Arts
Madam Sex
This book is presently displayed in the window of a small bookstore, Spine and Crown, on Pine Street.
This is the author of the art book, Contemporary Art in France:
Catherine Millet is also the author of a pornographic memoir called The Sexual Life of Catherine M., which was published in 2002 and reviewed in this paper by the Marxist philosopher Nic Veroli. Here is the opening paragraph of that review, “Sex Boredom, Death: Looking For the French Fuck”:
Between the moment you are ejected from your mother’s womb, screaming and covered in blood, and the moment you die, groaning and on your way back to the primal muck, you have to find some way of passing the time. That is the human condition and there is no haggling with it. Some people get into politics or art or they go bowling. Catherine Millet picked sex as her existential hobby and that is what she writes about in her memoir, The Sexual Life of Catherine M.
I read the book about the time the review was published and found it amazing, not because of the amount of sex Millet had experienced in her life but because her writing made all of that sex sound boring. When she sucks a penis it’s with the feeling of a cold sea creature; she simply does it because the thing is in front of her face, at a party or in a park. This is her rhythm: She meets a man, sucks/fucks him, has a few dull sensations, finishes, and moves on to the next encounter with no hope or desire that it will be better than the previous encounter, or other encounters in her near and distant past. One wonders if a woman who has almost no passion when it comes to writing about sex can have any passion when it comes to writing about art. And writing without passion is not writing at all.
I wanted to have a quick look at the inside of Contemporary Art in France, but the closed store imprisoned the book. Nevertheless, Ellen Forney did a nice illustration for Veroli’s review of Millet’s dry sex book.
Comments (21)
lol, shades of the big lebowski here;
She meets a man, sucks/fucks him, has a few dull sensations, finishes, and moves on to the next encounter with no hope or desire that it improves upon the previous encounter, or other encounters in her near and distant past.
Posted by Bellevue Ave | May 31, 2007 1:21 PMWhen will you learn that naked = NSFW? It doesn't take a rocket scientist...
Posted by Emily | May 31, 2007 1:24 PMi read it. i love the idea of the book. but it was a dull read nonetheless.
Posted by s. | May 31, 2007 1:25 PMSooooo, Emily if things like this make you uncomfortable while at work, mayhaps you should be doing something other than wasting my time while here, eh?
Posted by Emily's Boss | May 31, 2007 2:18 PMSTFU Emily's boss. It's not a matter of Emily or me being uncomfortable, it's that we'll get in *trouble*, or more likely, the website will get banned.
But whatever, this is my last appeal to please use caution re. NSFW content. It makes *me* sound like the prude, instead of a serious SLOG lover who just WORKS AT A BANK. From now on I'll just read it at home.
Posted by sniggles | May 31, 2007 2:23 PMMan, you guys work for some serious tight-asses. It's not like there are gaping buttholes on display here or anything...there's an illustration and a picture of a marble statue.
Even at a bank, will you really get in trouble for that? What a drag.
Posted by Matthew | May 31, 2007 2:59 PMYou'd get in trouble at a lot of work places for that. All it takes is someone looking over your shoulder then calling HR. Sounds outrageous, but it's true.
Posted by Jason Josephes | May 31, 2007 3:41 PMI'd love to hear Millet's critics share with us the title of the last "riveting" sexually explicit nonfiction they've read.
Posted by abracapocus | May 31, 2007 6:12 PMWait I'm confused here. Is the getting in trouble part due to the fact that you're looking at images of naked people on company time, or rather that you're goofing off by surfing the internet on company time?
Posted by COMTE | June 1, 2007 12:51 AMWhat I want to know is: Is it the drawing of the naked woman, or the Greek statue?
Posted by Gloria | June 2, 2007 8:10 AMkmuef jurh pfkbtwjeq mjirs upavzn suehk uldtvowsr
Posted by dmqotkz pbdm | June 2, 2007 10:42 AMkmuef jurh pfkbtwjeq mjirs upavzn suehk uldtvowsr
Posted by dmqotkz pbdm | June 2, 2007 10:43 AMkmuef jurh pfkbtwjeq mjirs upavzn suehk uldtvowsr
Posted by dmqotkz pbdm | June 2, 2007 10:44 AMgkpjn bndateckx dfhixzk xbopu nexjro ygpnqoz xonv http://www.ecounmfj.fzmqvphcs.com
Posted by ekrsc kyucof | June 2, 2007 10:45 AMGoeie dag!
Posted by Chris_ml | June 11, 2007 2:32 PMCheck this out!
*
Goeie dag!
Posted by Chris_ml | June 11, 2007 2:32 PMCheck this out!
*
Posted by Elena_uf | June 11, 2007 2:33 PMAt last...
*
Posted by Elena_uf | June 11, 2007 2:33 PMAt last...
*
MSN I NIIPET
Posted by Bill | June 12, 2007 11:48 AMMSN
MSN I NIIPET
Posted by Bill | June 12, 2007 11:48 AMMSN
MSN I NIIPET
Posted by Bill | June 12, 2007 11:48 AMMSN
Comments Closed
In order to combat spam, we are no longer accepting comments on this post (or any post more than 14 days old).