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> Still find trouble believing that people equate what de Sade wrote with > what he did. Well, it's not wholly unhuman to suspect that there may be some kind of connection between i) abducting, poisoning, torturing and raping women, and ii) writing about how much fun it is to abduct, poison, torture and rape women. Or, as a naive attendee at a book-signing might put it, "Where do you get your ideas from, Monsieur Sade?" It so happens that utter shits are sometimes persecuted for the wrong reasons. The authorities were more bothered about de Sade's "blasphemy" and liking for "sodomy" than they were about his rapes. That's nothing new. So, shall we cheerfully assimilate him to the pantheon of gorgeous romantic blasphemous sodomites? That is, do we concur with the authorities that the rapes really didn't matter all that much, that the important thing is the spectacular naughtiness of the man's language? Is a loathing of rapists and of literary celebrations of rape merely a matter of bourgeois literary taste? I don't think that we are faced with a choice between *equating* "what de Sade wrote with what he did" and denying that there is any connection, any continuity. I wouldn't "equate" what Hitler wrote with what he did, either - the term seems rather misleading somehow - "and yet", as George Steiner might say. Rather, I'd see what de Sade wrote, his writing, as one of the things he did amongst all the other things he did; and I'd want to insist that he wasn't a different person when he wrote, a person elevated above the thoughts and motives and actions of the "other" de Sade, the "pathetic criminal". So: he hurt some women and he wrote some books and he wrote some more books and he hurt some more women. The books were not books about gardening. The women were not cardboard cut-outs. Blood, vomit, ink: it's all praxis. Why do we continue to indulge the Fred West of the ancien regime? Or rather, why do we continue to indulge ourselves with him? Is it possible that a *prose style*, of all things, could be so valuable? - Dom %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%