If you say “Nine and a Half Weeks,” then everyone immediately imagines Mickey Rourke with an unnaturally tender gaze, charming Kim Basinger, feeding strawberries and other erotic joys that made the film one of the main hits of video stores.
At the same time, many have no idea about the book on which such a famous film in Russia was based. Although she is worth remembering, much more than the film.
True, I won’t recommend reading it - it’s strange to recommend such a difficult read.
It was written by an American of Austrian origin, Ingeborg Day, under the pseudonym Elizabeth McNeill. Under a pseudonym - because she didn’t want to traumatize her daughter with a story about what strange and difficult relationships fate had led her into. And the reader cannot think that the novel is simply a fruit of erotic fantasy. There is no romance, no hero with brown eyes and stunning, albeit tacky, charm. There is only a sparse, strict and therefore deafening description of the severe dependence into which a woman fell, who just wanted... Love? Probably yes, love.
Actually, love, in a sense, was what it was.
Girls often dream of being taken care of. Cared for them when they were sick, served them breakfast and ensured their pleasure in bed. This is all Elizabeth received, only in an excessive, grotesque form. When she left work, she ceased to be a woman, a human being, and became simply her lover’s favorite thing, a pet. Literally - she spent 90% of her time outside of work in handcuffs, she was fed and watered. This gave her a lot of purely physical pleasure and completely broke her psyche.
Actually, the book's Elizabeth went the same way as the film's Elizabeth took the first steps. She completely lost her human dignity and disappeared into other people's fantasies.
I would say that this is a warning book, it should help against romantic dreams of a man who will come and decide everything for you.
Should I read it? Probably not. Is it well written? Of course, yes, much stronger than the film. Sparingly, collectedly, precisely. Here is the very beginning of the novel, the heroine has not yet realized how deeply she is in trouble, and we read the description of her lover’s wardrobe - a dozen identical shirts, hundreds of exactly the same socks, everything in perfect order - and shivers run down the spine, this order is so scary, and I want shout: “Run away from here quickly!”
By the way, the film’s rating on American Rotten Tomatoes is noticeably lower than on the domestic KinoPoisk. It is understandable: what is a passable erotic-romantic film for the whole world, for post-Soviet people is a golden memory of youth about unheard of and unprecedented freedom.
UPD. From the afterword by the author’s daughter:
“I was twelve in 1975, and my mother was going through the affair she describes in Nine and a Half Weeks. I had no idea what was happening to her. At our house everything was as usual: she secretly led a double life.
That summer I went on vacation to my grandmother. When I returned to New York, my mother seemed to be fine. She went to work every day, met with friends on weekends; nothing unusual. About a week and a half later, she suddenly started crying, and the sobbing continued throughout the next day. I called two of her friends from work and they came to us. Together we took her to the hospital. We were told that she had a serious nervous breakdown and needed specialist help. Two years earlier, she suffered severe depression after the successive deaths of her son, mother and father. Friends and family decided that the unexpected nervous breakdown was again somehow connected with the tragedies that had occurred in the family. Mom didn’t reveal the real reason to anyone...
...It was only when I started writing this afterword that it suddenly dawned on me: what efforts it must have taken to keep this a secret. My mother went to great lengths to protect my childhood and youth from unpleasant questions from classmates, teachers and neighbors. Looking back, I feel tender and grateful, and I admire the courage it took to go all this way alone. I am proud that she found the strength to abandon her lover and the abusive addiction to which this affair doomed her. I am grateful for her decision: although she suffered, her daughter should not suffer. I am comforted and inspired by the legacy she left me: proof that even in the darkest times, we control our own destiny, we make our own choices.
Ursula Day"

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Title: Nine and a Half Weeks

About the book "Nine and a Half Weeks" by Elizabeth McNeill

Those same “Nine and a Half Weeks”!

A cult novel about love, obsession, vicious passion and submission.

After a chance fateful meeting, a masterly seducer draws his beloved into a dangerous and sensual love game that will force her to abandon her previous life principles and help her discover new facets of forbidden pleasures.

How far can she go if she's willing to do anything for him?

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Elizabeth McNeill

Nine and a Half WeeksElizabeth McNeill

Nine and a Half Weeks: A Memoir of a Love Affair

Copyright © 1978 by Elizabeth McNeill. All rights reserved.

Introduction copyright © 2005 by Francine Prose.

All rights reserved.

© Milogradova Yu.A., translation into Russian, 2015

© Design. Eksmo Publishing House LLC, 2015

Preface

“He and I made love for the first time, and he held my hands tightly above my head.”

Without further delay, we get down to business. Everything is resolved quickly and deftly, the research stage ends as soon as the first sentence of the novel is completed. We, like the storyteller, know what the ending of the story will be. Her future is not yet fully visible, but intuition tells me that this will not end well.

A vague premonition gains strength along with awakening interest and a pleasant feeling of excitement, and our heroine counts the steps along which her heated romance climbs. The next time she and her lover are together, he will ask permission to blindfold her with a scarf. On the third, it will bring you to orgasm and make you beg for more. For the fourth time, he will tie her hands with the same scarf. “He sent thirteen roses to my office that morning.” This short prelude, like a telegram, ends, but we, like the narrator, can no longer get out and ask ourselves how far this will go and how frank she will be with us.

Almost 30 years have passed since the first publication of the memoirs entitled “Nine and a Half Weeks.” The author took the pseudonym Elizabeth McNeill.

The book caused an incredible sensation, which could not have been expected, given that the so-called sexual revolution took place a long time ago.

The appearance of the book provoked a shock wave, probably because the boundary between pornography and the usual memoir literature was clearly blurred here. Only in the last ten years have writers of both sexes begun to compete with each other in defining the limits of what is acceptable. They strove to raise the stakes in self-exposure - confessing to the reader in intimate details: incest, childhood abuse, unusual forms of sex.

Before, of course, explicit books were also published. Some of the works of Henry Miller, the novels of Joyce and Nabokov caused scandals that culminated in accusations of obscenity. And also Frank Harris and his fellow memoirists, who talked about the hidden aspects of life... But those writers were men (and this should be emphasized). True, there were also well-publicized female confessions like Xaviera Hollander's The Gay Slut, the literary pornography The Story of O, and Anaïs Nin's diaries, in which she recalls her romances with a compelling lyricism that few would call erotic. And again, Nin's narrative gave the reader a clear sense that there were many things in her life that meant much more to her than sex: psychoanalysis, marriage to a literary agent, writing!

The author of “Nine and a Half Weeks” is entirely focused on what happens between a woman and a man, and mainly in bed. Occurs over a period of about two months, when everything else ceases to matter. It was written by a woman (or rightfully claimed to be), but the author can be called anything but a “gay slut.” And, as in the case of The Book of Henry Robbins, the imprint included the name of a reputable publisher who published John Irving, Joyce Carol Oates and Isaac Bashevis Singer.

However, the fame of the novel was further enhanced by the fact that it was published at the end of an era marked by the struggle of feminists for control, power, independence, and self-realization of women. The narrator of “Nine and a Half Weeks” happily gives up all these feminist benefits when she ventures into an affair with a man she meets at a Manhattan flea market. The irony is all the more acute because the social position of this New Woman seems to personify all the advantages won by her “sisters.” And she enjoys these benefits. She is “a spectacular businesswoman who is loved by friends and appreciated by her bosses,” she has clients, she has obligations, and “her own briefcase, and a summer handbag, and heels, and lip gloss, and fresh hair.” She received a good education, traveled a lot, and, when it comes to sex, she can be called sophisticated. In short, she is gifted with the opportunities that today's young, single, middle-income working woman in New York enjoys. And what, as it turns out, is she striving for? Having met her prince charming, she suddenly discovers, to her own surprise, that she desperately wants to be tied up, beaten and humiliated, treated like a helpless child who is unable to satisfy her primary needs.

In a section that summarizes what turned out to be the most innocent aspects of the relationship, McNeill explains the couple's approach to the division of labor. Under the heading “What He Did,” she reports: He “fed me. He bought his own food, always cooked himself, and always washed his own dishes.” He dressed and undressed her, took her shoes to be repaired, read to her, washed, dried and combed her hair with an expensive comb, which he later used to beat her, bought and inserted tampons, washed her in the bathroom, and removed her makeup. And in the chapter “What I did” there is one word – “nothing”. But, as it will soon become clear, this is not entirely true. She did more than “nothing.” She crawled on the floor, took provocative poses on mattresses in a furniture store and, disguised as a man, held a knife to a stranger's throat simply because her lover ordered her to do so. And all this time she reveled in her double life: “My daily routine remained the same: I was an independent woman, I earned my own living... I made decisions, I made my own choices. But the nightly rules said: I am helpless, dependent, unable to take care of myself. No decisions were expected from me, no responsibility lay on me. I had no choice."

"And it was amazing."

What made the book “Nine and a Half Weeks” revolutionary (or counter-revolutionary, depending on which way you look at it) was the author’s confidence, seemingly supported by his own experience, that in some circumstances, for certain personality types, sex is a trump card that beats not only political considerations, but also everything else.

A quarter of a century has passed, and we are accustomed to reading memoirs that describe the horrors of oppression that the defenseless suffer from those in power. We had to recognize that emotions and sensuality play a double game with our principles and aesthetic convictions. The fetishistic trappings of sadomasochism have emerged from the sexual underground onto the glossy pages of high fashion magazines. One can only hope that McNeill's book has moved past the period when it was associated exclusively with the disparaging, low-brow film with Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger. The book has nothing in common with it, except for the title and a vaguely similar plot. Obviously, a lot has changed over the years. Then why does the story of a sadomasochistic relationship between two adults who voluntarily entered into it still retain its relevance, unbalance and excite us?

I would argue that the book owes this to the author's skill—the deceptive ease with which she combines the techniques of prose fiction with the persuasiveness of a personal diary. The book was published just two years after Raymond Carver's short story "Will You Be So Kind to Keep Quiet?" introduced a new style of storytelling - short, concise sentences in the present tense, characteristic of a style that would later be called minimalism. And this style, this manner, is used by McNeill in his memoirs. They appeared nine years before Jay McInerney, in Bright Lights, Big City, used the same method to convey the rhythm and atmosphere of a metropolis hostile to humans, but this (if you take away the drugs and nightlife) is the social environment that in which McNeill's characters revolve. The book “Nine and a Half Weeks” - restrained, abrupt, clear - can be called perhaps the first memoir in the style of minimalism. Unlike many writers of her era, whose work is filled with a melancholy sense of unrequited desire for romance, McNeill understood that Eros calls out to our attention much more urgently.

As for the language of the book, the author refuses the intermittent breath of romance novels, the false lyricism of romantic literature, and the comical clichés of pornography. The description of sensations and feelings is given in a casual tone, in an almost journalistic manner, as if the reporter was trying to stick to the facts, real events, frankly talking about what happened.

The second time he picked up my scarf, which I threw on the floor while undressing, smiled and said: “Can I blindfold you?” No one had blindfolded me in bed before and I liked it. I began to like him even more after the second night, and in the morning, while washing my face, I couldn’t help but smile: I had found an amazingly skillful lover.

The third time he stopped again and again when the moment separated me from orgasm. I was close to losing consciousness again, and I heard my own voice soaring above the bed and begging him to continue. He obeyed. I was starting to fall in love.

The fourth time, when I was already excited enough not to notice what was happening around me, he tied my hands with the same scarf. That morning he sent thirteen roses to my office.

It's Sunday, the end of May is approaching. In the afternoon we met with my friend, who quit the company where I work almost a year ago. To our mutual surprise, we see each other more often in recent months than when we worked together. She lives downtown and there is a street fair in the same area. We walk, stop near the stalls, talk, eat. She bought an old, very pretty silver pill box from a shop that sold old clothes, old books, random junk marked "antiques" and massive paintings of grieving women with cracked paint at the corners of their pink lips.

I'm trying to decide whether to walk half a block in the opposite direction to the counter where I found a lace shawl that my friend called a rag. “Really, you’re a rag,” I say loudly behind her, hoping to be heard above the noise of the crowd. “But imagine - if you wash it and mend it...” She looks over her shoulder, puts her hand to her ear, points to a woman in a huge man’s suit, who is furiously beating on the drums; rolls his eyes and turns away. “Wash and fix,” I shout. – Do you think it’s worth washing it? I think I’ll go back and buy it, it has potential...” “Then it’s better to come back,” says a voice in my ear, “and soon. Someone could have already bought it and washed it before your friend heard you in the noise.”

I quickly turn around and cast a dissatisfied glance at the person behind me, then again try to shout to my friend. But I was literally stuck. The crowd, already barely moving its legs, finally slowed down. Directly in front of me are children no older than six, all three of them with melted ice cream, the woman on the right is waving her drumsticks with an enthusiasm that is dangerous for me, and the guitarist has joined the drummer, and their listeners are frozen in admiration, paralyzed by the food, fresh air and good spirits. “This fair is the first of this season,” said a voice above my left ear. “Only here can you talk to strangers, otherwise why come here at all?” I still think I should go back and buy whatever it is.”

The sun is shining brightly, although the heat is not felt at all. The air smells tender and subtle; the sky is transparent and clear, like over a small town somewhere in Minnesota. The middle child in front of me had just taken turns licking each of his friends' ice cream. This is the most beautiful of all possible Sundays. “Just a frayed shawl,” I say. “But it’s still fine handmade, and it costs four dollars – it’s like going to the movies, so I think I’ll buy it.” But the way back is closed. We stand opposite each other and smile. He's not wearing sunglasses and he's squinting. His hair falls over his forehead. His face becomes very attractive when he speaks; and even more attractive when she smiles. He probably looks terrible in photographs, I think, at least if he's trying to put on a serious face. He's wearing a slightly tattered pale pink shirt with the sleeves rolled up; baggy khaki pants. “Anyway, it looks like he’s not gay,” I think. These pants are one sign (though not a very reliable one). And – tennis shoes without socks. “I’ll take you there,” he says. “You won’t lose your friend, all this stretches for a couple of blocks, no more, you will meet sooner or later, unless, of course, she wants to leave completely.” “He won’t,” I say. “She lives not far from here.” He began to shoulder his way back to where we came from, and turning his head, said: “Me too. My name is…"

Today is Thursday. We had dinner at a restaurant on Sunday and Monday, had lunch at my house on Tuesday, and ate cold cuts at my co-worker's party on Wednesday. Today he invited me to dinner at his place. We talk in the kitchen while he cuts the salad. He refused my help, poured us a glass of wine, and just had time to ask if I had brothers or sisters when his phone rang. “You know what, no,” he says in response to someone. - No, now is a bad time, really. I'm telling you, this shit can wait until tomorrow... During a long pause, he shakes his head and makes expressive faces at me. Suddenly he explodes: “Oh my God! Well Fine, come. But two hours, no more, if you don’t make it in two hours, then go to hell, I have plans for the evening...”

“What an idiot,” he groans, dissatisfied and stupidly, “Even though he has already disappeared from my life. It's nice to have a beer with him, but we have nothing in common except that we play tennis in the same place and work in the same company, and he constantly fails and then has to take an intensive course, like in school . He's not very smart and a complete wuss. He will come in at eight - as usual, some business that needed to be done two weeks ago, and now he is in a panic. I'm terribly sorry. But I’ll take you to the bedroom and watch TV.”

“I’d better go home,” I say. “No, you won’t go,” he says. “Don’t go, that’s what I was afraid of most.” Look, we'll eat, you'll do something for a couple of hours, call your mom, whatever, and then we'll have a great time, when he leaves, it'll only be ten o'clock. Fine?" “I rarely call my mom when I need to kill a couple of hours,” I say. “I actually hate killing time, it’s a pity that I don’t have papers with me, I could work…” “For every taste,” he says, “whatever you want, he’s at your service,” and he shoves it under my nose. your case. He manages to make me laugh.

“Okay,” I say. - I'll find something to read. But I'm going to the bedroom and I don't want your friend to even suspect that I'm here. If he doesn’t leave before ten, I’ll go out with a broom and a sheet on my head and start an obscene dance.” “Great,” he smiles widely. “I’ll still bring the TV there in case you get bored. And after dinner I’ll run to a kiosk a block away and bring you a stack of magazines so you can pick up a couple of obscene gestures that you wouldn’t think of on your own.” “Thank you,” I answer, and a grin appears on his face.

As for the language of the book, the author refuses the intermittent breath of romance novels, the false lyricism of romantic literature, and the comical clichés of pornography. The description of sensations and feelings is given in a casual tone, in an almost journalistic manner, as if the reporter was trying to stick to the facts, real events, frankly talking about what happened.

This book is a role model in the art of withholding information. What we know about the lover is extremely general information, like in a men's clothing catalog: the colors, styles, cut of his shirts and trousers are all that she finds out during the first attempt to search his bedroom. We do not know his name, he is always designated by the pronoun “he,” as if there was only one “He” in the world. In other words, as if he were the only man in the world. We learn that her almost abandoned apartment, filled with souvenirs and memorabilia, resembles a warehouse storing the wreckage of a troubled past. And her life together with him, concentrated exclusively on sex and sadomasochism, remains as faceless and colorless as the decor of his home. His relationships with his friends are shrouded in mystery, almost sinister. And her friend, with whom the narrator took a fateful walk to the flea market, disappears from the pages of the book as soon as her lover appears.

We know What he cooks, reads, where he buys clothes, but not a word about the work of each of them, about their background, about the weather (except that it happens in the summer) or the life of the city, which probably goes on as usual. There is no condemnation, no reflection, no search for meaning or reasons, no reflection (the heroine does not give any assessment of her situation), and there are absolutely no amateurish conclusions and hypotheses usual in such cases about what childhood traumas and early experiences prompted them to enter into such relationship. McNeill does not consider it necessary to agree with the prudent arguments of doubting readers, who, probably, from the very beginning it was obvious that nothing good should be expected from this guy.

With the help of omissions and omissions and thanks to constant tension, the book recreates the unbearably stuffy atmosphere of the relationship between a man and a woman, when all objective reality outside of this relationship disappears. It seems to the reader that oxygen is gradually being pumped out of the room.

This exciting and disturbing book has a simple structure - things go from bad to worse. The narrator sinks deeper and deeper into the abyss of humiliation and disappointment, increasingly loses her individuality, allowing desire and the increasingly cruel and offensive whims of her lover to suppress her own morality and her very sense of herself as an individual. We witness an episode with a masseur and a story with a prostitute who is specially hired to turn the narrator into some kind of cheap whore; the “successful businesswoman” dressed in an incredible wig and patent leather miniskirt is forced to admit that any woman who is more or less savvy in matters of sex can give pleasure to her lover. However, the story of the robbery of a stranger is probably the most frightening episode, because this time the cruelty touched an innocent, trembling person who was not explained the rules of the game.

In one of her rare moments of reflection, McNeill contemplates the possibility that the affair will spiral ever more tightly, spiraling out of control until she feels the need to die and her lover has the same urgent need to kill her. But such a thought appears in her only when she sees her own blood during another act of love, and at that moment a certain instinct of self-preservation overcomes the power of desire, attraction and ends in hysteria. The worried lover (although we are left to imagine the extent of his anxiety) takes the narrator to the hospital. MacNeill clarifies, with characteristic reticence, that this will be followed (as the novel's finale) by "several months of treatment."

A sudden feeling of horror arises when you realize that the story of an extreme, pathological degree of passion seems to be a metaphor for the extreme to which any passion can go. And this is precisely the main achievement of the author of the book. The book is no less an astonishing clinical study than the memoir of a love affair it purports to be. An exciting discovery, dissolution in each other, the gradual disappearance of the outside world and, finally, a painful return to the usual state - this trajectory is familiar to everyone who is in the throes of a passionate romance, no matter how “normal” and “healthy” it may be.

Nine and a Half Weeks is as compelling as it was when it was first published three decades ago. It is defiantly frank and at the same time intended to warn. She tells the legend of how easily the intoxication of love and sex can change our understanding of ourselves and make us see in a completely different light the person we, in our naive and stupid assumptions, were.

Francine Prowse

He and I made love for the first time and he held my hands tightly above my head. I liked it. I liked him. He was gloomy, and it impressed me - it seemed romantic to me. He was cheerful, bright, and an interesting conversationalist; knew how to give me pleasure.

The second time he picked up my scarf, which I threw on the floor while undressing, smiled and said: “Can I blindfold you?” No one had blindfolded me in bed before and I liked it. I began to like him even more after the second night, and in the morning, while washing my face, I couldn’t help but smile: I had found an amazingly skillful lover.

The third time he stopped again and again when the moment separated me from orgasm. I was close to losing consciousness again, and I heard my own voice soaring above the bed and begging him to continue. He obeyed. I was starting to fall in love.

The fourth time, when I was already excited enough not to notice what was happening around me, he tied my hands with the same scarf. That morning he sent thirteen roses to my office.

It's Sunday, the end of May is approaching. In the afternoon we met with my friend, who quit the company where I work almost a year ago. To our mutual surprise, we see each other more often in recent months than when we worked together. She lives downtown and there is a street fair in the same area. We walk, stop near the stalls, talk, eat. She bought an old, very pretty silver pill box from a shop that sold old clothes, old books, random junk marked "antiques" and massive paintings of grieving women with cracked paint at the corners of their pink lips.

I'm trying to decide whether to walk half a block in the opposite direction to the counter where I found a lace shawl that my friend called a rag. “Really, you’re a rag,” I say loudly behind her, hoping to be heard above the noise of the crowd. “But imagine - if you wash it and mend it...” She looks over her shoulder, puts her hand to her ear, points to a woman in a huge man’s suit, who is furiously beating on the drums; rolls his eyes and turns away. “Wash and fix,” I shout. – Do you think it’s worth washing it? I think I’ll go back and buy it, it has potential...” “Then it’s better to come back,” says a voice in my ear, “and soon. Someone could have already bought it and washed it before your friend heard you in the noise.”

I quickly turn around and cast a dissatisfied glance at the person behind me, then again try to shout to my friend. But I was literally stuck. The crowd, already barely moving its legs, finally slowed down. Directly in front of me are children no older than six, all three of them with melted ice cream, the woman on the right is waving her drumsticks with an enthusiasm that is dangerous for me, and the guitarist has joined the drummer, and their listeners are frozen in admiration, paralyzed by the food, fresh air and good spirits. “This fair is the first of this season,” said a voice above my left ear. “Only here can you talk to strangers, otherwise why come here at all?” I still think I should go back and buy whatever it is.”