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Dewey Decimal Number: 306.7082 EAN: 9781852428112 ISBN: 0802117163 Label: Grove Press Manufacturer: Grove Press Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 209 Publication Date: 2002-05 Publisher: Grove Press Studio: Grove Press Editorial Review: Book Description: Called 'a fantastic breakthrough into the dark content of female desire' (France-Soir), The Sexual Life of Catherine M. was the literary success of the year in France, selling over 300,000 copies and becoming the most controversial book on sexuality since The Story of O. Catherine Millet, the prominent editor of Art Press, has led an extraordinarily active and free sexual life -- from alfresco encounters in Italy to a gang bang on the edge of the Bois du Boulogne to a high-class orgy at a chichi Parisian restaurant. A graphic account of a life of physical gratification, the book is also a relentlessly honest look at the consequences of sex stripped of sentiment -- including the joys and sorrows of her open marriage -- and a completely fearless unmasking of the fallacies we cling to and the often shocking, sometimes disturbing truths of female sexuality. The French press was equally admiring and appalled by Millet's daring, but Le Nouvel Observateur certainly spoke for them all when it wrote, 'Sex is this woman's continent, which she explores tirelessly. No one has ever described it like this.' Now American audiences will have the opportunity to take home Catherine M. 'This is the most explicit book about sex ever written by a woman.' -- Edmund White '[Her] aloof, gracefully crystalline style is as elegant as any French pornography since Sade.' -- Francine du Plessix Gray, Vogue '[A] stylistic tour de force recounting three decades of sexual exploits ... This book's pleasures are first and foremost literary.' -- Saul Anton, Bookforum '[Millet] relates her sexual life without trembling, and allows us to share her pleasures.' -- Daniel Bougnoux, Le Monde Related Items:      see moreAverage Rating:
 Rating:  - Worth a readI thought this was an interesting read, though it gets a little dry and to be honest I read it in parts. The narrative structure is loose and that makes it a little bit difficult to read, as she just tends to skip around and some of the wording is hard to wade through, but I think that has a lot to do with the translation and not how she writes. I hope. I took a star off for the poor editing. I liked her cool impersonal style. She doesn't proselytize and pretty much tells it like it is giving a rundown on the men she was with and some of the ways. I don't believe she was trying to be titillating and that shows. I also think that's what a lot of people expected and are put off by the book cause it runs a little too sterile for their tastes. I do think she gave a pretty good explanation for her philosophical approach to sex, contrary to what other reviewers here stated. I just think they are used to the typical angst towards sex and sexuality that you find a lot in American books. None of that here and how refreshing it is! There is a lot of repetition though and I have to warn you that it does get a little boring reading about one orgy after another done in such a detached style. But again I loved the unapologetic, free approach to men and her sexuality that she had and her philosophy towards sex was interesting in and of itself. Rating:  - More than maybe you want to know--but then again maybe not...Book-length accounts of one's real-life sexual exploits always run the risk of being insipid, monotonous, and just plain boring. After all, how many times can you describe the act circumscribed by the limitations of a non-fictional human body, especially when you confine yourself primarily to describing yourself as the focal point of the action. For the most part, Catherine Millet avoids the peril of this sort of writing not so much by the variety of her sexual proclivities--aside from a stupendous and indiscriminate promiscuity bordering, if not altogether crossing over into nymphomania, she's pretty vanilla--as by the super-lucid intellectual precision with which she analyses the physical, mental, and emotional ramifications of her sexuality. Despite its subject, this is not a titillating read; the matter-of-fact nature of the writing matches what strikes me as the author's straightforward, almost typically "masculine" approach to getting it on. ((Millet is, by her own admission, relatively uninterested in seduction and prefers to move straight to the main event.)) That being so, one might suppose that, if not erotic, the primary value of this book would reside in how it illuminates some general truths about human sexuality--in this case, female sexuality. But how much can a woman--or a human being, for that matter--who lays on a car hood in an empty parking lot in the middle of the night and allows herself to be taken by ten, twenty, thirty, she loses track of the number, of guys have in common with even the most uncommon of common women? As a work of human sexual archaeology, *The Sexual Life of Catherine M.* thus fails to enlighten us very much about human sexuality in general; it becomes, instead, a sort of believe-it-or-not account of what might reasonably be called one particular woman's sexual pathology. And yet, one might still, and easily, find something of oneself in these pages for Millet is so brutally, clinically honest and so unsparing of detail that she doesn't flinch from even the most hushed-over aspects of monkeying around. There are also passages and reflections of a philosophical depth and subtlety, such as when Millet writes of wishing she could wake in a strange bed every morning to revel in the novelty of a new perspective on life. Behind Millet's compulsive and voracious carnal appetite, there is a drive to experience everything--and everyone--a desire as admirable as it is unfulfillable given the limitations of our mortal flesh. Reflections such as these raise *The Sexual Life of Catherine M.* above the level of the merely lurid into the realm of soul-searching mediation on life in general and our finitude in the face of infinity. While many will no doubt file this book under "Way Too Much Information," Millet is actually talking about a good deal more than what she seems to be at first glance--she is using sexuality the way the artists she chronicles as an art critic use art: as a means to understand self and world. We don't complain, but rather admire, an artist who takes risks and their art to extremes: perhaps we should likewise admire a woman like Millet. *The Sexual Life of Catherine M.* is probably one of those books that someone had to write. If nothing else, Millet has done us this service. Rating: - An honest account of a woman's self realization in pleasureCatherine Millet's sexual development autobiography is a must-read for all women in the United States who've ever had "dirty thoughts" but failed to act on them for fear of society's labels. This is Millet's true life account of her self discovery, pains and many pleasures that may not ring kosher with US audiences, but should be read by all women as an honest account of a woman's sexual desires and dreams. Tp hell with chopra and "venus and mars" books! This is the real deal! Vive La France!!! Rating: - an ocular spectaclethis book is divided into 4 sections. the first section, entitled numbers,describes the numerous, numberless, men with whom catherine has sexual activities in groups, small groups at first, later orgies, the largest about 150 participants. the aggregates done with she moves on to her second section, space, sexual activities outdoors, often while positioned to scan bucolic landscapes. millet writes of pictorial works and how they are 'said to inhabit the cusp between imaginary space and the space we live in, be they barnett newman's vast colored expanses (newman himself said: i declare space), the radiant blues in the work of yves klein (who called himself the 'painter of space') or even alain jacquet's topological surfaces and objects which juxtapose paradoxical abysses. what characterizes these works is not the fact that they open space up, but that they both open and seal it again'. from her inner and outer open space, she proceeds to her third section, confined space. confined space isn't just a room or an elevator or a place, confined space, for millet, is having sexual activities while ill, sexual activities in dirty places, with unclean persons, and acts considered taboo, a few of them, but not many, she would not do. in confined space, jacques, catherine's husband, makes his entrance with his camera, and it's back to open spaces where he frames her in the confined space framed by the camera. in the concluding section, details, millet reflects on forms of objectivism, with observations of her shyness, rigidity after orgasm, her body as willing surface as represented in memory and filmed by a video camera. so there it is, her sexual life through number to canvas to camera to video camera. these days her sexual experiences are reflected by a steady stream of women attracted, for whatever reasons, to act in porn, and women who use online chatrooms. with objectification there is no voice. that's the difference with millet, she voices her interior world, her mental activity, as well as describing in detail, sexual acts and the female orgasm. a good book, a very good book. Rating:  - 'I wouldn't flirt. I would just be available......I made a decision to make myself available at all times, because it made me feel free." Catherine Millet One of my amazon.com friends whose opinion I value a lot, says in his review on Catherine Millet's memoir that if it "is truly as bad as others suggest in their negative reviews below, why then did it sell over 300,000 copies when it was first published in France?" Well, I have a counter question, how many of 300,000 returned it back? I first learned about "The Sexual Life of Catherine M." from a review in "Entertainment Weekly" back in 2002 and I instantly became very interested in reading Millet's book. It was written by obviously intelligent educated woman, editor of the French art magazine Art Press by day and insatiable Messalina who doesn't make any secret of her 30 years history of orgy-loving by night. I was not afraid of the multiple (I just could not guess how multiple) explicit sexual encounters and their shocking descriptions. I am an adult and I can accept and appreciate any honest, open, no matter how shocking and controversial book (or movie) as long as it is well written, interesting to me, touches me deeply, even makes me angry but certainly makes me feel, makes me to identify with its author, to understand at least their motivations...Well, I felt nothing of these when I began reading my copy of English translation of the memoir that I bought from my local book store. I became bored very soon. The endless line of faceless men having sex with the strangely passive author, or rather her alter ego, Catherine M. in all possible and impossible Paris locations for hours and hours; one all-night party after another and another and yet another simply could not hold my interest for 209 pages of the rather short book and I never finished it. I returned it to the store and received the full refund. I would not say that "The Sexual Life of Catherine M." is the worst book ever written and I am sure it's got the loyal fans and admirers but I did not enjoy it and at some point I realized that I was wasting my time. I expect from a memoir something more than monotonous descriptions of endless anonymous sex acts with every man who happened just pass by Mlle. M. The book has been compared often to "The Story of O" by Pauline Reage and I disagree with it. "The Story of O" which was written by a French mistress for her married lover is the love letter and the statement on how far a woman in love was ready to go for her beloved. "The Story of O" is sad and beautiful, erotic and strangely innocent, cruel and elegiac. It is a fine work of literature which "The Sexual Life of Catherine M." in my opinion is not. |
