Monday, May 4, 2015

50 Shades of Schadenfreude.

The greatest contribution from 50 Shades of Grey was neither the film nor the book, both of which were complete crap, "pathetically vanilla and retrograde in its message" in the eyes of one female movie-goer. Rather the value comes from the commentary, the cynicism and all the shameless self-loathing they spawned, says a friend. A veritable Rorschach test for our times. 

Well, you'll now be relieved to learn that you too might be able to write as well as E.L. James. That is, "write the same quality prose as" E.L. James rather than "write prose in addition to" E.L. James. At least that's according to Lev Raphael in a recent Huffington Post blog, who says that a writer's guide is about to emerge from the queen of so-called "mummy porn".  Side-stepping for the moment Salman Rushdie's comment about the novelist's handiwork ("I've never read anything so badly written that got published"), this might be big news for all writers-in-residence programs around the country.

Raphael gets the stomach curdling humor right, so instead of me trying to describe what it all means, why don't I just send you over to him. It'll save you some trouble. Happy dungeon creeping ...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lev-raphael/writers-everywhere-can-re_b_7181920.html