Commencements, Catherine Millet
Signed copies

In a café, a teenager observes from afar a group of young people absorbed in their discussion. She doesn't know yet that they are preparing a poetry review, but soon she will follow in their footsteps. First readings, first loves, discovery of aesthetic emotion, first writings.

Catherine Millet attempts to unravel the mysterious interweaving of chance, confused desires, and more or less well understood opportunities that lead a young girl with no baggage, no money, and little culture to leave her suburb for the Saint-Germain-des-Prés of artists and art galleries. The intimate life and the professional life inevitably mix.

The time is May 68 in Paris and the emergence of the SoHo district in New York, the appearance of an art that doesn't look like art, the birth of what we call today "contemporary art".

Beginnings is the story of a sentimental education that is also a sexual education and an intellectual training.

“Catherine Millet taught me the practice of critical writing. With "Commencements," I understood that its origin was the sexual relationship.” dixit Laurent Goumarre

Flammarion, 2022
text in French
21 x 14 cm
soft cover
320 pages
ISBN: 9782081486218