The Sexual Life of Catherine Millet

I can think of no other book so smartly written and probing of the human sexual condition than The Sexual Life of Catherine M. The author of this personal memoir, Catherine Millet, sought throughout her adult life to become indifferent to her every orifice in ways most of us would find entirely unacceptable behavior for a woman of her standing and intelligence. The fact that she is a respected art critic who publishes a high brow art publication lends credence for me to everything she has to say. She is not in any way a caricature of her environment. She is constantly involved in the comings and goings of the fluctuating circumstances surrounding her. Always susceptible to the sexual escapades devised by others for no other reason than to thoroughly prove her committed indifference to what the rest of the sexually repressed world likes to believe is normal. Catherine Millet has rocked my world.

Catherine suggests the reader may deduce from her behavior an "inclination for self-abasement, mixed with the perverse intention of dragging others into that same abasement." But it was a freedom she termed "extraordinary" that motivated her behavior. "To fuck above and beyond any sense of disgust was not just a way of lowering yourself, it was, in a diametrically opposite move, to raise yourself above all prejudice."

Through her book Catherine Millet is teaching us about our own sexuality by revealing her sexual self shamelessly to the hyper-critical world we live in. This book is a completely mesmerizing memoir written wonderfully in beautifully explicit language. There is no other female writer I have ever known who could write as honestly as Catherine Millet. There is absolutely no male writer who could even come close to what she has accomplished on these pages.