Foolestroupe,

In my younger days I encountered a paperback edition of "The Pearl" in a second-hand bookstore. And it wasn't by Steinbeck. I bought it and read it. It was a fascinating read, more for the Victorian English than the content--which was quite tame by today's standards. (The maid, coachmen, mistress and master of the manor or estate or what ever the heck they were in besides each other; myriad combinations of the above in permutations imaginable only by mathemeticians or people given to that sort of thing.) I though at the time that this sorta stuff only happened in the movies. Anyway, I was surprised to see that it was a serialized group of 'cliff hangers' based on sex--fashioned after the work of Dickens in books like "Great Expectations". I didn't get through the entire book because frankly it was boring to read about it all. Pornography has changed somewhat, but I find it is more about the subjugation of women today than it was then. That might be of interest to a sociologist. I wrote a paper on that for a course in university some twenty years ago.

That's probably more than you wanted to know, but be aware that I got a chuckle from your remark--if indeed it was directed to me.

Bruce M