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The
erotic madame
Peter
Guttridge investigates the furore caused by Catherine
Millet's book of frank sexual revelations
 How
to explain the furore that greeted the publication in
France last year of Catherine Millet's memoir La Vie Sexuelle
de Catherine M? In it the author - a highly esteemed art
critic and curator, editor of Art Press and part of the
Paris intelligentsia - describes in scrupulous detail
a lifetime of sexual encounters with a large variety of
men. They are named and nameless, often faceless, usually
in groups, frequently in public.
So
far, so explicit. After all, in French literature, frankness
about sexuality and a liberal attitude to sexual mores
dates back at least as far as the 18th century and Rousseau's
autobiographical Confessions. (Fellow-philosopher Denis
Diderot's The Indiscreet Jewels, published in 1748, featured
female genitalia discussing sexual pleasure.)
In
the 20th century such frankness made possible the publication
of literary classics as James Joyce's Ulysses, Nabokov's
Lolita and a range of Henry Miller's work, all unpublishable
in English-speaking countries because of their sexual
explicitness.
So
why has Millet's memoir made elements of the ostentatiously
unshockable French intelligentsia apoplectic (at the same
time as the book itself has become a bestseller)? Author
Michel Schneider sniffed: "Mme Millet cannot imagine
that those upon whom she inflicts these marvellous revelations
don't care at all about them."
The
Le Monde critic wrote: "Catherine Millet patiently
performs a blow job on her readers (and cunnilingus on
her female readers?) with the cold professionalism of
a whore and the calculating fervour of an engineer from
the highways department."
Jean-Jacques
Pauvert, author of erotic bestseller The Story of O, declared
that her memoir was devoid of eroticism: "In this
day and age, despite appearances, there is very little
eroticism - maybe even none at all." But maybe the
male critics had a problem with Millet simply because
a woman has dared to write something so explicit when
most pornography is phallocentric. Or maybe it's because
she sees no need for remorse.
Her
book is now published in translation in England by Serpent's
Tail and she will explain herself for the first time here
during the Brighton Festival. She will be in conversation
with gay writing icon Edmund White, who lived for many
years in Paris and has been pretty explicit about sex
himself.
In
interview, one of the intriguing things about Millet is
the way she elides her transition from growing up in a
conventional Catholic home to Parisian swinger. As a teenager
she was scandalised by a Hemingway novel in which a woman
had several lovers. Then she had her first sexual experience,
left the suburbs, abandoned God - and learned to disassociate
sex from sentiment.
The
next thing you know, she is living in Paris in the late
Sixties, and meeting "men who like to make love in
groups and who like to watch their partners with other
men". At first she felt awkward, until she realised
that: "My true clothing was my nudity, which protected
me". Soon after she was lying on a table in the back
rooms of bars for two or three hours: "Always the
same configuration: hands reached all over my body…
20 or so men took part in this relay during the evening."
And
this with the consent of her husband, Jacques Henric.
He is very much a part of the memoir. Millet lists the
locations and positions she has made love to him. (Locations
include cupboards, park benches, kitchen tables, baths
and a dentist's waiting room.) In fact Henric has published
his own book about his wife - Legendes de Catherine M
- which features photos of his wife naked and semi-naked.
But
if this sounds like some weird kind of exhibitionism,
some Big Brother 15 minutes of fame, think again. Millet
is the author of respected monographs on art, has a background
in structuralism and psychoanalysis and believes the purpose
of art is to unsettle and disgust.
So
her sexual explicitness has an intellectual function yet.
She is identified with a trend of French women intellectuals
who use sex as the central theme of works that are detached
and analytical. ('Clinical' is the word most often used
to describe her work.) They include Catherine Breillat,
director of Romance, and Virginie Despentes, author of
Baise-Moi (Fuck Me).
She
may just be a woman trying to appropriate pornography
from men. Certainly she dislikes the French literary eroticism
industry, as epitomised by The Story of O author Pauvert.
"I
believe that I keep my dignity better when I spread my
legs," Millet says. "They want to lock us up
in a ghetto of eroticism on the pretext that that is pretty
- which shows that they think women's sex is ugly. That's
what they have been trying to do down the centuries, Women
have a capacity for pleasure ('jouissance') far superior
to men, and that is why they put us on a leash - to hide
their shame."
Catherine
Millet is at the Pavilion Theatre, May 19, 6pm. Tickets
£7.
For more event details see www.brighton-festival.org.uk
or pick up a copy of the Festival brochure or this month's
The Insight magazine
copyright New Insight 2002
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