Joel Warner

An account of the composition and history of the autograph manuscript of the infamous Marquis de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom, The Curse of the Marquis de Sade is that kind of pop history which makes plain that its author is a journalist rather than a historian. Joel Warner writes with story in mind, not meaning, and his understanding of the history of the book is not deep. The fact that in the 21st century, the scroll was caught up in the Aristophil manuscript Ponzi scheme is interesting, but I'm not sure that the two strands of the book—the present scandals and the past writings/biography of de Sade—really played off one another in a way that was interesting.

It didn't help that I listened to this in audiobook format. Why, when recording a book which is largely about French people set in France, would you hire an audiobook narrator who clearly doesn't speak French? The repeated mispronunciations were blatant and jarring—though to be fair, there were also a number of such errors when it came to English words as well.… (meer)

How did the notorious Marquis de Sade go from a dangerous criminal to his works being sought by collectors and declared a part of French heritage? That's a question partially answered in this book (I don't know if it can be fully answered), which is centered around the history of Sade's famous manuscript of 120 Days of Sodom. Sade wrote the manuscript while imprisoned in the Bastille before the French Revolution and the manuscript had a tangled history before becoming a part of an investing scandal in contemporary France. I appreciated how the author intertwined the history of Sade, the manuscript, and the recent scandal, which made for engaging reading.… (meer)