The Daily Beast had a recent article on what the author, Tracy Quan, termed Kinkonomics: the growing number of women turning to freelance dominatrix work as the economy tanks. In New York dungeons, such as Le Salon DeSade and Rebecca’s Hidden Chamber, there’s good money to be made:
Jessica, a pro-domme in her late twenties, apprenticed at a dungeon before striking out on her own. In Manhattan dungeons, she says, the typical cut on a $200 session is 60-40 in the dungeon’s favor. To people who make their entire living in the sex industry—professional escorts who get $500 an hour, for instance—such rates can seem abusive. But freelancers see it differently. “If you’re making $8 an hour at your day job, $80 is awesome,” says Jessica. “There’s no shortage of women willing to work at those rates.”
It’s a cyclical thing, apparently - the current situation a replay of the 2002 technology bust - but it brought to mind those authors who also turn to the seamy side during tough times. Sphere has just released In Bed With…, a collection of erotica for women by a collection of household-name women writers, including Adele Parks, Ali Smith, Chris Manby, Daisy Waugh, Kathy Lette and Maggie Alderson.
The kicker is that, while the authors are listed in the front of the book, the stories themselves are unattributed. Is this titillation, or shame? Are these authors proud of their filth, or afraid to be associated with it? Like the dominatrixes of New York, do they wear masks to heighten the mystery - or to make it easier to return to the straight world when the tough times are over?
Pseudonyms, unattributed works, a renunciations have always been a part of dirty fiction. The author of Bookkake’s own Memoirs of a Young Rakehell, Guillaume Apollinaire, began his life as Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary de Wąż-Kostrowicki, but it’s by his pseudonym that he has become much better known. He was first translated into English by one ‘Oscar Mole’ - in fact, a psudonym of Alexander Trocchi (who Bookkake’s wanted to publish for some time - see our introduction by Stewart Home).
Trocchi himself wrote under a number of pseudonyms: the delicious White Thighs and Helen and Desire appeared under the pen-name “Frances Lengel”, while Thongs bore the name of the enticing-sounding “Carmenicita de Las Lunas”. All of these first appeared from Maurice Girodias’ legendary Olympia Press, whose Travellers Companions series was almost exclusively composed of anonymous and pseudonymous titles - look out for fine works by “William Talsman”, “Harriet Daimler” and “Keith Kerner”. Terry Southern’s wickedly funny collaboration with Mason Hoffenberg, Candy, also from Olympia, appeared authored by “Maxwell Kenton”.
John Cleland tried to renounce Fanny Hill to avoid prosecution, having first published it anonymously - as did “Walter”, the author of the seminal (but largely dull) Victorian erotic compendium My Secret Life, now widely, but not conclusively, believed to have been the sex-obsessed bibliographer Henry Spencer Ashbee. Auden refused ever to claim credit for the quite extraordinarily filthy The Platonic Blow - which luckily for us means it is not protected by copyright, and you can find on our 404 page.
The most famous dirty lit pseudonym is probably that of Dominique Aury who double-bluffed everyone with The Story of O, which appeared under the name of Pauline Reage but was widely assumed to have been by a man. Pseudonyms seemed to have had rather a comeback in recent years with the rise of the both the sex-bloggers (Girl With A One Track Mind, Belle De Jour - named for the original hard-times hooker) and the sex memoirists (the barely-disguised Melissa Ps and Catherine Ms), with a corresponding, increasing desire to unmask those behind them. If a pseudonym is what’s required before an author with something to get off their chest will let their work out into the world, long may they continue.
I read a few of the stories when I worked for the publisher and they were disappointingly filth-free (maybe I just missed the good stuff). One of the authors of In Bed With won the Bad Sex prize this year so I’m not alone in that opinion. The stories are attributed to the writers’ porn names, so it was more of a publicity stunt to get people to figure out who wrote what. But it does mean those writers who produced some really dull erotica can hide behind their anonymity.
# by Lindsey, February 26, 2009
I have seen little mention on Bookake in my limited readership of my personal favorite, Georges Bataille, who published Story of the Eye under the name “Lord Auch”, which he claims is an inside joke translating to “God relieving himself” in Le Petit–though I think it has much loftier theological premises to Bataille than simply a dirty profanity. The first edition, and the two subsequent released during the war years, I believe were when he was head of the French National Library, and would explain his wish for anonymity.
# by Adam, February 27, 2009
Excellent call Adam - Bataille should be on the list (and I’ll definitely write about him at a later date).
Wikipedia translates Lord Auch thusly: “literally, Lord “to the shithouse” — “auch” being short for “aux chiottes,” slang for telling somebody off by sending him to the toilet” - which is pretty good.
Bataille also went under the pseudonyms “Dianus” (for L’Amité, 1940), “Pierre Angélique” (Madame Edwarda, 1941) and “Louis Trente” (Le Petit, 1943) - often with a preface under his own name, which is a neat trick.
# by Bookkake, February 27, 2009