Maybe its like how people called marijuana a "gateway drug", because after all of the breathless hype about how great it is and how it will immediately ruin you life, the people who tried it were mostly disappointed. If the authorities were so wrong about marijuana then heroin can't be that bad.

I am certainly not saying it’s actually obscene or indecent! My point was that the scandalous bit was really quite prominent at the time of publication and not buried in an 800-page novel.

Is this okay to open at work?

Very. I skimmed about halfway through and I guess the closest thing to eroticism that far in was a bit of blushing and some racy ankle descriptions.