Venus in Furs and Selected Letters

Sadly, I think high expectations spoiled the experience. And when you consider having already read the better part of Chuck Palahniuk's collected stories and experiencing the internet as a teenager, Venus in Furs tends to lose it shock value.

—-
“I now had the leisure to muse about the riddle of human existence, and about its greatest riddle of all-woman.”

This book reads more like a philosophical treatise on Sacher-Masoch's type of love than it does a novel. By today's standards, it is actually extremely chaste.

I found it very romantic and sweet, except for the fact that Sacher-Masoch puts his main character through horrible ordeals, usually involving whippings of some kind.

Also interesting is the fact that the story closely parallels incidents from his life with his wife, Wanda.