When in 1999 Péter Aradi's interview with Catherine Millet appeared in a very prominent Hungarian literary periodical, Élet és irodalom, she was almost entirely unknown for Hungarian readers. Leading a French-English bilingual art-periodical, as an art historian, Catherine Millet participated on a conference organized by the French Institution in Budapest. Though the basic issue of the meeting was how do various periodicals impress the intellectual mentality, in this interview she speaks with a lot more pleasure about her own periodical, Art Press. Speaking about what kind of art-tendencies does the journal follow with extreme attention, she emphasizes that it is not easy to determine an unambiguous orientation and to find the real art by getting away from the pressure of topicalities at all, because "there are so many things going on in the artistic life of America and Western-Europe, that you simply want to give an account of everything- (Aradi). Not even two years after the appearance of this interview, Catherine Millet becomes world-famous with her book, titled The Sexual Life of Catherine M, and so does she become a part of the topicalities as well. .
But really, what do we first think about when we notice a new book in a bookstore with this kind of title? The readers, even if it is out of their range of interests, know all about the high distribution of the very famous products of so-called sex and the city generation. It is also a fact that bestsellers, whose popularity probably lies in the characters and world concept that seem to resemble ours, are all being republished again and again. So buying this book, we might expect another story of a feminist woman, who thinks we are really interested in her private life.
However, one who starts to read the book in this attitude will surely be disappointed, just like the one who puts it into the category of "foolish novels of dull ladies- (Pécsi).
