We hadn?t yet calmed down from an attack of vampires. Now a dominant-submissive affair has got us exited again. At least Stephenie Meyer?s Twilight quartet received big, mainstream play only after Hollywood got on top of translating what was initially a cult phenomenon. That was consolation for critics deeply offended by the popularity of a heroine who cried: ?When you loved the one who was killing you, it left you no options. How could you run, how could you fight, when doing so would hurt that beloved one? If your life was all you had to give your beloved, how could you not give it? If it was someone you truly loved?? Blame could be deflected unto the power of what Adorno and Horkheimer designated a gargantuan ?culture industry?, where escape led us back to ?the same old drudgery?. Questionable as this argument is, even it is not easily available with EL James?s Fifty Shades of Grey, which its publishers say has become the best-selling book in the UK since records began, and which is expected to turn in similar results from other markets as well. And all of this long before the books have been spun up by Hollywood, although reports of Kristen Stewart, Mila Kunis, Emma Watson, Angelina Jolie (too old!) Robert Pattinson, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, etc being interested have kept fans stimulated.

Here, the journey from a self-published cipher last summer to the large imprint now being popularised by Random House has been propelled by word-of-mouth motility, blog drives, and e-book downloads. It may be part of a larger trend of today?s digital universe offering new publication opportunities for an exponentially expanding crowd of writers, but most are just left sifting sand even as the likes of James and Amanda Hocking hit gold. Daily, there are growing reports of libraries where Fifty Shades of Grey has more holds than anyone can remember for any earlier titles, of hotels where it is replacing the traditional Gideon Bibles, or flights that are offering audio versions to their passengers. This is an amazing accomplishment for the mother of two teen-aged sons, formerly leading a dreary executive life and actually named Erika Leonard, who was just one among many generating X-rated online homages to Twilight three years ago. She used to feel guilty about it. Now that she can move on to feeling pride, millions of readers are supposed to feel guilty about the pleasures she fictionalised into being. Or so some experts say.

But like a lot of smart writing, we see here that many of the criticisms are anticipated and countered within the text itself. How could any self-respecting, self-reliant, educated heroine fall for a hero whose ego is centred around a Red Room of Pain ? la Bluebeard? Well, Anastasia Steele is very resistant to Christian Grey?s proposition, which is what allows their story to run into three novels. Sometimes, her subconscious (yes, it talks to her, weird is matched with weird) wears Edvard Munch?s Scream face. Sometimes, it cowers away from Grey, much like Lyra Belacqua?s d?mon when it?s faced by Gobblers. But his appetite for bondage is met with her epicurean expertise in literary romance, especially its heroines. Remember Elizabeth Bennett: ?There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.? Well, Anastasia has that Steele. Remember Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, whose name meant ?the breaker of chains?. Well, our Anastasia takes control of her chains and his chains. Read the gamesmanship play out till the end, through crops, cable ties and cuffs, and you?ll find the conventional ending of the romance genre, which tends to outsell mysteries and sci-fi combined. Marriage, happily ever after, babies?the whole cake. There is icing too. Anastasia?s publishing company (he brought it for her) now has an author on the New York Times best-sellers list, and the e-book side of her business has exploded! For those who have a problem with this generic course, take it up with the ghosts of Jane Austen and Nora Ephron.

Or reread Stuart Hall: The dog in the film can bark but it cannot bite! Reality exists outside language. Although it is constantly mediated by and through language, the key lies in the articulation of language on real relations and conditions. Or read Lev Grossman writing about genre fiction vs literary novels in Time magazine: Fiction is never real, but feelings always are. ?What?s germane are the ideas and emotions that those stories create in those who read them.? No formula has yet been devised to justly generalise the ideas and emotions of the more than 40 million people who have read the Fifty Shades trilogy globally, including around 180,000 in India?including single men, single women, happily married folks, folks trapped in harrowing relationships, contented workers and dejected ones, young adults and retirees. There is no universal truth applicable even to Austenians, for example. A groovy heterogeneity received PD James?s Death Comes to Pemberley or Gurinder Chadha?s Bride and Prejudice. Find me fifty feminists who describe feminism identically, and I will know I am dreaming (or writing bad theory). For Nadezhda Tolokonnikova of Russia?s anti-establishment punk band Pussy Riot, ?Feminism begins in the third grade, when you realise that all textbooks and clever books are written by boys for boys.? There are feminists who never made it to the third grade. Women who write doctoral dissertations on why they aren?t feminists. There are men who embrace the label, to be hip or because they care or their mother did, etc. It?s impossible to generalise the reception of James?s work, the meaning people make of it.

The relativity conundrum effects the question of whether James is pornographic as well. US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart was most honest in 1964 when, asked to define pornography, he said: ?I know it when I see it.? No wonder reactions have ranged across a) hymns to how James has made women?s porn less of a taboo (with Kindle?s help), and b) supplications for less banal scenarios. Helpfully adding to the volatile mix is the underlining of the dom-sub side of modern pop ranging from Britney Spears? Toxic and Nelly Furtado?s Try to Enigma?s Principles of Lust.

What?s your general attitude to receiving pain? Were you physically punished as a child? So you have no sphere of reference at all? Christian quizzes, to get Anastasia into the Red Room of Pain, akin to the torture chambers of the Spanish Inquisition. But we are talking fantasy here, whose logic is unravelled on the psychoanalytic couch rather than in the sociologist?s spreadsheet. Still, Grey is fifty shades of disturbed, beaten and cigarette-burned as a baby, by his mother?s pimp, who also locked Grey with her dead body for days; seduced into abusive habits by his step-mother?s friend when he was just a troubled teenager. This is pretty melodramatic. So is the Bachianas Brasileiras aria he likes. Or his favourite film The Piano, which the great Roger Ebert succinctly describes as a story of ?shyness, repression and loneliness?, where the heroine communicates only through music, and hasn?t spoken since she was six: ?Nobody knows why, least of all myself. This is not the sound of my voice; it is the sound of my mind.? Before Christian coaxes Anastasia to take pleasure in pain, his pain must be put on technicolour display. Then, Donne?s sun will shine on them together. Sopranic shyness, repression and loneliness will ascend into melodious harmony.

The fetishisation of pain is placed in its literary-historical context. One is reminded of the fiery purgatory of Jane Eyre. ?Am I hideous, Jane? Very, sir: you always were, you know.? ?Jane, be still; don?t struggle so like a wild, frantic bird, that is rending its own plumage in its desperation.? The pull of Christian is no more to be resisted than that of Mr Rochester, one?s scars as seductive as the other?s, a Mother Teresa complex luring women in both cases. But the atmosphere is thinner here, the dialogue increasingly losing its edge over Fifty Shades Darker and the characters exhausted by Fifty Shades Freed. It?s difficult to imagine James being read 20 years from now let alone 200. But literary history is full of surprises. Like the recent resuscitation of JRR Tolkein from cult shelves, which were at least more venerable than the ones to which University dons would have relegated Charles Dickens? work in his own times.

Final point to ponder is made by Grossman: ?We expect literary revolutions to come from above, from the literary end of the spectrum ?the difficult, the avant-garde, the high-end, the densely written. But I don?t think that?s what?s going on. Instead we?re getting a revolution from below, coming up from the supermarket aisles. Genre fiction is the technology that will disrupt the literary novel as we know it.?