The big O: erotica in the canon.

• Author: Freund, Charles Paul
• Position: Citings

THE STORY OF O, a once-notorious French novel about a woman, an obsession, and a lot of whips and chains, turns 50 this year. To mark the occasion, France has included the work on an official list of national triumphs.

"Official" recognition of a work of outright erotica as a "national triumph" may seem perverse, but The Story of O has earned its celebration. The novel, attributed to one "Pauline Reage," finally paid off centuries of French-language erotic tedium with an acknowledged classic.

No nation has enjoyed a greater reputation for producing and tolerating such works--from the 17th century "whore dialogues" that swept Europe to the original Pads edition of Joyce's Ulysses--than France. Philosophe Denis Diderot penned an 18th-century novel featuring talking vaginas, while poet Guillaume Apollinaire spiced up one of his short works with incest and urine fetishism. And then there's Marquis de Sade.

Most such works were written rapidly, anonymously, and for the money, and they show it. O, however, is a different matter...