L’Histoire d’O / Story of O (1954) – Pauline Reage [Amazon.com]

I’d never paid attention to it, but Pauline Réage’s 1954 novel Story of O betrays its ‘literary fiction’ (as opposed to genre fiction) antecedents by a metafictional streak; the novel has two alternative beginnings and endings. Postmodernism avant la lettre.

After the novel is two pages underway the narrator steps in and announces:

“Another version of the same beginning was simpler and more direct: the young woman, dressed in the same way [as in the first opening of the story], was driven by her lover and an unknown friend.”

Likewise, the author provides an alternative ending which is rather macabre:

“In a final chapter, which has been suppressed, O returned to Roissy, where she was abandoned by Sir Stephen.

There exists a second ending to the story of O, according to which O, seeing that Sir Stephen was about to leave her, said she would prefer to die. Sir Stephen gave her his consent.”

Notice the secretive “a final chapter, which has been suppressed”. Very Borgesian.

P. S. I am currently reading the Dutch translation by Adriaan Morriën who adds an interesting afterword to his translation of this classic, which was written before the true identity of the writer of O was known. He notes that the women in Story of O are not slaves without rights but that their permission and consent is sought for everything they undergo. He also notes that apart from the first 10 pages the narrator steps out of the way to give an account seen through the point of view of O herself. The novel, he says “does not provide a philosophy nor a way of life but rather a description of human relations that are conceivable.” But this reminds me very much of what Poe said in 1850: “The mind of man can imagine nothing which has not really existed.” Aury could not have written this novel without living the story first.

Sort of off-topic: staying with the subject of sadomasochism in fiction, Il Giornale Nuovo has a nice post on the graphic work of Bruno Schulz, a man primarily known for his modernist fiction. This image tells most of the story.