Books

Translating Sex

 

Translating sex? What’s not to get excited about?

I can’t think of a better way to spend a Friday night than here in London on March 8 at the London Review of Books Shop where these four incredibly interesting women will be talking about how to translate French erotica.

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Is it jealousy I feel whenever I think I might not be able to attend the master class that follows on Saturday March 9?

Yes, I think it is. If those women are what you get, I’ll never stop my adventures in translating.

Well anyway, she says politely, handing me the ticket, if I can’t be there, I hope you will go in my place. Then she pauses. Odd, don’t you think, how much that girl looks like Renée Vivien. Not really, I say. She merely raises an eyebrow. And it’s moments like these I should so like to undress her, that I may find something about her not to love so much….

Monsieur cover 1

 

 

Monsieur is Emma Becker’s first novel. Her next book sounds right up my alley.

Apparently she’s fleeing the teeming hordes. How Berlin will prove more restful for her than Paris, not so sure.

 

 

Cumberland

 

As for me, after six weeks of six thousand words nonstop, none of them erotic, I need a break from writing.

 

Monsieur is coming along.

alligator

 

I need to get a better girlfriend, she sighs, reaching for a second piece of chocolate cake.

With a feature film produced in 2012, award-winning screenwriter Suzanne Stroh’s period drama Scotch Verdict is in development at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Suzanne hails from Michigan, where her family brewed Stroh’s beer for five generations. She lives with her family in the Virginia countryside.
Tabou

Stuck on Fifty Shades of Grey?

I just finished Book 1 of the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. Have you read it? It’s the latest thing in popular erotica, and I can see why. The erotic scenes are steamy and the subject matter is taboo, and yet there’s something comforting and predictable about the summer reading formula, complete with the voyeuristic impulse that goes with the status envy.

The “serious” literary press has trashed the writing, which I find too thin for my taste, but as an author of erotica I have high praise for aspects of this work by the TV-producing mum, E.L. James. I heartily approve of the compulsive contraception. More foil packets are torn in Fifty Shades than in all five seasons of “Queer as Folk.” And guys, seriously: if you don’t have a clue what a girl wants or needs in the nude (whips and chains aside), read this book. Finally, the best instruction may be for aspiring lawyers. If you are studying for the bar and you’re worried about failing Torts, this book reprints contracts in a mesmerizing, even sultry, fashion. If you forget key clauses here, forget hanging your shingle anywhere near me.

So why am I not rushing to dip into the second book?

It could be sensory overload. When they drank the Sancerre with the pasta I was thinking, whoa, baby, save something for dessert ! Guess I’m just a Picpoul-with-my-pasta kinda girl.

But I bet the real reason why my Kindle is still on low burn is that I’m waiting for my champagne delivery, in the form of Eros, the wonderful back issue of Lapham’s Quarterly from Winter 2009. I’ll savor that as long as I can before firing the Kindle back up Fifty Shades Darker.

Lapham’s Eros: now there’s a pretty girl bound to turn your head. Order it online—go ahead, command it!—from laphamsquarterly.org and tell me what you think.

With a feature film produced in 2012, award-winning screenwriter Suzanne Stroh’s period drama Scotch Verdict is in development at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Suzanne hails from Michigan, where her family brewed Stroh’s beer for five generations. She lives with her family in the Virginia countryside.