Reading (Story of) O

Emmanuelle Waeckerlé

The famous erotic novel Story of O began as a series of love letters written by Anne Cécile Desclos to her lover Jean Paulhan. It was first published in French in 1954, under the pen name Pauline Réage, and the official English translation appeared in 1965.

Fifty years later Reading (Story of) O reprints, in parallel, both English and French versions in a graphic reworking of the original story. In doing so Emmanuelle Waeckerlé attempts to navigate a passage through this difficult literary work and its notorious yet little known history. She offers a few simple strategies and choices for reading—alone or with others, in private or to an audience. Waeckerlé includes three further texts: (Reading) O, (Story of) A, and (Story of) E, describing a path as if through her own story, from A to O to E to you… does a story ever end?