Nom de Plume (35 page)

Seaver's stint as d'Estrée has been largely forgotten, but the novel still resonates around the world, affecting readers in ways that are deeply personal. “Ever since I remember,” an anonymous American woman admitted on an online message board, “I have always used some form of power exchange fantasy in masturbation. I had no words for it, no framework, and
O
was the first book to provide that.”

Story of O
also influenced writers of erotica for decades after its release, though it set a standard that few, if any, could meet. The person who could perhaps claim the closest literary kinship with Réage is the contemporary author and art critic Catherine Millet, whose “autobiography,”
Sexual Life of Catherine M.
, was published in 2002. Edmund White went so far as to call it “the most explicit book about sex ever written by a woman.” The book detailed the author's early experiences with masturbation and her abiding fondness for orgies (in which she began to dabble at the age of eighteen), sex in public places, and so on. She said that of her countless lovers, mostly men, she would be able to recognize at best only fifty faces or names. The book was cast as a memoir, but J. G. Ballard wondered if it was “the most original novel of the year.”

Although Millet's sexual proclivities hardly mirrored those of Réage—Millet did admit to enjoying having her nipples pinched, along with more aggressive forms of sex—their profiles were strikingly alike. Both women published confessional, shockingly graphic books in midlife. Millet is French, and by day she, too, is a bourgeois intellectual who appears respectable enough. Her book, like
O
, was well written and even literary. As Jenny Diski noted in the
London Review of Books
, Millet “anatomises her sexual experiences and responses as a Cubist might the visual field.” That Millet's project was both intellectual and sexual (and possibly even spiritual) calls Réage to mind yet again. “[Millet] takes her radical philosophy from Bataille, and admires Pauline Réage's über-underling O for her perpetual readiness for sex, her propensity for being sodomised and her reclusiveness,” Diski wrote. Millet, like Réage, feels no guilt about her sexual life, and similarly writes about sex “as plainly as if she were a housewife describing her domestic round.”

Had Réage not published
Story of O
, perhaps Millet could not have published
Sexual Life
, at least not under her own name. Aury had endured stigma and shame and had emerged a success. That legacy gave Millet license to tell her story. And it explains why Jane Juska, for example, could celebrate, in
A Round Heeled Woman
, the pleasures of promiscuous geriatric sex via the
NYRB
classified ads. It also freed a young woman, Melissa Panarello (known as “Melissa P.”), to publish an erotic autobiographical novel in 2004. Called
One Hundred Strokes of the Brush Before Bed
, it chronicled, in diary form, group sex, S&M, and other experiences. This book was an immediate best seller in the author's native Italy, and was hailed as “a
Story of O
for our times.”

O
's enduring significance was evident on the fiftieth anniversary of its debut, when the French government proudly announced that
Histoire d'O
would be included on a list of “national triumphs” to be celebrated that year.

Two years later, in 2006, Réage's works were part of an auction at Christie's in Paris, featuring the “Bibliothèque Erotique” of Gérard Nordmann, a businessman in Geneva who had assembled a library of almost two thousand erotic manuscripts and rare books. An edition of
O
from its limited first run of six hundred copies was cited as “First edition of the most important erotic novel of the postwar period.” Another lot by Réage was described as “[the] complete holograph working manuscript in pencil and ballpoint of what is arguably the finest erotic novel (1954) of the post-war period and its sequel (1969), which describe unconditional love as total sexual submission carried to its ultimate consequence.” The manuscripts of
Histoire d'O
and
Retour à Roissy
sold for $127,000.

In assessing the life and work of Dominique Aury, it is striking how brave she was to risk everything for the man she loved. The pseudonym could have been exposed early on, destroying her reputation and wrecking friendships. “If you care enough about something, you have to pay the price,” Aury once said. Hers was a life without compromise, highly moral, and one lived without regret.

After Aury's death in a suburb south of Paris, a longtime friend declared it unremarkable that the author had hoarded a nom de plume for so long. “Everyone is double, or triple, or quadruple,” she said. “Every character has its hidden sides. One doesn't reveal one's secrets to all.”

Acknowledgments

Above all, I cannot thank enough the amazing Tina Bennett. Without her, there would be no book, or it would exist only in my head. I'm endlessly grateful for her wisdom, kindness, patience, and enthusiasm, and for always laughing at my jokes. I feel very lucky.

Thanks to Gillian Blake for acquiring this book, then nudging and nurturing it along.

To all at HarperCollins—the wonderful Rakesh Satyal, Katie Salisbury, David Koral, Heather Drucker, and Leah Wasielewski—thank you for everything.

Also at Janklow & Nesbit, I'm grateful to Stephanie Koven and to Svetlana Katz (a real-life superhero). Dorothy Irwin provided expertise at crucial moments. And I did nothing to earn such generosity from Amy Grace Loyd, but there it was, anyway. The phenomenal Nicholas Latimer is busy enough with his many responsibilities at Knopf, yet he gave freely of his time, his brilliant advice, and more. Whenever I tell people that I know Gretchen Koss, they usually respond by saying, “She's the best.” It's true, and having her help has been a great gift.

Love and gratitude also to Alice Quinn and Laurie Kerr; Michelle Williams; Devon Hodges, Eric Swanson, Tristan Swanson, and Cecily Swanson; the Rosabals; my dear friends at 37 Montgomery Place; and above all, Sarah (and her parents, Rosalind and Colin) and Oscar and Freddy Fitzharding.

Time Line

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The sources below were invaluable to me in researching and writing this book. Dates refer to the editions used, rather than the date of first publication. My supplemental research sources—hundreds of archival magazine, journal, and newspaper articles—are far too extensive to be cited in full here. Any source errors or omissions are wholly unintentional and will be corrected in future editions.

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———.
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———.
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———.
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———.
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———.
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———.
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———.
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———.
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———.
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———.
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