ACULTURAL LITERACY

For the past year or so, whenever I asked my good friend Currado Malaspina what he'd been up to I always received the same deflecting response:

Pas grand chose

(not too much).

Little did I know that the ever-enterprising Malaspina was consumed in the singular task of trying to write a best-seller.

In France there is no real market for the traditional American bodice ripper. In a country whose literary tradition includes highfalutin filth by the likes of Isadore Ducasse, Choderlos de Laclos and the Marquis du Sade, minor shades of gray have little or no appeal.

Currado Malaspina is determined to change all that.

With the recent publication of Les Petite Morceaux de Gratitude, (inexplicably the English language version will be called The Flame of Philomène) Currado is attempting to reconfigure centuries of French sexual mores.
  

In the US, Malaspina likes to observe, sex, like sports, is enjoyed more as a spectator than as a participant. Fantasy is preferred over achievement and fetishism is more of a fad than an inclination. Knowing that with globalization popular culture trends exclusively toward America he keyed his book with a more repressive bias anticipating a French turn toward puritanism.

Whether his bet pays off is of little consequence since he has optioned the book to Burbank-based Duchateau Productions with several big names already attaching themselves to the project.