After the success of her explicit memoir, Catherine Millet examines the nature of jealousy.

Jealousy is about sex, not love.
At least that’s what Catherine Millet, a French intellectual who has succeeded in merging her private sexuality with her public life, argues in her next autobiography, which will land on bookshelves this fall.
At first glance she comes across as a distinguished intellectual, a reputation built upon her founding of France’s leading art review, Art Press. In a dark pantsuit and pearl earrings, she doesn’t look at all like the writer of arguably the most sexually explicit memoir ever written by a woman.
“Some people, when they’re ready to go in a new direction, take a trip around the world,” Millet, who recently turned 60, explained. “I wrote a book about my sex life.”
The Sexual Life of Catherine M., published in 2001, describes in graphic detail her prolific sexual life: from casual affairs and tenderly recounted scenes with men she loved dearly, to orgies both casual and elite with anonymous partners too numerous to count. The language leaves little to the imagination.
The memoir shocked many readers, but because of the controversy, it became a big hit in France. Two years later the English-language version made it onto the New York Times bestseller list.
“I went from being Madame Art to Madame Sex,” she laughed. “I thought The Sexual Life of Catherine M. would be a digression from my career. Instead, it became a big part of it.”
Her sexual confessions made her into a modern day Anaïs Nin, with the popularity of an advice columnist. Readers reached out to her, asking for personal advice about their love lives. She became a hero to many intellectuals for her brutal self-honesty, and traveled widely to talk about her book and, more importantly, her life. At the same time, she continued her career as an art critic and publisher of Art Press.
Millet maintains that the two threads of her life reinforce each other. “There are parallels between the anxiety I felt before long group sexual encounters and the anxiety I feel just before giving a lecture,” Millet explained. “My talents as an art critic—being observant, being sensitive to structure and to concrete situations, precision in the description of what I have seen and experienced—help me to write.”
Seven years removed from the publication of Sexual Life, Millet has again called upon those talents; she has recently finished a reply to readers’ demands for a sequel. Entitled Le Jour de Souffrance (The Day of Suffering), her latest effort answers the question that she is most constantly asked: how can someone be completely sexually free and not consumed by jealousy?
“I was moderately jealous my whole life except for one very precise period that lasted several years, where I was absolutely obsessed with jealousy and out of control,” Millet said. “It made me do things I was ashamed of later: spy, digging around to find out what was going on when I wasn’t there. It took me some time to be ready to write that down and go public with it. People want to know how I could love these men and give them the same freedom that I was taking.”
Le Jour de Souffrance reveals the emotional rollercoaster Millet glossed over in The Sexual Life of Catherine M., in which she has presented her escapades in an emotionally disconnected way.
“In the end, I found out that jealousy isn’t about loving someone as much as it is the sublimation of sexual desire.”

Watch Catherine Millet speak about writing and jealousy.