Note: When I attempted to share this 2014 blog of mine with a new writer friend, I discovered it had disappeared online, so I am reposting it.
The New Yorker article “Who Was the Real Woman Behind 9 ½ Weeks” established that the wildly successful memoir was not written by a corporate executive. Rather, it was penned by Ingeborg Day, a gifted, struggling writer and a single mom. Since the author recounts a job that never existed and makes no mention of her child, I doubt most of the events in the story actually happened.
However, as a work of fiction, it stands as exquisitely powerful storytelling of a woman who willingly gave up everything in her world, except for her job, for a relationship with a man that had nothing to do with intimacy and everything to do with chasing a high.
Day’s spare, precise language paints stark images with an immediacy that transports the reader into the world of the narrator such as her depiction of a Manhattan street fair at the beginning of the story, “Directly before me are three children under six, all with dripping Italian ices, the woman to my right waves a falafel with dangerous gusto, a guitarist has joined the drummer and their audience stands enthralled, immobile with fresh air and food and goodwill.”
While navigating the crowd at the street fair, a man, a stranger, begins to expertly flirt with the narrator. Within hours they have sex. Sex with a stranger is a rush unto its own. As the story unwinds, each of their encounters becomes about achieving more of a rush. Sex became their ultimate fix.
Day mastered the art of using minimal, yet perfect, details to convey mood such as this brief sentence, which captures the giddiness of falling in love, “I liked him even better than the first night and later couldn’t stop smiling while brushing my teeth: I had found an extraordinarily skillful lover.”
During the course of their intense love affair, the narrator never puts on the brakes, never says no, and never speaks up. She could have suggested that they socialize, take long walks, do volunteer work, or do anything that would give them the opportunity to get to know each other better and develop real intimacy. She never says, “I want more.” If he wasn’t interested in giving more, the relationship would have ended, and she could have walked away with her dignity.
The sadomasochism and the risky sex could be symbolic of any addict needing more and more to achieve that blissful first high. Months after the affair ends, the narrator describes scars that remain from her having been whipped. The scars could be figurative too. Any love affair that starts with such promise seems tragic when it ends, and emotional scars result from a loss that cannot easily be forgotten.
The sado-masochism must have served as insurance that the “memoir” would become a best seller. A Million Tiny Pieces and Go Ask Alice are two other mega-sellers that took advantage of the fiction-posing-as-memoir formula.
Anyone serious about book publishing realizes that it is a game. Trendiness plays a bigger role than most people realize; many buy best sellers in vogue, but never read them. And many readers solely enjoy “formula” fiction such as mysteries and romance.
The Internet has created a forum for aspiring authors to find and build their audience, but such an endeavor takes oodles of time on top of finding the time to perfect the craft of writing. If you are game, two successful authors spell out the art of online promotion and sales:
- Michael Hicks, The Path to Self-Publishing Success ($2.99)
- Jonathan Gunson, The Bestseller Labs Guide for Authors (free)
Other than her memoir about growing up in Austria as the daughter of a Nazi SS soldier, Ghost Waltz, Day never used her absolute mastery of language and storytelling to write more novels and eventually committed suicide.
Our loss.
Sasha Kildare, author of Intact: Untangle the Web of Bipolar Depression, Addiction, and Trauma
Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash