Those Sexy French Literary Ladies

Once upon a time, all lady authors had to have horse faces, gray bangs and legs shaped like claret bottles. And authors of erotic novels had to be rheumy-eyed fat men who lived in lonely hotel rooms, kept cats and probably drank a lot. If these notions were ever true, they aren't any longer--as browsers in a Paris bookstore recently discovered when they came across a new-model author in the flesh, Catherine de Premonville, dressed in nothing but the ballpoint pen with which she was autographing copies of her novels.

For living-color proof of this year's style in literary looks, playboy offers seven glimpses of what's best selling in France--six successful young novelists and a very feminine publisher. Each is individual: Catherine de Premonville has a second career as a popular singer; Catherine Breillat belongs to upper-class society; Michèl Matthys is married to a television and film actor; Régine Desforges is a new force in Paris publishing; Marie-Ange Agnèse writes both film scripts and novels; Béatrice Privat is the daughter of a well-known publisher; Virginie des Rieux divides her time among Paris, fashionable St.-Tropez and a mountain hideaway in the Maritime Alps. One thing they have in common is that their books are raking in francs, lire and Deutsche marks. The other things they have in common will be detected by alert readers.

Catherine Breillat

Excerpt from L'Homme Facile

"L crosses the street, thinking perhaps he may pass a girl worth his notice, and in that case he is quite ready to follow her. Sometimes it is in vain, because, having first caught a glance of her lovely profile, you then meet her face on. And never again can you recover just that first angle, the glimpse that caught her in the act of being beautiful and the object of the chase.... And then, after the night of drinking and lovemaking, they tell you their names--probably not their real names. Eva, Sybil, Sylvia, Karine, all those little one-night girls who try to look so innocent and who brag about their titles, their castles, their princes. But you find that it takes no attack on the chateau, no storming the drawbridge, no battering the gates--their portals are wide open for you to charge through...."

Virginie des Rieux

Excerpt from La Satyre

"One Wednesday afternoon, Monsieur Ballintré was working alone in the director's office over a confidential dossier while an early May storm swept over Mont Valerien outside his windows. Suddenly, Célina, dressed in gray and arrogant in her beauty, came into the room. She halted in surprise. Then she said, 'Ah, so you're here? I can't seem to close my window against the storm. I wonder if you'd look at it?'

"The clerk put his pen on the desk, patted his tightly buttoned vest, rose methodically and followed along to her room. Once there, he examined the stuck window hinge and said simply, 'Hammer.' By the time she had found it and brought it to him, he had removed his vest and shirt and was ready for labor. He had the torso of an athlete. She looked at him and laughed a little nervously.

"When he'd got the window shut, he rearranged the drapes, rubbed his hands together and turned to Célina. It was as if everything had been decided in advance. Not a word was spoken.... He began methodically to undress her, laying out her clothes piece by piece and even refolding her skirt three times to make it neat. Celina, stupefied and amused, soon found herself absolutely naked. He lifted her with care onto the bed, where she lay spread out in all her russet beauty. He was like a trained animal going through its routine. She wanted to laugh....

"Suddenly, he was on top of her, beginning his new work with the same methodical persistence. Her little cries and his heavy breathing mingled with the muffled sounds of rain and traffic on the street outside. Then she wrapped herself around him. She surrendered herself as never before in her life as a woman."

Catherine de Premonville

Excerpt from Jamais sans Jules

"I am wearing one of Antoine's blue-canvas shirts. Two buttons are missing and my breasts jut out. They look fragile and pale in contrast to my sun-tanned belly. Shuddering, I drop the shirt to the floor, and I realize that this shudder comes from the same bad conscience I felt as a 12-year-old when I first explored the lines of my body in the bathroom mirror. Then I was so troubled at the sight of my almost-hairless pubis that I would shave it in hopes of growing the kind of fleece I'd seen on the older girls at school. "Now, I steal into the bathroom, take Antoine's razor and shave my tawny hair, leaving just a vertical streak between my legs.... When I go into the bedroom, Jules is lying on the bed. I open the creaking closet door and put on my golden, high-heeled Cuban bedroom slippers. In the dressing table's ancient mirror, I can see myself again, and I turn the mirror so that it reflects the bed. Gently, I undress Jules. I kneel on top of him and lick his body. All the while, I continue to watch the reflected image of myself...."

Marie-Ange Agnèse

From the film scenario for Elle avec Elle

"Before they go out to dinner, Elizabeth invites Marie-Ange to bathe with her. What grace there is in the encounter of these two exquisite women--the ripe maturity of one and the budding promise of the other. Marie-Ange draws her friend to her, the girl's face against her breasts, the rest of her body abandoned to the penetrating caress of the water. After a few voluptuous movements, Elizabeth sighs and turns off the jade lamp. In the darkness, only the sound of the water is heard. Marie-Ange speaks, in a voice of fulfilled sensuality--but there is no reply. She reaches up to switch the lamp on. With horror, she sees that they are immersed in a bath of blood! A single razor blade floats on the surface and the inert body of Elizabeth is slumped in the water..."

Régine Desforges

She is one of the most recent sensations in French publishing, that traditional home of the spicy novel and the frank memoir. The first book on her firm's list (Irène, by an anonymous author) shocked even the French police into raiding the bookstores. Within a year, she had become one of the best-known Paris publishers of avant-garde and erotic works.

In a Plexus magazine interview, Mme. Desforges says of herself: "I publish a book for its power to disturb; books are my passion. Pornography is the poor man's eroticism.... Prostitution is one of my phantasms.... Every housewife should have the experience of prostituting herself. By that she would acquire a physical knowledge of men and a knowledge of how to use her body. Pleasure is an extraordinary gift...."

Michèl Matthys

Excerpt from Le Coeur à la Renverse

"Sexually satisfied women are supposed to be more tyrannical toward their lovers than unsatisfied women. This seems simple logic to me. The fulfilled ones have something to defend; the empty ones have everything to gain. Eroticism is only a way of consoling oneself. I conceal my disappointment as best I can. Bander, get your orgasm and shut up!' I tell myself when I really have the blues. Deep inside, I rebel through eroticism, almost without being aware of what I am doing. Eroticism is a sign of failure, not in the act of sex but in the thought.... I love to be loved as a child, because childhood is the only reasonable state.... Tell me, Salvatore, why is the world so unjust? When we do not have the gift to become real adults, why does it deny us the right to return to our own world?"

Béatrice Privat

Excerpt from Les Vergers de Février

"Just Mauduit walked into the theater and stopped near Ange Mansfeld, who was tuning his harp and preparing to practice. Ange felt the gaze of the famous man upon him and he felt both pride and a furious exhilaration. He concealed this excitement as he kept his eyes down and ran his hands over the strings, yet in his heart a horse galloped in an April dawn along the seashore. As his own fingers touched the strings, he was conscious of Just's gaze, like spectral fingers, running over his skin. Ange felt himself growing upward, getting as tall as the world, his head reaching the stars. He held the wind in his left hand, the sun in his right. Music always upset him the way hashish did.... As for Just, he was quite oblivious of the boy's mood. Just believed neither in his own fame nor in his own powers of seduction--or at least it never occurred to him to think about such things..."