Henry Miller

Consider 50 Shades of Grey, the most recent entry and phenomenon in the sex book wars. I read a couple of pages at the checkout counter of a local bookstore and that was enough for me. My daughter says that she and a group of girlfriends read scenes aloud and howled. So what’s to be made of the trilogy’s 65 million in sales? Do women really crave bondage? Or is it simply that every generation needs a sex novel? When I was a boy it was Peyton Place. I was just a kid when it came out so it must have been a few years before I read it though I remember the sex scenes as if it were yesterday, bad girl Betty Anderson and rich boy Rodney Harrington on the beach, illegitimacy, incest and more. Then there was Fanny Hill, a bit flowery for my taste but it did the trick, and of course … Read more