Upon rereading Story of O: I hardly know what to make of it, or what it all means.

From every indication, Story of O is one of those books which marks the reader, which leaves him not quite, or not at all, the same as he was before he read it. Such books are strangely involved with the influence they exert, changing in accordance with that influence. After a few years, they are no longer the same books, and consequently the initial reviewers soon seem to have been a bit simple-minded. But that cannot be helped, a reviewer should never be afraid to make a fool of himself. With this thought in mind, the simplest thing for me to do is admit that I hardly know what to make of it, or what it all means.

—Happiness in Slavery, Jean Paulhan, in introduction to Story of O, Pauline Réage, xxiii

This thing I do when rereading my most favorite of favorite books, when I revisit them and see their pages in a sharp light that illuminates them as never before, and then write posts less concerned with the moderation and scope, as in a review, and instead trying to convey what I saw in that light. The truth is, I've done to to Story of O already, see: initial review, and two-part discussion during my first reread (one, two). But as I've told anyone who will listen as I do this third pass through the book, I've seen it different this time than any other; it's without question been the best.

The first time through I became so wrapped up in each stage of O's journey—and Réage, in d'Estrée's translation, writes so lucidly, frankly, coldly that there is nothing there between reader and scene; it's an immediate sort of captivation, one that demands rather than entices, and you cannot look away or see beyond it—that each one consumed me. I saw each tree down to the very needles on the branches; the forest, behind, blurred almost to nothing.

The second time through it was the progression I was watching; I remembered a deep envy and admiration I'd felt for O, and kept waiting for feel it again; I followed her motivations, the forms of her servitude, its paradoxical interaction with her ownership of self; I wrote about the book in two halves, but saw it best for how one half matured into the next. Forest, that is to say: only the shape, the expanse, of the forest.

This third time, I see it all. Forget the tired analogy: I know the book so well (so brief and direct, its memory stays clear) that I experienced it all as if simultaneously. I saw the arc of O's progression, in status and in mind, but was drawn into every scene and page with the immediacy that the text demands. I looked forward and back, saw each stage in relation, but drowned within each scene. This is the sort of book which will swallow you whole, in no small part because it demands as much of the reader as it does of O: the body, the mind; violently erotic and more than psychological.

I hate most to review the books which I love best, and often detest what reviews I do manage to write of them. Honestly I didn't do half bad by Story of O, but my point is that now I better understand why that happens. It's not just that I can't do the book justice, but that nothing can; a work like this evolves with time and with each reader and with its role in culture in which it exists; there is no way to write the whole of it, because that whole grows ever larger.

I hardly know what to make of it, or what it all means.

That's only the third page of the essay, of course; it continues on for a dozen more. These are impossible things to write, but we write them, we write them all. We shouldn't be afraid to make fools of ourselves.

ETA: I should add, of course, that Paulhan is a raging sexist douchebag who does make a fool of himself and barely gets the point. He tries to generalize a wholly unique experience—for the book says little about women and everything about O's individual sexuality, desires, aspired and attained role, and love—and, knowing what we know now (that he was the author's lover, that she wrote the book addressed to him, in response to a comment made by him) his coyness about her identity and the essentialism by which he assigns her gender seem like a poor joke. One good observation does not a decent introduction or human being make.

But it is a good observation.