The Sexual Life Of Catherine M. (2003) - Plot & Excerpts
I really liked this book, though I understand why people who picked it up expecting erotica of the Anais Nin sort, or people who expected the kind of self-involved confessional that often takes place in memoirs published in the US, would not have liked it. Millet writes about her very outsized sex life with a detachment that makes it sound like she is writing about someone else, reporting some kind of clinical research. I also found this detachment off-putting at first, but the more I read, the more I came to appreciate it, because I think anything else would have been a distraction from what appears to me to have been the point of the book: an exploration not so much of the meaning of sex, not an exposition--however erotically done--of her sexual exploits. In this, the book reminds of Sallie Teasdale's Talk Dirty To Me, which is one of the smartest books about sex I have ever read.I found myself underlining passages in Millet's text. Here are a few, taken at random as I page back through the book. They represent for me the fact that Millet's was an intelligence I really enjoyed following as it wended its way through the subject of sexPage 8: A dick that is constantly exposed demands to be looked at, it provokes sexual excitement with its smooth monolithic contours, whereas the foreskin that you can play back and forth, uncovering the glans like a great bubble forming on the surface of soapy water, elicits a more subtle sensuality, its suppleness spreading in waves to your own orifice.Page 27: There are major structural similarities between situations I have lived and those I have imagined, even though I have never actively chosen to reproduce the latter in my life, and the details of what I have lived had little part in nourishing my imaginings. Perhaps I should just assume that the fantasies forged in my earliest youth predisposed me to widely diverse experiences. Since I never felt ashamed of these fantasies, and I reworked and embellished them rather than trying to bury them, they offered not opposition to what was real but rather a sort of mesh through which real-life situations that other people might have found outrageous struck me as quite normal.Page 65: Those who obey social mores are probably better equipped to confront demonstrations of jealousy than those with a libertine philosophy that leaves them feeling helpless in the face of passion. A person can prove her extensive and sincere liberality by sharing the pleasure she takes with the person she most loves, only for it to be pierced, without any warning, by an exactly proportionate intolerance. Jealousy may have been bubbling within like a spring, and as the bubbles burst it might even have been giving a regular and subterranean form of irrigation to the garden of libido, until--suddenly--it formed a torrent and then the entire conscious mind was submerged by it, as has been described by many people.Page 70: It is just when I have found my bearings with the body, as it were, when the grain of the skin and its particular pigmentation have become familiar to me, or I have learned to adjust my own body to it, that my attention could focus on the person himself, often to form a sincere and lasting friendship.Page 92: There must be a fairly general intrinsic link between the idea of moving in space, of traveling, and the idea of fucking, otherwise the widespread expression "getting off" would not have been invented.Page 105: ...[N]atural spaces do not feed the same fantasies as urban spaces. Because the latter is by definition a social space, it is a territory in which we express a desire to transgress codes with out exhibitionist/voyeuristic impulses; it presupposes the presence of others, of fortuitous looks to penetrate an aura of intimacy that emanates from a partially naked body or from two bodies soldered together. Those same bodies out under the clouds, with only God as their witness, are looking for the opposite sensation: not to make others come into the pocket of air in which their rapid breathing mingles but, thanks to their Edenic isolation, to let their pleasure spread as far as the eye can see.Page 109: With the intransigence of the newly converted, I believed that fucking--and by that I mean fucking frequently and willingly whoever was (or were) the partner (or partners)--was a way of life. If not, if this thing was permitted only when certain conditions were met, at predetermined times, well then it was just a vacation from values that remained completely traditional.Page 112: Sex really answered a wider necessity: to carve a smooth path for myself in the world.Page 126: I leafed through the magazines on display, cautiously turned over the shrink-wrapped one. Isn't it wonderful how you can be aroused so freely, in full sight and full knowledge of all the other customers doing the same thing, even though each behaves as if he or she is searching through the display racks at the local newsstand? Isn't it admirable, the apparent detachment you have in public, contemplating pictures and objects that would certainly make you lose your composure at home? I liked to imagine myself in a mythical world where every shop offered that sort of merchandise, in among other goods, and where, with apparent nonchalance, you were gradually suffused by that warm feeling, absorbed in your perusal of organs reproduced in full color that perfectly depicted their moist surfaces, and you might shamelessly turn and how them to the person next to you. "Excuse me, could I borrow your paper?" "Oh, please do." Etc. The quiet unassuming blatancy that reigns in a sex shop spread to every aspect of social life.
"(dirty words) need less reciprocation than caresses do (and are) always more stereotyped, and perhaps some of their power derives from the very fact that they belong to the most immutable inheritance. So, in the end, even words--which should help to distinguish us from each other--serve to fuse us all together and to accelerate the annihilation of the senses that we are all trying to achieve in these moments." -page 33A thoughtful insight in a book that, so far, has been a stunningly fulsome litany of mainly gang-bang fantasies and real-life orgies. This is a sexual autiobiography, and I don't think it aspires to be much more than that. It is a confession, and very hot --if you like matter-of-fact graphic descriptions of debauchery drenched in ample bodily fluids. I must admit, I kind of do. Millet talks frankly and the tome is very much in the line of highly regarded French (autobiographical) erotica that reaches back from the Marquis de Sade to Pierre Louys and Louis Aragaon to Pauline Reage. Because she jumps into all this abruptly, we don't know very much about her, other than some short bits about her upbringing in a Catholic household. One wonders why she brings this up if she's not going to use it as a springboard from "sex is dirty" to the typical rebellion that follows that kind of oppression. But, anyway, there's nothing original in that either. Quite frankly, I just wanted a dirty book to read, and, so far, this one delivers.Reading on... OK, well I'm in the latter stages. I don't think it would be at all a slander to say that Catherine Millet is a complete slut and whore. I don't think she would disagree; in any case this book disallows her from denying it. There doesn't seem to have been anyone or anything she wouldn't do. Right now I'm reading about her finger fucking in the ass a garbage man with rotten teeth...Throughout most of this book, Millet the art critic tries to overlay some kind of pretentious aesthetics about space and spacial perception (eg. how she fits into or sees her surroundings,etc.) as she's going about her carnal biz. Some of it is cool but most of it contrived and boring. The autobiographical elements are not chronological, we find out more about her formative years much later in the book. I think a lot of people who checked out of this book early on and wonder about her attitudes and motivations might well have stuck with it to this point before rendering final judgment.FINAL: It took me a long time to read this. I engaged it in chunks and set it aside often. For every pretentious thing Millet has to say, she also says something fairly insightful. I found this a worthwhile read in the literature of sexuality. Near the end, Millet explains her distanced approach to seeing and conveying sexuality; something a lot readers seem to be complaining about without having stuck with it to see why she has that attitude. It does seem that Millet's best thoughts are reserved for the latter half of the book, by which time many are turned off and have bailed due to the carefree promiscuity fulsomely and repetitively detailed early on. That's too bad. I can't say that I like Millet after reading this; there's something ungenerous about her despite her frankness. But I am envious at all the fucking. She realizes that we don't have these bodies and this skin for very long, so why not enjoy it to the max? I can't argue with that line of pursuit.
What do You think about The Sexual Life Of Catherine M. (2003)?
In the beginning, I found it highly amusing that Catherine Millet spoke so candidly about very detailed, raunchy sexual escapades while still maintaining a very proper voice. In fact, when I began the story, I read it next next to a man who had his own book to read. Heavily into war and politics, his reading material was something about the situation of world affairs, but every time I looked over, I noticed that his eyes were on the pages of my book! It was unfortunate that Millet's voice so quickly lost its novelty. I tired of her overt, trashy fuck-speak half way through and did not bother finishing the book, which I don't believe actually contained a story, with the exception that she caught and spread an awful lot of infections and diseases during her time participating in indiscretionary orgies. I was expecting erotica, got and eyeful of filthy, gonzo 70's porn, instead. Just terrible.
—Valerie Baber
I needed to read something interesting and fluffy enough to read that could hold my interest while I'm back stage in the dressing room waiting for my cue to enter and throw up fake vomit on stage. So far, so good. This book can definitely underscore the screaming of obscenities and feigned sexual acts on stage. ...I like talking about sex. I like thinking about sex. I thought I was fairly free and adventurous when it came to sex. This book proved me wrong. I'm small potatoes. Little bitty potatoes. Plus, I just really can't get into anal all that much, Catherine. But you have fun with that. It's fascinating to hear how you co-ordinate all of your orifices... Fascinating.
—B
This book was a little too much for even me. I mean, I don't think the activities in this book are wrong, they just physically repulsed me at times. I've always thought myself as an open-minded person, especially sexually. But I'm having a hard time finishing this book because of how hard it is to read at times.I do have to say that I think this book is very eye-opening, and a good read. I would recommend it to someone who wants to read a different perspective. But I can't help feeling almost disgusted while reading some of the passages. Why can't I handle a book that is only trying to tell a sex-positive story? It bothers me that I am bothered by this book.
—Lindsay
