CBR16 Bingo: Scandal – The Marquis de Sade lived about every year of his life scandalously, and there’s plenty of scandal that follows around the scroll and Aristophil as well.
The Marquis de Sade is a divisive figure in literature, with as many people arguing for him being a visionary as there are for him being a mere maniac. But less known is the complicated journey of the manuscript of his best-known work The 120 Days of Sodom and how it came to be involved in a massive Ponzi scheme that’s still being untangled to this very day.
I have a passing acquaintance with the Marquis de Sade as a curious historical figure and not much else. I read pretty broadly, but not broadly enough to include his canon of works. Still, it’s always made me curious why this writing, which while satirical is also overtly, unpleasantly pornographic and seems to fit in a narrow niche, became part of the zeitgeist at various points throughout history.
In this book Warner tackles three interwoven stories – the life of Sade, the journey of the scroll, and the initial success and eventual crash of Aristophil. They are all fascinating stories, easy to follow despite the many settings and characters over which they range. I loved how Warner dug into the stories of those who possessed the scroll at various times, and how it left its mark on them all.
However, I did feel like there was a bit of a disconnect between the Sade and the scroll sections from the Aristophil section. The scroll crosses the path of the company only briefly, so while some sections, like those dealing broadly with the buying and selling of manuscripts, fit together with the rest of the book, others seemed to belong to another book entirely. I also wished the author came down more definitively on the central question of Sade. Is he a visionary or a madman or both? The question is thorny enough to always demand another answer.
