Hmm, Susan Sontag rated this as one of the five most important "pornographic" books. It is heavy on humiliation, power differentials, and some sadism. While it deals with erotic material, it is pretty cerebral. Almost clinical. Makes me want to read Sontag's essay. ( )

Catherine Robbe Grillet, como fotógrafa e dominatrix, tem um olho bem treinado no assunto e descreve as cenas de maneira visualmente impecável, mas como tenho uma queda por dominatrices que lidam com homens submissos, vou ficar devendo uma nota maior, embora o lance da sua escrava ser na realidade o seu duplo é de fato bem engenhoso. ( )

The hardcover Grove Press copy, clocking in at 143 pages, makes this book a pretty fast read, that is, if it weren't so pathetically boring. I know I know, Susan Sontag has blessed it with true literary status, as have countless others starving for a good erotic read. But I never got the point. I never believed in anybody or anything. I never had any stake in it. There was nothing of me involved with anything that mattered. Early on I figured the book was obviously written by somebody from high society, well-educated, and somewhat worldly, at least in their belief system. I have since researched enough to find out that the author was actually Catherine Robbe-Grillet, the wife of a very talented, but dead, writer in his own right, not to mention that Alain Robbe-Grillet did a bit of erotic writing himself that I have found a little more difficult and high brow than his spouse's foray in to the genre. Alain's, JEALOUSY, had more eroticism in it from what he left out than the entire book written by Catherine in all its graphic detail. It is possible I am merely a square, that I have not developed the necessary libido to enjoy this type of deviant behavior (deviant as different, not necessarily bad). Whips, ropes, and chains are definitely not of my cultural upbringing and have no place in the world I live in, unless I am missing something of my neighbors' life. Don't get me wrong, I like a bit of kinky sex as much as the next fellow, but I just wasn't feeling it with this little book, and feeling, feeling it in my body , is what I am always after. Nothing presented in the book made me feel anything strongly pro or con about even trying a little tie up at home.

The hard part now is where to go from here in my personal quest for sexual awakening. Sontag, according to sources, also blessed Pierre Louys', THE SHE DEVILS, George Bataille's, STORY OF THE EYE & his MADAME EDWARDA, and THE STORY OF O by Pauline Reage. After reading a few reviews and one synopsis I have ordered MADAME EDWARDA simply because of the incest factor and the threat of pain I can't imagine on my own. THE IMAGE was too predictable. It was written so simply I felt it was not for me but instead it was written for somebody afraid of the language and what the words might possibly do to me. I want to be challenged intellectually. I want to be confused enough to want to know what's true. The main problem with THE IMAGE was, it did not make me care. ( )

Very disappointed in this book. I found it boring and basically a waste of time. If you are interested in why I did not like it, and more about what I do like and why, I have written a review of THE IMAGE here: http://hubpages.com/hub/Sex-Without-Love-But-the-Whips-Their-Ropes-and-Chains ( )

The Image
By Jean de Berg
Review by Karl Wolff

Personal History: Virtually none. While the previous entry, Story of O is a minor classic and a well-known novel within the BDSM community, I had known little to nothing about Jean de Berg's novel, The Image. Susan Sontag's mention of the novel in her essay, "The Pornographic Imagination," was the extent of my previous knowledge. For all intents and purposes, I read this novel cold. In some ways, this is beneficial for criticism. It's nice not being weighed down with a novel's fame or notoriety, let alone one's preconceived opinions. My only preconception about The Image was that Susan Sontag considered it to be a pornographic text with literary merit.

The History: This is the last novel Susan Sontag discussed in her essay, "The Pornographic Imagination." Along with Story of the Eye and Story of O, Sontag considers The Image to be a pornographic novel that has literary merit.

Written in 1956 by Jean de Berg, the pen name for Catherine Robbe-Grillet, the wife of nouveau roman pioneer Allain Robbe-Grillet. Like Story of O, the novel became emblematic of Mid-Century Modernist erotica. In the process of postwar recovery and still possessing much of its colonial empire, France was a hub of high culture, fashion, and commercial success. Along with heightened national pride and disposable income, France returned to its tradition of creating challenging experimental work and nurturing its aesthetic avante-garde. Allain Robbe-Grillet's work creating the nouveau roman ("the new novel") went along with the early pioneers in Cahiers du Cinema (Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard). The years Pauline Reage and Jean de Berg published their books, Samuel Beckett disassembled the novel with his landmark Trilogy. The Fifties re-ignited artistic experimentalism in everything from books to plays to art. A Streetcar Named Desire laid bare an inarticulate, yet charismatic, American masculinity. Jackson Pollock's canvasses confounded gallery patrons. Bebop ripped apart the pre-war jazz elegance with technical virtuosity and boundless energy.

In the United States, one could still get arrested for reading "Howl" or drooling over Bettie Page photographs. It wouldn't be until the Sixties when censorship would be relaxed enough for people to appreciate erotica on an aesthetic and philosophical level. Susan Sontag's essay would make inroads towards legitimizing this otherwise notorious and prurient genre.

On a much larger historical level, The Image, like Story of O before it, would continue the French literary legacy begun by the Marquis de Sade: the bondage novel. It's difficult for American readers to understand that there's a literary tradition for these books. It's too easy to either consider erotica akin to thermonuclear waste and not touch it, unless one has a moral hazmat suit, or medicalize the genre and see the kinky world of bondage as a realm best left to the psychologically damaged. Both these lines of argument won't be dealt with, because, in the end, they are irrelevant to appreciating this piece of literature.

The Book: The Image is peculiar, even by the standards of Mid-Century Literary erotica. With a preface by Pauline Reage, the book doubles down on the pen names. A literary sensation writes effusively about a book written under another pen name. Nothing like starting a book about bondage and domination with some mind-games for the reader.

The story itself is pure simplicity. Like Waiting for Godot with its minimal stage direction, The Image has a limited number of locations and only three major characters. Unlike Story of O, this story is barely over one hundred pages. The narrative involves Jean, the male narrator, witnessing and occasionally participating in various humiliations of Anne. Anne is privately and publicly humiliated by her mistress Claire. In the end, Claire submits to the will of Jean and lets Jean dominate her sexually.

This is bare-bones erotica. Written in a style that's simultaneously explicit yet detached and clinical, the reader identifies with Jean and his mounting shock and arousal at the humiliations he witnesses. Like O, Claire is a fashion photographer. The novella's climax is when Claire shows Jean a series of pictures. The pictures involve ascending levels of sexual humiliation visited upon Anne. Jean thinks they are staged until he sees Claire do the same things to Anne. This shocks and arouses him. He eventually becomes a participant in these humiliations. While Anne is Claire's subject, she gets verbally harassed by Claire, who treats her like a child, using language that infantilizes her.

Story of O had an intricately built erotic underworld created around O and her torturers. The Image is like a stage-play. Actors, setting, situation. The barest necessities to create a plausible narrative.

The Verdict: The Image is a classic bondage novel and it does have literary merit. But this brings up some relevant points. Would I have considered it "literary" if Susan Sontag hadn't given it her critical imprimatur? Possibly. Perhaps it would have shown up in the bin of forgotten classics like Gynecocracy? It's the same conundrum with other aesthetic judgments. Just because it's in a museum and has a nice frame around it, does that make it "art"? Does the incomprehensible gibberish on the museum label also make it "art"? (Although the incomprehensibility of museum labels is most rampant in contemporary art galleries, where artists writing grants and galleries catering to the academic crowd create a feedback loop of obscurantist jargon.)

With the barest elements present, what makes this novel an example of erotica and not pornography? Sontag thought it was pornography. My issue is that there are two words to begin with. "Erotica" and "pornography" implies we are talking about two different things. (In the visual arts and cinema, there's probably merit to that argument.) Either the distinction is inherently classist (hence the old joke: "The difference between erotica and porn is the lighting.") or narrative based (plot equals erotica; plotless equals porn). Is that always true? Beckett's Trilogy has explicit language, a couple horrific sex scenes, and then becomes a jumble of hallucinations and plotlessness. Hardly porn, especially to those who awarded him the Nobel Prize. There's also prurience. Molloy's actions with the old lady do not inspire arousal.

In the end the distinctions between erotica and porn seem like historically contingent definitions. Sontag was writing in the Sixties about books written in the Twenties and the Fifties. Today, The Image appears like a quaint relic from the past. The challenge with assessing literature is figuring out the lens to interpret the narrative. As a historian, I like historicizing the novel, contextualizing it with the events, politics, and trends of the time period. But I also like reading books for the sheer joy of reading something new and unknown. I also had to juggle critical assessments. Art for the ages versus historical relic, although I find either/or judgments constricting and self-defeating. I neither want to diminish a novel by historicizing too much and I don't think "art" is something special and beyond-the-ordinary. This ends up being a roundabout way to say that The Image is both historically important to the literary history of erotica and an entertaining read. It is minimalist erotica: a novel about sexuality and domination sanded down to its barest components necessary for a narrative.

Coming next: Ada, or Ardor, by Vladimir Nabokov

http://www.cclapcenter.com/2013/10/the_nsfw_files_the_image_by_je.html

or

http://driftlessareareview.com/2013/10/18/the-nsfw-files-the-image-by-jean-de-be... ( )