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Loading... The Pure and the Impureby Colette
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. 3.5 stars. This is sort of a collection of essays. Unlike much of Colette's work, it's almost unemotional and detached. I also forgot how very binary she was in her thinking about genders. There is a lot of emphasis on the "incompleteness" of women lovers. It is focused on the queer communities but not flattering. I picked up this used copy from the Book Burrow because I'd enjoyed Cheri and The Last of Cheri, and I'd gotten more curious about Colette herself after watching the trailer for her new biopic. I was expecting fiction, but instead got some blend of memoir/journalistic essays or a thinly fictionalized version of the same. Here Colette (or "Colette?") sets as her subject love/romance/sex and the ways they are intwined with each other -- particularly among those whose romantic/sex lives deviated from the norms of the time. There are peeks into lesbian enclaves, communities of gay men, a conversation with a Don Juan type, a long piece on the Ladies of Llangollen. There is a thrill to get a glimpse at some of the sorts of lives that history has deliberately hidden from us -- but still Colette herself is hardly an impartial observer. She reveals much of herself along the way -- her own opinions on love, sex, and gender -- some of which are radical and liberating and some which a modern reader can't help wondering to what extent were limited by the views of the time. How much of her observations of lesbians, let's say -- is true to the nature of women and/or lesbians, and how much an artifact of how lesbians had to hide themselves and dissemble -- and how that must have shaped their lives even when in the limited communities where they were able to be "free" with themselves? In short, Colette as a narrator is in turns charming, radically open-minded, empathetic to the point of excusing what seems like very bad behavior, but then sometimes surprisingly conservative. She is resolutely herself -- shaped by her own time in and among the communities she reveals here. And that is deeply intriguing. I have no clue why Colette considered this her best work. These random musings on love, drawn mostly from people Colette met in social circles in Paris (or opium dens), were provocative for 1932 because they openly acknowledged homosexuality and androgyny, and that speaks in the book’s favor. However, the book is poorly written, rambling in some places and too vague in others, maybe because Colette was trying to preserve the privacy of her ‘sources’, or because she was too close to the details, knowing them so well she forgot that others may not follow along with how she was telling the story. It may also have been because she was past her prime when she significantly revised the text in 1941. Of course, the fact that she was doing this in occupied Paris, in a climate that was not exactly open to alternative lifestyles, and right before her Jewish husband was put in a concentration camp by the Nazis, is mind-blowing. In the book she often draws conclusions based on her knowledge collected over the years and her sophistication, but unfortunately, few of these rang true for me. There are a few bright spots, such as the story of the two wellborn Welsh girls who ran away in 1778 to live a long and happy life together (“In short, what did they want? Almost nothing. Everything. They wanted to live together.”), but it’s far too uneven and otherwise cheerless to recommend. no reviews | add a review
Belongs to Publisher SeriesIs contained inLes heures longues by Colette (indirect) Dans la foule by Colette (indirect) Notable Lists
"This guided tour of the erotic nether-world with which Colette was so intimately acquainted begins in the darkness and languor of a fashionable opium den, and continues as a series of unforgettable encounters with men and, especially, women whose lives have been improbably and yet permanently transfigured by the power of desire. Lucid and lyrical, The Pure and the Impure stands out as one of modern literature's subtlest reckonings not only with the varieties of sexual experience, but with the unlikely nature of love."--Jacket. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)843.912Literature French French fiction Modern Period 20th Century 1900-1945LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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some beautiful ideas and i appreciate colettes honesty ( )