write her way
out of a paper bag appears to be irrelevant to
the hordes of readers willing to indulge her
tumescent prose (the fi rst book clocks in at more
than 500 pages). Fifty Shades of Grey focuses on
the insular, exotic, bondage-happy relationship
(sic) that blossoms like a hothouse lily between
Anastasia Steele, a recent college grad and
virginal naïf, and Seattle-based billionaire
Christian Grey, a gorgeously wounded mancake
whose temperament is a cross between Brontë’s
Rochester and Patrick Bateman in American
Psycho. The book has been dubbed “mommy porn,” most likely as a convenient marketing tool.
There is good bad writing, bad good writing, bad books by great authors, great books by
mediocre authors — the possibilities go on and on, stretched along an artistic spectrum that, in
its very diversity, pays tribute to the diffi cult nature of writing itself. Fifty Shades, however, falls
nowhere along that vast gamut of quality, because James is not a writer, and Fifty Shades does
not qualify as art. It is a bonanza of wretched prose and inept editing. Heads are always being
“cocked,” lips are incessantly “quirked” into smiles, eyebrows are constantly arching, gazes
are routinely hooded and eyes ineluctably darken. Nipples regularly get “tugged”; heads move
“fractionally.”
It just goes on and on. The sex scenes are limp, chatty and tortuous. Ana and Christian meet
in the most unlikely manner, and it’s not until page 70 or so that he fi nally splits her infi nitive with
his dangling participle. But, oh boy, is it worth the wait:
“’Come for me, Ana,’ he whispers breathlessly, and I unravel at his words, exploding around
him as I climax and splinter into a million pieces underneath him. And as he comes, he calls out
my name, thrusting hard, then stilling as he empties himself into me.”
Technically, he empties himself into the condom he “pulls onto his considerable length,” but
who’s sweating the details here?
Fifty Shades of Grey leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination: No doorknob is left
unturned, no twitch is left unremarked, no walk across the fl oor is unmentioned; every gesture,
breath, heartbeat, smile, glance, grimace, smirk, sneer, twitch, hitch, snit, fi t and fl irt is transcribed,
causing the pages to pile up to twice, thrice the necessary amount; a mediocre editor would hack
this book to one-fi fth its current length and improve it exponentially ... or rather, fractionally.
So the question remains: Why read this book? It is neither sexy, nor fun, nor accurate, not even
grammatically correct. Like all fads, you read Fifty Shades of Grey simply because everybody
else is reading it, and you want to join in the conversation. If you want to cheat, and join the
conversation without actually enduring the book, just wrap your medulla oblongata around this
lovely mixed metaphor capped by an outright lie:
“Two orgasms … coming apart at the seams, like the spin cycle on a washing machine, wow …
the pleasure was indescribable.”
Got it? Holy crap! You’re good to go. — Rick Levin
EUGENE BALLET ACADEMY PRESENTS
Alice’s Journey Through Story Ballet
SILVA— Tix: $15; Youth discounts available
Students present a glimpse into the wonderland of ballet
and dance with works from Alice in Wonderland,
Sleeping Beauty, Giselle and more.
ZAPP ACADEMY OF DANCE PRESENTS
Zapp Dancers: Fired Up
Sunday, June 10 at 3:00 PM
SORENG— Tix: $12
High energy, edge-of-your-seat electric entertainment for the entire family!
Dancers age 8-32 showcase a variety of genres.
MUSICAL FEET PRESENTS
Step By Step
Friday, June 15 at 7:30 PM
Saturday, June 16 at 7:30 PM
Like your granny’s sex diary
W
ell-written literary junk food is a fantastic
palate cleanser for people whose job
it is to read a lot of nonfi ction. When
you throw sex into the mix — especially forbidden
sex — you’ve got entertainment plus the antidote
to becoming a snob who wants to look down on
whatever is trendy in popular literature.
Unfortunately, Fifty Shades of Grey isn’t a book
that can do that for a lot of people. Ana’s inner
monologue bogs down the story so badly that she
quickly becomes detestable, and an erotic novel
with a rather pathetic narcissist for a heroine
just isn’t worth the opportunity cost of reading it.
And for a lot of people — maybe a lot of people in
their 20s like me — it will feel a little bit creepy,
as if they’re reading their grandma’s sex diary. The
dialogue doesn’t sound like the recent college grad
Ana is supposed to be.
So why has the book gotten so popular?
Well, there are a lot of good, patient people out
there, and they’re horny. If you’re able to suspend
judgment of the awful writing and glacial pace,
the plot has the bare bones of an excellent dirty,
sexy story — so much potential spoiled by terrible
writing! If you gave the outline to a decent student
of creative writing and asked her to rewrite it, it
could end up solid masturbatory material for all.
— Shannon Finnell
WWW.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM
SORENG— Tix: $15; Youth discount available
Tap, jazz, ballet, hip-hop, and contemporary dance styles
set to music from the 1940’s to the present.
Send us
your smut
EW is having a Smutt-Off,
a contest to see what sort of
dirty, erotic stories are lurking
in the minds of Eugeneans.
Send us a 500-word story
that captures everything Fifty
Shades doesn’t, and we’ll
publish the winner in print, plus
runners up on our website.
You have until June 28. May
the best dirty, depraved soul
win.
This Weekend!
Saturday, June 2 at 5:00 PM
OREGON BACH FESTIVAL PRESENTS
Joshua Bell plays Mendelssohn
Friday, June 29 at 7:30 PM
SILVA— Tix: $62-15; Student and youth discounts available
Opening OBF with a performance of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, Bell will
enchant the audience and add his own solo at the high point of the work.
OREGON BACH FESTIVAL PRESENTS
Discovery Series- St. Matthew Passion Part I
Tuesday, July 3 at 4:30 PM
SORENG— Tix: $15; Student, youth, and seniors discounts available
Zapp Dancers
This fi rst of four lecture-concerts encompasses the opening through
movement 17, the chorale “Ich will hier bei dir stehen.”
Fired Up
TICKET OFFICE INFORMATION
BUY TICKETS ONLINE: HultCenter.org
OR CALL: 541 .682. 5000
HULT CENTER TICKET OFFICE HOURS:
Tue-Fri, 12-5 PM ; Sat, 11 AM –3 PM
Send entries to
shannon@eugeneweekly.com
ONE HOUR BEFORE PERFORMANCE MON-SAT, TWO HOURS BEFORE ON SUN.
UO TICKET OUTLET IN THE EMU: Mon-Fri, 9 AM –5 PM
EUGENE WEEKLY MAY 31, 2012 25