Colette

I had known of Colette, do not ask how as I cannot recall, but only in prison did I read her. There was a strange collection of books floating around Fort Dix FCI. You will hear about them if I ever get my journals onto this blog. Let me suggest that you find her, and read her, too. 

Bookforum published Becca Rothfield's Supreme Courtesan  wich reviews Chéri and The End of Chéri BY COLETTE, TRANSLATED FROM FRENCH BY PAUL EPRILE. NEW YORK: NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS. I found Colette's style, technique, interesting, which gets no mention in this review. Ms. Rothfield takes on the substance of Colette's writings, which should not be underestimated. In the hopes of getting you to read her, consider the following:

But the feint of girlishness is not without its benefits, for the project and production of womanhood provides a rigorous education. To be the mistress of a younger man—to be a girl at all, but especially to be a girl forever—is indeed a profession. For once, Chéri recognizes the truth of the matter when he coldly appraises his young wife and reflects, unimpressed, that her natural beauty is “not fair.” The invocation that hovers in the air, implicit yet palpable, is of Léa, whose beauty is earned by her labors at the dressmaker’s and the makeup table. Colette is often described as an apolitical writer, and at least one critic has pronounced her a specialist in “amoral” female characters, but many of her most memorable protagonists embody a quiet and unostentatious morality: their virtues consist in their ruthless social intelligence and their quiet but heroic capacity for getting on with things. Léa is beautiful because she has the acumen and the courage to make herself so, even when every social force conspires to convince her that she is beyond beauty, beyond relevance. 

But if girlishness takes work—and refusing to be a girl takes not just work but daring—what does manliness take? Colette’s biographer, Judith Thurman, notes that the men in her subject’s fiction “tend to be shallow, yet however terribly they behave, she pities them as the weaker sex.” They are flabby, self-indulgent, and utterly without resilience. They never have to master the difficult art of self-curation, and as a result, they are stunted. The girl grows up while the man stays boyish forever. Claudine ripens into Léa, but Chéri simply rots.

See? There is something to be learned from Colette.

sch 12/6/22 

Thornfield Hall, a Book Blog published today Lolling in Sweatpants and Reading Colette’s “Cheri” which reviews the same edition. Two paragraphs I want to highlight:

I wonder, What are the publishers thinking? Why new translations of the Cheri books? They are my least favorite in Colette’s canon:  I would have lobbied for The Vagabond, her autobiographical novel about a traveling music-hall artist, and if the publisher wanted two books in one volume, well, there is a sequel, The Shackle. 

 Eprile’s translation of Cheri is jaunty and readable, yet I find this novel an uncomfortable read.  By the end, I was so tired of the finicky, coddled Cheri that I declined to read the sequel, The End of Cheri.

sch 12/12/2022