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New Buzz for a Forgotten Novel
by Debra Hyde
03/06/03
It's the second time in a decade that an Olympia Press book of yesteryear has jumped the shark. The first came in 1994, when Story of O author Pauline Reage was revealed to be French writer/translator Dominique Aury. It happened in the pages of The New Yorker, when Venus Bound author John de St. Jorre told the world of his authenticating encounters with Aury. Now, it's happened again, this time with the re-release of Gordon. Its author, formerly known as Louise Walbrook, is now known to be Edith Templeton, whose short story collection The Darts of Cupid was a recent nominee for a National Book Critics Circle Award.
Ironically, many of her short stories originated in the very same periodical that outed Aury.
Two things are certain, it seems. Yesteryear's foul smut is today's literary work of art. And it ain't your daddy's dirty book anymore.
Gordon first appeared in 1966 as a New Library Edition release, just as Maurice Girodias had contracted with the same publishing house to bring his no longer suppressed Olympia Press titles for British readers. However, Gordon caused such an outrage with its portrayal of obsessive love, harsh dominance, and complete submission that it was banned in England and Germany for indecency. In the process, it upstaged all of Girodias's backlist.
Knowing instant infamy when he saw it, Girodias, having left France for the U.S., brought the book to America and published it as part of the U.S. "Travellers Companion" series. Considered a late entry in Olympia Press history, Gordon failed to attract critical notice stateside, largely because American critics had no inkling that a dirty book might have literary value. It quickly fell into reprint obscurity, seeing light time and time again, under various smutty titles, some pirated.
How times have changed. As an undercurrent in the literary world for a good year now, Gordon's re-release has been highly anticipated ever since The Darts of Cupid hit the bookshelves.
But it didn't happen in a vacuum. Templeton's literary agent, David McCormick, worked magic for Templeton. Among other things, he specializes in reviving established author's backlists and on the heels of critical praise for The Darts of Cupid came word that Gordon would see re-publication. After all, if a collection of short stories could garner such critical attention forty years after they first saw print in The New Yorker, why not push for Gordon's re-release?
The media certainly followed the news, first with a spectacular profile of Templeton in a February 2002 New York Times Magazine article, then in recent weeks with reviews in the Times, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and on NPR's Fresh Air. First-chapter excerpts have appeared at the Time and The Denver Post.
But other factors propelled the novel forward. Although the story of Aury is so much old news, it remains such an exciting precedent-setting incident that what publishing house wouldn't want to reveal the identity of another Olympia Press author? And if Catherine Millet's lackluster memoir, The Sexual Life of Catherine M, could earn constant notice for its erotically extreme content, then that could only spell good things for a stunningly written novel. Then there's the tantalizing fact that Templeton's fiction is only one step away from her real life experiences.
In that well-positioned New York Times Magazine article, Templeton insisted that she draws no line between fiction and biography. Only the names are changed to protect the outrageous -- hers too in the case of Gordon, not because Templeton felt any shame towards the novel, but because she upheld that time-honored tradition of protecting the guilty parties while they lived.
And how they lived. In Gordon, the young divorcee Louisa is charmed by a man in a pub, only to find herself up-ended and fucked on a park bench without warning. That dramatic sexual encounter sparks an affair that dives deep into humiliation and sexual enslavement, eventually leaving Louisa waiting in thrall for Gordon's next command. Though immersed in sexual extremes, Gordon prods Louisa to find herself, to understand what lies beneath one's surface. Finding those answers bring awareness to Louisa but ruination to the relationship.
Was it real? True to her fictional blur, Templeton revealed to writer Maria Russo in that Time Magazine article that she wrote it to confront her experiences long after the affair's end and decade into a marriage to a man who was, comparatively, a wet noodle in bed. "I had to do it then or I would have choked," she claimed.
All those scenes of public sex, humiliations, and extreme dominance (right down to controlling her access to the bathroom)? Real, real, real.
It's the women that give fascination to Templeton's works and, in many ways, Templeton's short story collection solidifies that which one sees in Gordon. Both books are filled with articulate women who pursue their eroticisms without shame or apology. These are women who want to be loved, but are too worldly to view romance as anything short of a sham. Maria Russo explains, "Their pleasure in sexual submission is a mark of their toughness; they can take what their men give them and they are unsqueamish about bodily realities."
Other realities, however, aren't as majestic. Sadly, the real life Gordon saw a tragic end, soon after the end of his affair with Templeton. If the novel is any indication, her absence rendered him impotent and, unable to bear it, he committed suicide.
Perhaps Templeton's late-in-life notice will have a happier ending, but I wonder. Even as her fiction shakes up the rest of the world, she no longer writes. She lives a quiet life in Italy, resting on what laurels come your way when you're in your eighties. If she never writes another word, then I hope a cache of unpublished works lurks undiscovered somewhere because, frankly, one juicy novel just isn't enough.
This article previously appeared at the now-defunct Yes Portal website as part of its news and entertainment coverage.
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