We are always touting our beautiful books--so important and culturally significant!--but this summer we are working with a class called "Baaaaad French" and another one called "Bad Art!" We have so much to offer it is dizzying! We have books that have been banned for daring to suggest the earth is not the center of the universe; others that challenged the social mores of the day to such an extent that they were deemed pornography; others that were cheaply printed for a mass market that the cultural elite suspected of being, well, too damn dumb to deserve to read; and many books with lots of naughty bits.
We have so much that not everything we selected could make the final cut to be used in class. Case in point,
Did She Fall?, by Dartmouth's own Thorne Smith. The book was marketed to titillate. Its racy pulp cover shows our heroine, Emily-Jane, practically falling out of her dress engaged in a passionate kiss, but the blurbs on the back were what caught our eye: "She could have given lessons to Lolita," and "When she was bad, she was very, very bad, and when she was good, she was luscious until somebody killer her, or Did She Fall?"
That one didn't make it into the class, but you'll be happy to know that Lolita did!
To find out if bad, bad Emily-Jane fell, ask for Alumni S662dia.
