The 120 Days of Sodom

One feels like if the Marquis de Sade, were to be locked in a bathroom, he would spend his time writing reams of filthy porn on toilet paper scrolls.

Locked up he was, but within the less inglorious confines of the Bastille, under a Royal order initiated by his mother-in-law. De Sade was stuck in the famous prison for 37 days and deprived of writing materials--because any form of writing from an enemy of the state would have been deemed incendiary--de Sade wrote furiously and continuously in tiny scripts on both sides of a sheaf of narrow paper. According to the movie Quills, a beautiful prison laundress smuggles in writing quills, ink and paper to the Marquis.

The 37 days of uninterrupted writing produced the controversial book 120 Days of Sodom, that tells the story of four "libertines" who lock themselves up in a remote Medieval castle with forty six victims, comprised of a motley of boys, girls and virginal women. They are accompanied by a handful of experienced prostitutes who arouse the hosts with their outlandish stories. The hosts in turn seduce their guests into performing grotesque types of sexual acts with them.

The 120 Days of Sodom is a potpourri of what came to be patented as "sadism" thereafter. Despite attempts to elevate the book into the category of "erotica," the book remains steadfastly un erotic according to experts. The maker himself described it as "the most impure tale that has ever been told since our world began." 

De Sade's objective was to get back at the regime with extreme verbal debauchery--to shock and awe, as it were, his oppressors before they put him to death.

The Bibliotheque Nationale de France is currently negotiating a price of up to five million dollars to acquire the manuscript and preserve it as French national heritage.