Review of "The Curse of the Marquis de Sade" by Joel Warner
Locked away in a tower in the Bastille in 1785, Donatien Alphonse François furiously scribbled 157,000 words on 33 sheets of paper in just 37 days, his handwriting so cribbed that it was barely intelligible to the naked eye.
By the time revolutionaries took over the infamous French prison four years later, François, better known as the Marquis de Sade, was imprisoned at a nearby mental hospital, but the pages he’d filled — stretching 40 feet when the paper was stitched together — remained behind. A citizen from Provence found the writing, a violently pornographic novel titled “120 Days of Sodom,” hidden at the Bastille and removed it, sparking an overlapping sequence of some of the most notable controversies and scandals in literary history.
“The Curse of the Marquis de Sade,” Joel Warner’s book on the surrounding dramas, is equal parts biography, history and true crime. It tracks not just the story of the novel and its notorious writer but the role it played in a massive French Ponzi scheme.
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Warner follows three timelines in alternating histories. The first depicts the life of François, a man whose cruelty inspired the word “sadism.” The second follows the text’s journey across Europe. And the third traces the rise and fall of Aristophil, a French company that purchased rare manuscripts and sold shares of them at inflated prices to an unsuspecting public.
Spanning hundreds of years and multiple countries, “The Curse of the Marquis de Sade” is impressive in scope. Warner admirably keeps all the storylines moving, and a list of characters included at the beginning of the book is a helpful reminder of who’s who in each timeline.
The strongest sections of the “The Curse of the Marquis de Sade” focus not on the titular nobleman but on the history of his most famous manuscript. It survived the storming of the Bastille and (several twists later) was smuggled out of Germany just before the Nazis took over.
Along the way, Warner highlights the influence “120 Days of Sodom” had on generations of scholars and artists. Iwan Bloch, an early sexologist who translated and published the outrageous novel for the first time in 1904, rose to prominence by railing against Germany’s somewhat liberal attitudes toward sex and homosexuality in the late 1800s and early 1900s. But Bloch underwent a transformation: “The seeds of those misgivings arose from, of all places, ‘120 Days of Sodom,’” Warner writes. “Sade’s recounting of myriad sexual activities at all levels of French society seemed to suggest that sex wasn’t just a matter of right or wrong, moral or depraved, but existed on a wide spectrum.” Bloch went on to collaborate closely with the gay rights pioneer Magnus Hirschfeld.
Later, “120 Days of Sodom” inspired noted filmmaker Luis Buñuel and artist Salvador Dali to create “L’Age d’Or,” a surrealist, satirical movie that condemned traditionalist values and the Catholic Church. Their funders were the Noailles, a wealthy couple who owned the infamous manuscript at the time. At a screening in December 1930, right-wing protesters set off smoke bombs, destroyed paintings by Dali and Joan Miró, and screamed “Death to Jews!” and “This will teach you there are some Christians left in France!”
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Fans of John Carreyrou’s “Bad Blood” or “Billion Dollar Loser” by Reeves Wiedeman will probably enjoy the final thread of “The Curse of the Marquis de Sade,” which documents how Gérard Lhéritier went from the son of a plumber to the “king of manuscripts,” only to be accused of running a Ponzi scheme. Driven by a belief that technology would drive up the value of handwritten items, Lhéritier began collecting manuscripts. He purchased letters from Albert Einstein and Napoleon, as well as a book by a 14-year-old Charlotte Brontë. Through his company, Aristophil, Lhéritier sold “shares” of these documents, promising investors huge returns. Authorities claim that his actions destabilized the global market for rare manuscripts and artificially drove up prices. In 2014, shortly after acquiring the crown jewel of his collection, none other than the original “120 Days of Sodom,” Lhéritier was arrested for allegedly running a Ponzi scheme. The case is still working its way through the French court system.
Warner excels at explaining Lhéritier’s complex — and possibly criminal — business operations in easy-to-understand language. And his depiction of France’s lively rare-manuscript community is a fascinating look at a largely hidden subculture.
“The Curse of the Marquis de Sade” at times feels disjointed and fragmented, with chapters jumping 100 years forward in the timeline and then back again. The shifting chronology creates a sense of mystery but can also make for a somewhat confusing reading experience. Still, given the breadth of the book’s subject matter, Warner admirably ties his three storylines together, showing how and why “120 Days of Sodom” became a holy grail for book collectors.
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Early in the book, Warner defines “bibliophiles” as people who view books not just as “conduits of information” but as “treasures in their own right.” Anyone who finds themselves identifying with that definition will want to give “The Curse of the Marquis de Sade” a try.
Elizabeth Held writes What To Read If, a weekly book recommendation newsletter.
The Curse of the Marquis de Sade
A Notorious Scoundrel, a Mythical Manuscript, and the Biggest Scandal in Literary History
By Joel Warner
Crown. 281 pp. $28.99
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