Catherine Millet at the Sydney Writers Festival

Linda Jarvin, Catherine Millet and a french interpreter at the Sydney Writers Festival.

At the Sydney writers festival this year, Catherine Millet discusses her recent book Jealousy and reveals that in order to free herself from a terrible period of her life that she calls The Crises, she wrote the original Secret Life of Catherine M in order to free herself from a terrible jail cell she'd created for herself.

At the festival, she likened what she went through to a social experiment encased in art, observing her life in the context of libertine while at the same time making something so universal extremely personal.

This is the talent of the artist. To take the universal and make it personal so that we are able to make it universal again is something Millet knows she is capable of. In Jealousy, you realise that is how she sees herself, as the artist playing out a role for herself, everyone and herself.

None of this is intentional, as she makes very clear, and yet there is a kind of fatalism about it, as if it is what we choose to do with all that makes us who we are that allows fate to exist in the first place.

Catherine describes her situation as her physical body hurtling through space searching for a hard surface to crash into. And yet there is no hard surface to crash into and there never will be. It is the anxiety that she believes artists feel as they allow themselves to "go down the rabbit hole."

There are so many things to talk about with this book. Shame, humiliation, hysteria, possession, masturbation, voyeurism, fear, self loathing and indulgence are some of the topics visited here in interesting ways. Mostly I was startled by Catherine's maturity and her sophistication. She is oh so very French.

Barbra

www.barbranovac.com

Catherine Millet - Jealousy

The question is: Does a libertine have the right to be jealous?

Catherine has a relationship with Jacques based on the theories of the libertine. That is, a don't ask don't tell aspect to their relationship that allows each to live their private sexual life without having to share it with the other. Their partnership is based on other loves and considerations. The sexuality of each belongs to the self.

When Catherine Millet wrote about her sexual life in The Sexual Life of Catherine M, a tale of hysteria so desperate drive her, that writing the book was the only source of hope and freedom for her. You see Catherine had gotten wind of her husbands "other" life, and although she had her own "secrets" she (to her own shame) pursued his, snooped around, and came up with the goods.

What ensued was three years of what Millet calls The Crises in her life. She experienced the most profound jealousy, imaging herself in her husbands shoes as he took other women, fantasising about his lovers, masturbating to his infidelities.

However, and Catherine spoke very eloquently of this at the Sydney Writers Festival this year, because of her libertine beliefs, she had no way of blaming Jacques. He was living according to a code of ethics the two had agreed to together. In other words, he had done nothing wrong. Catherine had not been wronged. There was no place to locate her jealousy besides inside herself.

Thus begins a three year period of The Crises when Catherine perpetually tortured and humiliated herself through the curse of jealousy.

Fortunately for us, Catherine is an amazing writer. She has written the book out for us and we can experience every second along with Catherine of the horror of emotional self abuse.

Catherine was not being blamed for her lifestyle. She was not being punished for loving a libertine. Catherine was doing something to herself, and getting a twisted and perverse pleasure out of it.



Barbra

www.barbranovac.com

The Sexual Life of Catherine M

I saw Catherine Millet at the Writers’ festival last week.

I should confess right up front that I am a huge fan and that the next three posts will be all about her and some of the things she said at the festival.

For those of you who don’t like her - I apologise and promise in a few days all will be back to normal.

For those of you who don't know how she is, she is a French art critic / analyst who is very famous for her influence on the modern art world in France.

However, and here comes the part where I fell in love with her, in 2002 she wrote a memoir called The Sexual Life of Catherine M. This is a frank, tell all description of her love life as a libertine. Catherine describes a libertine as a person who has no belief in God and therefore they create their own morals. For many libertines, this plays out in their sexual life. For Catherine, it meant taking many lovers, sometimes many at one time.

At the time this book was written, Catherine was fifty-four years old, writing about a time in her history when she sourced her self esteem from being sexually brave. I was a woman of thirty-five years old experimenting heavily with her own sexuality. I was engaged in the BDSM lifestyle and learning a great deal about myself and others in the process.

In 2005 Catherine came to the Sydney writers festival to talk about her book and about how difficult it was to write such a frank account. She was very honest in saying two things prevailed. 1) it was an easy book to write because there is a subliminal admiration for women who are courageous about this sort of thing. 2) Everyone was interested in her and in the sex, rather than in the quality of the writing.

Catherine has said that in order to write about her own experiences, she had to step out of herself and see herself as object. She looked at herself as she would a work of art, and used the art critics voice to tell her story. The way the book was written is a significant part of why this book is so shocking. It is written without emotion. Catherine is very detached and separate to the woman described in the book, and yet one can't help feeling Catherine may have actually have been like that, observing herself in the act of living, taking mental notes as she watched herself have sex with so many different people.

However, what I learnt at the 2010 Sydney Writers festival is that all was not well with Catherine later on and that leads us to tomorrows post.

Barbra

http://www.barbranovac.com/

Fast Review - Twenties Girl by Sophie Kinsella

Twenties Girl by Sophie Kinsella



I really enjoyed this book. It's my frist Sophie kinsella book and I think she does a wonderful job. All the little twists and tuirns ultimate lead you to where you expected to go but not in the way you expected to get there. Toward the end of the novel, I couldn't put it down. Lots of fun!

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