Vince Pizarro’s: The End of Eroticism – A review of Catherine Millet’s ‘The Sexual Life of Catherine M”

“Ms. Millet spends a great deal of time describing the sheer physicality of sex, but through the lens of an erotically tense and desperate imagination: Her body is like a sexual filament, a carrier of electric pleasures, and in sex she sees a vast landscape of personal disintegration, an explosive escape from self that she greatly longs for. She does not apologize for this near-suicidal eroticism, and she is adamantly unashamed. The ultimate liquid animalism of sex, the sense of melting and heat, the stains and drips (which she describes with a particularly loving attention), are for her an integral part of the pleasure of the act: As a result, her descriptions either will strike you as being among the most effective erotic writing you have seen, or you will find them fabulously disgusting.”

http://observer.com/2002/06/the-end-of-eroticism-300000-french-readers-say-non/

3 Thoughts on “Vince Pizarro’s: The End of Eroticism – A review of Catherine Millet’s ‘The Sexual Life of Catherine M”

  1. janeway on December 4, 2012 at 1:03 pm said:

    I have to say I agree with him. If anything, it’s the antithesis of erotic.

  2. Admittedly, it left me cold. But, ironically, he hints at her unexplored sadness and I think that, had she examined that, it would have shifted her narrative into a different place.

  3. janeway on December 5, 2012 at 3:43 am said:

    Yes, I think so, too. In his review, I think this is the most accurate assessment of her almost furious pursuit of sex, that it is “an explosive escape from self that she greatly longs for.” Hard to say, though, whether she would even acknowledge the sadness, much less explore it.

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