Reading in the NYT about the ratings travails of giant authors like James Baldwin and E.M. Forster after being consigned to the Adult bin by Amazonian midgets, I had to find out first hand what company their books were keeping.
I must be the only person on Open Salon that didn't realize Amazon even had an Adult division. If one spends all of one's spare time alternating between Monty Python and Dostoyevsky, one is evidently not an adult, so.....
The screenshot of Amazon's Adult Products above is not for mere titillation. Examine it closely. Together with the not unexpected Desi & Elli Fox: Mother/Daughter Porn Team and works by the memorably yclept Sook-yin Lee and Sean Biggerstaff ..... SURPRISE! We have the rather improbable coupling of:
- The Book of Mormon (Hardcover) by Joseph Jr. Smith (sic)
- Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle and Terence Irwin (the redoubtable Prof. Irwin is doubtless thrilled at the billing)
There had to be more. Gorgias by Plato and Irwin, perhaps? I had to slip past
- Cheeky! by Yulia Mayarchuk,
- A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality by (Who gives a fuck -- is that a parent or a pedophile on the cover?)
- The Big Penis Book (probably by Sean Biggerstaff again -- and that has to be a banana.)
I barely glanced at the "Sexy School Girl Mini Skirt" (in electric tartan - $29.95), "Dreamgirl Open Crotch Thong" (unverifiable because the vital spot was black-blobbed, so Caveat Emptor -- $24.95) or "Rough Rider Anal Lube" (literally Priceless). And sure enough, there it was, in the heart of the Adult Community of Amazon:
So now I don't understand the kvetching of some of the authors quoted in the NY Times:
- Mark R. Probst, the author of “The Filly,” a gay western romance for young adults
- Craig Seymour, an associate professor of communications at Northern Illinois University and the author of “All I Could Bare: My Life in the Strip Clubs of Gay Washington, D.C.”
- Daniel Mendelsohn, an author whose memoir “The Elusive Embrace” lost its sales ranking over the weekend.
I am sure these writers and their works are of great moment and import. One would think they would be ecstatic keeping company with such immortals as Baldwin, Forster, Aristotle and Dostoyevsky (not to mention Joseph Jr. Smith). On the other hand, if it's exposure that Messrs. Probst et al want, they could do worse than join Open Salon.
The OS Edition:
Here they would not only not be remaindered onto the cut-price piles in the back room, they would be virtually guaranteed automatic EPs and Open Salon Cover status. For it has been reliably learnt that the Editors are looking for replacements for such erstwhile worthies as:
AmyTuteurMD. Dearly departed and loudly lamented, who can fill her void? Her oeuvre, and each opus a timeless OS Cover:
- Cosmo and the Zipless F*ck (note the demure asterisk)
- Your genital piercing got infected? Bummer
- "Sex Can Kill" "Viagra Can Kill" "Orgasms Can Kill" "Transplant shame (?) Can Kill" "Syringes Can Kill" "Sandwiches Can Kill"
- and "She used WHAT as a Dildo?" OMG, a .......
jeffrey dach md. Creationist. Vitaminist. Bio-identical Hormonalist. Anti-aging and Wellness clinicist. (Hullo, Drs. Scruggs and Lucente
-- also of anti-aging, wellness and, wait for it, STEROIDS fame).
amaresh ambarkar. The Acne Guy. "Baby Acne and What You Must Know."
De mortuis nils nisi bonum and all that. But who will replace them? Such authors as Jostling Testicles Harder, Larry the Loon (Gavia Canadiensis); titles like "Craig's List Call Girl with PhD"(open call), "Brazilians have big NUTS!" (foodie humor); the Eds straining at Tea Party coverage of Republican circle jerks? Close, but no Clinton cigar.
I say if we can't have Plato or Aristotle on the Cover, if we can't lure "The Filly" Probst or Prof. "All I Could Could Bare" Seymour to OS, at least give us:
SEAN BIGGERSTAFF
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Copiously noted for Mrs. M.:
Nota bene: Junior members will observe how the inclusion of the talismanic "OS" in the title, no matter how tortured the connection, transforms an otherwise trivial piece into a transcendental Über-meta post.
Foot Notes: Try Pussy Foot'n Vol 21 (2007) Starring: Alexis Amore, Rebecca Lineras Format: DVD. No customer reviews yet. Be the first.
End Notes: Cheeky! (Producers Cut, Unrated, English Version) (2000) might well be the living end, the end-all-and-be-all of the genre.
Starring: Yuliya Mayarchuk, Jarno Berardi Director: Tinto Brass Rating: Unrated Format: DVD
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Comments
I would love to see the media stop using the term "adult" to describe porn.
And why are all porn performers "stars?" The porn industry must be located in Lake Wobegone.
Maybe this post should have been titled March of the IlliteRates or Red Faces, White Bread, and Blue Pencils.
:-)
That said, Doc Amy, like cream, would probably rise to the head of the Amazon lists too. Jaysus weeps.
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Ablonde: Isn't OS great! The essential things one learns here!
Tom: Probst is just too good to be true for "gay young adult" writer, but that Seymour professes to be a professor!
Mrs. M.: Noted. But I suspect you are just checking out the footnote before commenting.
resistance: That "OS" is a surefire ratings ratcheter, God wot.
odetteroulette: Marvelous. That's Wilde.
Verbal: Seriously, I was floored. And I don't think I went beyond Page 2 of her blog. Had a definite view about killer sex, I guess.
Cartouche: Support your local bookseller. Take back the night from these literary, money-grubbing midgets.
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Verbal: She had a definite view about....
Cartouche: ...money-grubbing, literary midgets instead of literary, money-grubbing etc.
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Surely our dear departed depraved Dr. must have had something to say about THAT somewhere along the line. Alas, I am too lazy and/or non-skilled in the OS search paradigm to find it.
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With you I can cur
But how do you insert all these boxes, photo shots and sparkly names? Everytime I try to do something different or importa a picture and put it in a specific place of the post, it never works...
Now I am going to check www.amazon.fr and www.fnac.com to see what the French sites offer bookwise, in the "adult section" and I will let you know whom and what I find.
Poesy like that can't be taught or bought.
What a disappointment!
If Amazon really had their act together they would sell these books pre-highlighted so I could avoid all those unnecessary nouns, adjectives and ... shudder... adverbs.
Gimme verbs! Filthy wicked verbs! Like splonge and flense and the always suggestive trio of squa-tront, spa-foon and shlorp!
(damply rated)
:)
Mrs. Peel: Glad to be of assistance. You'd seemed a bit low lately -- but nothing lifts the spirits like lifting a bit of the spirits. So, I raise my glass to you, and hope you do the same. Cheers.
Axeman: Don't tell me I've fallen afoul of ye, citation-wise, agin. But finn again what about "crazed and be jadeses whipt" from "The Ondt and the Gracehoper," eh?
Sarah: Merci, madame. The French do this sort of thing so much better. I'll check out the site per your instructions and report back -- I doubt if one would find Flaubert presented cheek-by-jowl with Sook Yin Lee ;-).
Stacey: Thank you. Thank you. At least someone noticed my piles!
Harry: You're right. Back in the day, Fyodor and Dmitri were big swinging dicks. Aloysha not so much. And that Grushenka -- oo la la!
Kelly, thanks for understanding. It was a tough gig, but after my, ahem, little operation, I think I was best-equipped for the task :-).
Rich, Coyote: Thanks. Yes, the mind boggles at the thought, but then, she was hard to avoid ;-).
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Ooh la la, I tellya, the French do it right! None of this "Adult" nonsense. Following Sarah's explicit instructions, went to the section on Vie Pratique ("The Practical Life"!) and immediately entered Sexualité et érotisme and soon was hard on the heels of Le meilleur en Bibliothèque de pornographie.
Can't tell a book by its cover, but the erotic ones seemed erotic and the pornographic ones pornographic. And Aristotle, Plato and Dostoyevsky were nowhere to be seen. Did run into Marquis de Sade though. And, oui, j'ai certainement amélioré mon français , as Mrs. C. will be happy to attest, I hope ;-).
Sarah, my technique (c'mon guys, change of subject here) for formatting is very basic. Undertow has a great list of posts relating to the OS editor and such. I have found Kent Pitman's Tutorial
particularly useful.
Thank you all. Researching Amazon Japan next.
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