Catherine Millet (born 1948)
Related: French erotica - French literature - erotic fiction - publishing
Biography
Catherine Millet (born 1948) is a French art critic, curator, and founder and editor of the magazine Art Press, which focuses on modern art.
She is best known, however, as the author of the 2002 memoir The Sexual Life of Catherine M.; the book details her sexual history, from childhood masturbation to an adult fascination with group sex. The book was reviewed by Edmund White as "the most explicit book about sex ever written by a woman".
She is married to poet and novelist Jacques Henric, and has been in a monogamous relationship since 1994. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_Millet [Jun 2005]
The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2002) - Catherine Millet
The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2002) - Catherine Millet [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
From Publishers Weekly
Millet, art critic and editor of Art Press, has become a literary sensation in France with the publication of this graphic memoir of some 30 years of her sexual adventures. Millet's "gift for observation" and her "solid superego" are as useful in her career as an art critic as they are in her erotic explorations: her ability to concentrate and observe puts her inside "other people's skins." Comparisons have been made to The Story Of O, but Millet is more in the tradition of Jean Genet and Violette Leduc, whose descriptions of their sexual encounters were not meant to titillate so much as to explore the meaning of the erotic. Millet's "quest for the sexual grail" takes her to group orgies, gang bangs in French parks and other serial sex escapades. Before long, the sex begins to seem utterly routine, in spite of the elaborate staging. Millet and her readers are then free to consider more closely some questions she raises: how oral sex compares to vaginal intercourse; why sex in disgusting circumstances is not about "self-abasement," but raising oneself "above all prejudice"; or why solitary sex is more pleasurable for her than sex with a partner. Toward the end of this curiously graceful memoir, Millet comes close to explaining her need for all this sex: only by sloughing off the "mechanical body" she'd been born with could she experience actual sexual pleasure. While women readers will find much of interest, male readers may have to overcome a certain emperor's new clothes-type discomfort, as they realize that Millet may know more about the male body than they do. --Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to the Hardcover edition. via Amazon.com
From Library Journal
In this steamy work, a best seller throughout Europe, the editor of France's Art Press shatters gender assumptions by detailing her rollicking sex life.
bukkake
Some women have gone public regarding their sexual enjoyment of bukkake; one prominent example is Catherine Millet. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bukkake [Jun 2005]
See also: erotic fiction - group