Just as the rise of the Kindle afforded contemporary readers a new, more private way to engage with erotic content (the best-selling Kindle e-book of all time remains Fifty Shades of Grey, after all), the distribution model of early romance paperbacks of the 1940s and ’50s allowed readers access to a genre, and a hobby, previously unavailable to them.
Within these new retail spaces, mass-market paperbacks were displayed in revolving wire racks with the cover facing outward, rather than the spine (as in a conventional book shop). This made them more akin to a display of candy bars than to a display of encyclopedias. As such, the cover became the de facto advertisement for a book: It had to quickly and efficiently communicate the content and tone of the novel to the consumer, and it had to be loud and eye-catching enough to compete with the books directly adjacent to it.
In early May 2009, 12 men arrived in La Rochelle on the west coast of France, carrying a few pairs of Speedos in their luggage. They had not come to swim but, as they liked to put it, to “fly”. Their sport, which involves diving from cliffs, buildings or bridges, always comes with an atmosphere of nervous excitement, but this time the stakes were higher than ever before. Cliff diving had long been at the obscure end of extreme sports, a pursuit for thrill-seekers with day jobs. Now, the energy drink company Red Bull was launching what it called a “cliff diving world series”, with eight events scheduled across the summer that would attract hundreds of thousands of spectators. Here was a chance at fame and, if not fortune, for the very best of the divers, a modest living.
I think altering your face is more acceptable if you’re honest with everyone but your significant other (they don’t need to know how the sauce is made). Lying about your age is old news. I recommend stating your age, then politely waiting for the chorus of, “Oh, you don’t look 38!” It’s far more humble, especially when followed by a hand wave while saying “Botox,” as if you’re talking about “this old thing?” At least, that’s how it works in my head.
The mid-1990s seems like a pretty good era in retrospect. America was in the middle of the longest period of economic growth in history. Global pandemics were the stuff of science fiction, the Great Depression was a history lesson, the threat of global nuclear war seemingly had collapsed along with the Berlin Wall, and the numbers 9/11 were still just for calling in an emergency.
On the other hand, the mid-1990s weren’t so great for some people. Monica Lewinsky, for instance, probably has had better decades. Likewise, Isabel, the protagonist and narrator of Daisy Alpert Florin’s debut novel, My Last Innocent Year, might not have had such a great decade. Since then, societal attitudes toward consent and sexual assault have improved, but Florin’s novel questions how far we’ve really come.