“Life of a prostitute”, by Marie-Thérèse, preface by Alexandre Dupouy, La Manufacture de livres, “Beaux livres”, 160 p., €35.
On the cover, on the red banner, six words from Simone de Beauvoir: “An amazing piece of raw literature”. Inside, a woman seated in a car, her penis gaping, a man whipped, close-up blowjobs: even before landing on the text, the eye is struck by some fifty pornographic shots from the 1930s and 1940.
Literature, obscenity? The new edition of prostitute life alone sums up the exceptional and tormented double life of this story, initially presented as a sociological, even feminist document, very quickly snapped up by pornography publishers, redacted by some, spiced up by others, multiple condemned, sold under the cloak, translated into several languages, to become today a hybrid object, straddling sex and text, a curiosity whose power is still intact. “I do not believe that another writing was published by Sartre and Beauvoir, then sold in sex shops”smiles Pierre Fourniaud, the boss of La Manufacture de livres editions, who hopes to seduce lovers of vintage eroticism.
The beginning of this extraordinary editorial adventure is told in the last pages by the author herself, a certain Marie-Thérèse whose name, Cointre, ended up being disclosed following several decades. In 1946, while the young woman was working in a Parisian brothel but was trying to leave the profession, a painter neighbor made her read Henry Miller. “It was all regarding ass, jerks, shit and so on, she remembers. I said to him: “If this is literature, I will give you miles!…” The man takes her at her word: “Try it, we’ll see. » He pays 50 francs a page.
The thousand and one customer requests
Marie-Thérèse sets to work. In fine handwriting with uncertain spelling, she recounts her life, not every day joyful: “I got married at 16 to a man thirteen years older than me. My husband was only thinking regarding having kids for me. » Everything goes by without preparation or taboo: the children who arrive quickly, her job as a nurse, the discovery of her taste for women, the break with her husband, her entry into prostitution in 1939, thanks to a “real bledard, kind cow, but pretty boy”the thousand and one requests from clients, his abortions, his departure for Germany in 1942, the « Fritz » parading in her bed, her return to Paris, her work as a waitress for the Gestapo…
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