COMING SOON! IN THE CORPSE! FROM HARIETTE SUROVELL! FROM NEW YORK! CONSTIPATED COLETTE: THE NEED FOR A FLUSH!

Read the notice below, direct from Hariette:
I've been out-of-town since 7/10, but I'm back in Gentrificationland. Been here lately? The hood of funky dives, cool cafes and George-Therese Dickenson's crib (did I tell you that my landlord reports that she permanently joined a nudist's colony?) now looks like Lex in the 40's or anywhere on the Upper East Side. Sky-scrapery buildings and bourgeois restaurants, all are meant to cater to NYU trustfunders and H-wood celebs in their stretch limos. Will they re-name "The Bowery" something like "Cooper Alley"? And where exactly have all the Bowery Bums gone?

My brain is scheming away re. hopefully my next Corpse piece...in which I barbeque 3, 3, 3 sacred cows simultaneously. It will be titled "Constipated Colette: The Need for a Flush." Based on "New Yorker" contributer and "feminist" Judith Thurman's biography, "Colette: The Secrets of the Flesh" I will examine the total lack of disconnect exhibited by Colette, an anti-Semite as a fetus, who blithely and sincerely penned Nazi propaganda for Reich magazines as her third husband, wearing a yellow star, was sent to a labour camp. Her hype has endured long enough and must end immediately. She who wrote only about love, sex, and nature (tediously at that) was a complete fraud as a sensualist (my careful reading of this bio as well as Colette's overrated oeuvre proves that she never even experienced the Big O) while other residents of Gay Paree like Natalie Barney kept stables filled with showgirls & actresses who populated her nightly orgies, during which Natalie would get it on...and on...and on...and on! In fact, the bizarrely be-ribboned and otherwise dolled-up French poodle, so offensive to the eye of anyone who thinks dogs should roll in mud and eat Alpo will learn that during La Belle Epoque, this adorned animal was meant to be a signal to those trolling Les Tuileries, its secret code meaning, "I may look like a dog, but my mistress aime lechant la chatte." Barney, so full of beans, piss, vinegar and come-juice was the polar opposite of the dreary Colette, who was obnoxious to everyone in her life, most blatantly her neglected daughter, and most inexplicably her elderly mother, Sidonie, who was perhaps the only mother in history to offer utterly unappreciated maternal advice like, "Why don't you make your latest lover (your 24 yr. old stepson) jealous by pretending that your ex (a tuxedo-wearing trans) just sent you an enamored telegram?"

Why do I call the recipient of Le Prix Goncourt constipated? At the beginning of the book, Thurman tells us how this same Sidonie, so hip in vicarious matters of the flesh, was equally rigid in matters of the flush. Therefore, just like Edie Sedgwick, Colette was harshly toilet-trained at 6 mos. A lifetime that begins comme ca always spirals into sadism, narcissism and self-loathing and will never have a happy ending (or even middle), but Thurman ignores any Freudian implications, including the incident of Colette's wet-nurse, a hired village slave, sadistically weaning her unsuspecting charge (Colette writes, "She told me I nursed like an adult, standing up" which is the only credible thing Colette ever wrote) by smearing moutarde all over thoe pretty pink nipples to which the incipient dykelet had grown so attached, and afterwards, as la pauvre petite reeled from shock, shame, and the taste of curry and turmeric, laughed at her hysterically along with the stable boy she was shtupping. As far as I was concerned, Thurman could have ended the book there, but, on and on she wrote, compiling petty details without ever arriving at conclusions, leaving the reader to wonder how Colette, who spouts anti-Semitic remarks more or less hourly (that's when she's not otherwise engaged in committing them to her literature, i.e., in a story I read last night, "The Kepi": "She handled her pearls like an old Jewess.") could actually fall in love with and marry a Jew.

Why in need of "a flush"? Well, after just one of dozens of especially cruel romantic rejections, Colette, a "proud gourmand and glutton" "consoles herself with platters and platters of seafood." We're talking LOTS of seafood here, A. Half the Atlantic Ocean, in fact, and yet, what happens to it afterwards? Scatology is the secret thread that runs throughout this "National Book Award" finalist tome.

Perhaps the only aspect of the book more offensive than its half-assed scholarship and constant exposure to Colette's unpleasant personality is the Q & A section at the back, conducted between Ms. Thurman and the Self-Appointed Queen of the Feminists, Erica Jong. I've always wondered how Jong came to be considered part of the literary community. The success of "Fear of Flying" hinged (no pun...) on what many considered to be a racy, and I deem an irrational turn-of-phrase, "a zipless fuck." How can one fuck without unzipping zippers? If the book's success had been based on the phrase, "an anonymous fuck", " a spontaneous fuck", or any other such permutation, I could fathom why it became a best-seller among lame-ass readers, but to catapult Jong into the literary pantheon?! Time for her to zip it up, Baby.

Anyway, during this Q&A, the 2 literary feminists pretend to discuss their literary feminist heroine, but what actually is of paramount concern to both of them is Colette's "obesity", the result of her consuming not just les fruits des mer, mais le beurre, du creme, des tartes, les cassoulets, etc. etc. etc. etc. Jong is shocked (or more likely she herself would like to enjoy similar repasts and is curious re. Colette's secret. Jong did, after all, name her first book of poetry "Fruits and Vegetables") that Colette could still attract les hommes, femmes et garcons while weighing in at what Jong and Thurman estimate to be 185 lbs.

Thurman's response to these, um, weighty matters?

Verbatim, Big A:

"I know! Like all other women, when I'm not thin, I'm SUICIDAL."

Suicidal?

All three need a skewering, to be followed by a disembowelling. First I must begin my research into that fun-loving partygirl Natalie Barney, whose bad poetry can be overlooked, given her greater contributions, like her vraie gourmandise--the eating of 18 pussies in one single evening.

Well, Darlin', love the current Corpse. I am proud to believe that I single-handedly inspired the note to contributors stating that no changes will be permitted once a piece has been submitted.

Wishing you cool breezes and hot chochas,

Aunt Har

More of Aunt MataHariette on her website: http://www.matahariette.com/