Erotica is the New Literature

All those shades of grey have made erotica desirable

In New York, back in the 1990s, everyone, but everyone, was reading Anne Rice's vampire series. I tried them, and found them slow, though extremely well written.  When I confessed to a good friend that I had found it impossible to finish any of the books, he said very wisely, "Ah, but she writes very good pornography under a penname -- Roquelaure."

And, as I found, he was right.  Pornography can be flat-out embarrassing if badly written, and most erotica seems to fit that bill very uncomfortably indeed, but Rice managed the trick of making erotica good reading.

And now that all those shades of grey have made pornography both respectable and lucrative, it should be no surprise at all to read that Anne Rice's books are being reissued.

Anne Rice Republishes Erotica Trilogy, says Jason Boog on GalleyCat.

 

Plume will republish three erotica books that Anne Rice published in the 1980s under the pen name, A.N. Roquelaure.

The erotic trilogy revisits the Sleeping Beauty fairytale, imagining that a handsome Prince awakens Beauty to a life of “complete and total enslavement to him.”

What next?  Fanny Hill?  Walter's Secret Life? Both are worth reading, for the glimpses they give into a bygone age.  And, while Walter's sexual predation on vulnerable young serving girls is shocking by modern standards, Fanny has the virtue (if I may use that word in this context) of being rather endearingly candid, and is unconsciously funny, too.