Fifty Shades of Shit

I just finished reading Ethan Frome, a romantic novel set in New England circa early 1900’s. It blew me away; the heart wrenching tale along with the author’s superb down to earth prose advocates why the author, Edith Wharton, was awarded the  Pulitzer prize. Today I looked at the New York Best Seller's List and see  Fifty Shades of Grey ranks numero uno; and furthermore, the leftovers of this “trilogy are number two and number three, not respectfully (I’m sitting at the library writing this post cause I can’t get a connection at home and what do I overhear, a young woman asking the librarian if this particular book is stocked and the librarian says, yes but it’s out and there’s a waiting list of 60+ for it. Christ, go online and you can probably find a used one cheap cause after one reads this trite tale they most likely will try to collect a bit of their money back before trashing it (hey, that’s a good idea, just go through peoples’ garbage, just might find one there).  E. L. James sure is racking in the bucks. But can you blame her?

Oscar Wilde

I guess I live in the wrong era. Put me in a time machine--please. I’ll put up with long skirts and petticoats, and even a corset, sweltering in the heat and humidity; no wait, I’ll live in England and put up with cold and dampness--anything, please, just to be alive when the Romantics thrived. Yes, there was eroticism, and plenty of it, naughty and nice, but it was enshrouded in modes and manners long forgotten, brazenly tossed to the wayside and replaced by today’ self- indulgence and instant gratification. Reading reviews of certain literary works written in the last decade you would think “soft porn” was something recently “invented”. Good god, none of these works have anything over Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Jane Austin, Edgar Allen Poe, Nathanial Hawthorne, William Wordsworth (love that surname), Mary Shelly and John Keats (recently saw Bright Star, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0810784/ These authors are indeed able to set my jaded imagination on fire. And good ole Oscar Wilde, he can still raise an eyebrow or two. With that said I will leave y’all with a tiny piece of a whopping poem by poor tragic Oscar: 

Yet each man kills the thing he loves

By each let this be heard.

Some do it with a bitter look,         

Some with a flattering word.

The coward does it with a kiss,

The brave man with a sword!