Dicks Don’t Have Ears: Grey by E.L. James
To start, I want to say that Grey is not so much a book as it is a sick tale about a monster who likes to inflict pain on women. The story doesn’t portray BDSM relationships well, is highly redundant, and fraught with bad writing. “Bad Writing” barely begins to describe this travesty. Here is an example: “Her sharp intake of breath is music to my dick.” Am I making that up? Is that an exaggerated parody? No. That is a literal, direct quote. “Music to my dick.” Seriously? Why would a dick even want music? It doesn’t have EARS, E.L James! Dicks don’t have ears!
To call this “writing” is an insult to writers. There are words on the page, but the way in which they are arranged is cringe-worthy. This book, (I use the word ‘book’ loosely) in Bryony Gordon’s words, is “as arousing as the diary of a sex offender.” I can’t say it better myself. Not only is this book not arousing, it is downright disgusting in some parts. One example is Christian Grey fantasizing about Anastasia “shackled to [his] bench [with] peeled gingerroot inserted in her ass…” He also likes to imagine caning and the like.
If I was into caning and ass ginger, I still wouldn’t find this sexy. For something to be sexy it has to be consensual. Even for people who indulge a violent fantasy, I doubt anyone would want peeled gingerroot in their ass. That just sounds painful, not sexy. It sounds like it is intended to hurt and without any consent beforehand. I can’t find that arousing.
Another point of contention for me is that good writing should be fun (or at least not deeply embarrassing) when read aloud. I can’t see this happening for “Grey”. I wonder if she ever read her book out loud to an audience. I suspect not. If she had, she would have realized how awful her writing is and this monstrosity would have never been published. It doesn’t take Gilbert Gottfried to illustrate this point (that’s worth seeing, though. NSFW, obviously). Morgan Freeman couldn’t make this sound good.
While “Grey” and the Fifty Shades trilogy were the first mainstream BDSM novels, they don’t portray BDSM relationships accurately. Christian Grey doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. He continues to convince and manipulate Ana into trying things his way when she clearly doesn’t want to. While there is compromise in any relationship, Christian doesn’t seem able to make compromises when it comes to Ana’s comfort level with violence. Ana is also afraid of Christian. This is a clear indicator of an abusive relationship. What really drives this home is near the end of the book when Christian beats Ana with a belt. Christian should have been perceptive enough to realize that Ana was in real pain. She was crying and yelling. While she didn’t use the safe word, that is still no excuse for what happened. Christian was too caught up in his own need and sadistic desire to notice how what he was doing was affecting Ana. It seems to me that in any relationship, the goal is for both partners to look after one another’s needs. Especially when playing rough. Christian claims to do this. He doesn’t. He only cares about his pleasure, not Ana’s.
Another huge issue with “Grey” is that it was basically copy-pasted from its original. The emails exchanged between Ana and Christian were verbatim. The book was mainly the same with Christian’s thoughts inserted in italics. A new perspective is fine, but cover the new perspective.
It took me nearly a year to finish this book. The writing was so bad that I found myself putting it down for months at a time. Finally, I forced myself to read the second half of the book. The only conceivable reason someone would buy this book is in an attempt to understand how BDSM relationships go wrong. There are plenty of other sources out there to inform people about good BDSM relationships. In retrospect, I wish I had asked for my money back after the first week of reading. I want my ten bucks back. There is no good reason to buy this horrible book.
