She said it, not me.
Sunday August 26, 2001
In the context of discussing such naughty French narratives as Story of O and Histoire de l’Oeil, Susan Sontag said, “And books like those of Bataille could not have been written except for that agonized reappraisal of the nature of literature which has been preoccupying literary Europe for more than half a century; but lacking that context, they must prove almost unassimilable for English and American readers—except as ‘mere’ pornography, inexplicably fancy trash.”
So she said it before I was born. It’s still as good an explanation as any.