Status Updates From Secrets of the Flesh: A Lif...

I'm utterly fascinated by Colette de Jouvenel and I'm excited to finally get my hands on the book about her that came out in October!

It's crazy how nothing will inspire Colette to be interested in politics, not even Goudeket's arrest by the Nazis.

YOOOOOOO - I never cease to be amused by Martha Gellhorn's description of Colette: "She was a terrible woman. Absolute utter hell [....] [Bertrand de Jouvenel] never understood when he was in the presence of evil." (411)

Poor Bel-Gazou...

Today was the day I learned Rachilde, in private, called Colette "the worst piece of trash" she'd ever known. Can't say she's wrong really.

Thurman further confirms my theory that Colette's characters are portrayed as birds of prey who regenerate themselves at the expense of the weaker man. However, in becoming all powerful, these women often lose their traditional female form, much like Léa from La fin de Chéri.

It's very strange to see how many people Colette can apparently fall in love with at the same time.

I'm actually really interested in Colette's journalism career. Thurman keeps making vague references to her articles for Le Matin and Le Journal, and now I want to read them.

People really dance around Colette's internalized misogyny and anti-Semitism, but then you're forced to confront her writing this: "Falconetti is a pain in the ass [....] No makeup, a horrible old neck [....] She must be a sordid old jewess who never washes" (Thurman 319). Wow.

Colette really seduced her stepson like that, huh?

Apparently, Colette is one of the rare writers that never rebelled against the horror of WWI in her reportage. She always presents a candy-perfect nationalist dream of a united France. What a disgrace.

Colette almost became a victim of a "crime of passion" herself when she ran off with Jouvenel and his wife, menacingly nicknamed the Panther, came after her with a revolver! Damn!

Colette is so relentlessly self-interested and sociopathic adjacent that I'm in awe of it, really.

Jesus Christ, Colette accused Willy of giving his mistress a fatal dose of stolen morphine in 1909!!

531 pg 3/10

Thurman suggests that Colette, who met her husband when she was TEN, secretly enjoyed and consented to a skewed power dynamic Colette herself avowed was abusive. She says he raped her, gave her an STI, forced her to sexually and socially entertain his mistresses in HER OWN BED, but Thurman implies she got a Sadean pleasure out of it!? Jesus fucking Christ. People need to get off their romanesque bullshit.

Man, the Dreyfus affair really revealed the ugly side of France.