Tereska TorrèsCritiques

this wasn't well written - although it wasn't terrible either - but i wasn't all that interested in what she was writing about. and it was offensive the way she wrote about lesbians as not "real" women and not "normal." to be fair, this was 1950, about a period of time 10 or so years before. i'm just not sure what value there is in reading this now, except that this book launched the lesbian pulp genre, which had a positive effect and i'm sure served lesbians well in the 50's and 60's. from a purely story-based perspective, i felt like the author included the minutiae that were of no interest while leaving out all the possible really interesting stories.

this wasn't awful but it wasn't really for me.

from the translator's preface, by george cummings:
"The problems brought forward here are problems that must be recognized wherever women have to live together without normal emotional outlets." perhaps he's not referring to the lesbianism, but i'm not convinced.

as if lesbians can't have true or longterm relationships: "...most intensely she had known that exhausting love which dies of its own sterility between brief flashes of passion. It was a love that circled on itself, like a cat chasing its own tail."

an example of the language: "At Down Street there was never any question of a true Lesbian pursuing a normal woman."

and, ugh, the perpetuation of rape culture, as if kissing someone is consent for sex: "She wanted to cry and ask his forgiveness. He was so gentle and nice, and she was probably behaving very badly, letting him kiss her and then refusing to go further, like those frightful teasers..."

this made me laugh, though: "They all gasped. They didn't cry out, for they were after all British..."

it's the time period again, but i didn't like the way she referred to abortion: "...the doctor bending over her with the chloroform, she had realized that she was about to kill her child, and it was too late."

[what happened between ann and petit] "seemed to me the saddest of all the things I had heard about the unnatural lives of these women."½

If you've ever read a biography on Colette and said to yourself, "My, I wish someone would render her life in pulp fiction form," then your prayers have been answered.

By Cecile tells the story of a young girl plucked from her wartime country retreat by a much older man. She goes from petty provincial to hip Parisienne by the mere thrust of her husband's sexually enlightening hips. (So it goes in French literature, mais oui?) Of course he's charming, a womanizer, and a scoundrel. Of course she's bored and degraded in no time. To cure her boredom and his money woes, Cecile is encouraged (i.e. locked in a room) by her husband to recount her school days and put it onto paper. Add a touch of lesbian innuendo and what Cecile creates is a sensation strikingly Claudine-like in nature, right down to her husband's name being signed to the work.

What else can possibly follow but more depression and degradation? Well there is also our heroine's discovery of her literary merits independent of her husband's usurpation. It's a compelling enough story hampered only by the fact that the prose seems written in tar at certain points. (The first three pages are about the mutability of Cecile's eye color, the next two pages about slugs on lettuce leaves, and the next two pages we're back to eye color again...yeah, I think you get the idea.) There's enough marital angst and self-reflection to make for some decent feminist awakenings, and just enough suggested salaciousness to make this into a pulp. Descend to the depths of depravity and depression with Cecile, but don't worry about her too much--the kid is going to be all right.½

This book was definitely not as scandalous as I was expecting, but I'm sure it was shocking for the times. It's a story about love and war, and it did leave me a bit sad at the end. I enjoyed the author interview as it shed a lot of light into the characters.½

1525 The Converts, by Tereska Torres (read 4 July 1979) The author is the daughter of Marek Szivar, a Polish Jewish artist who became a Catholic but did not tell his Polish Jewish parents. He lived in Paris, and the author went home to Poland each summer. The book is a sensitive and beautiful autobiography covering the period up till the late 1940's. When the relatives in Poland found out Marek was a Catholic, they would have no more to do with him, so they did not visit again, and Tereska went to a convent school. She tells of their flight from France, and her joining the Free French Army, her marriage to Georges Torres, stepson of Leon Blum, and his death Oct 8, 1944. Very sad story at times--I enjoyed the reading very much.½

Ah, the pulp art cover featuring women in uniform (you know there will be lesbians!). Oh, the suggestive title that tells you that the women are going to be in close proximity (you know there will be action!). This is lesbian pulp fiction at its best. In fact, the only thing that Women's Barracks is missing in order to make it a quintessential lesbian pulp novel is, oddly enough, the pulp.

Though marketed as 25 cent throw-away drugstore literature, Women's Barracks is actually a well-written semi-autobiographical account of life in the Free French Army in London during World War II. Where you might expect to find bald-faced gratuity you instead get a thoughtful coming of age memoir peppered with women loving men and women loving each other. It's an account of women who arrive hopeful while some will leave with jaded feelings toward adulthood and humanity in general. In terms of literary quality it's only a few steps down from Francoise Mallet-Joris' The Illusionist and (on the other side of the Channel) Dorothy Strachey's Olivia. And it's quite a few steps above Colette. The only thing that makes this book lesbian pulp is the presence of an oddly unobtrusive narrator who only pokes her head out in order to pass pitying, moralizing reflections upon the lesbian characters.

This is good literature where you wouldn't expect to find it. Also be sure to check out the Joan Schenkar's interview with Torres included at the end of the novel.½

This was a surprisingly good read. Naturally, I was attracted by the title and the cover, but how was I to know that the story would be good as well? Lesbian pulp is usually one of those things that you skim to the juicy parts and then stop reading because the lesbian usually dies in the end. This book is different. It has some very realistic depictions of all of the main characters, who are all very different. I especially liked the conversation that the narrator has with Ann (the Lesbian) and the differences between women who are lesbians and those who sleep with women occasionally but do not consider themselves lebians. The book doesn't center completely around this idea of sexual identity, there is also a very strong story of the question of war. Most of the characters in the book are convinced that the end of World War II with put an end to war altogether. As the book ends, the optimism they have of post-WWII Europe has begun to wane.

Women's Barracks was the first lesbian themed pulp to hit the US. It was published in 1950. It was also the first pulp fiction that made it big. It sold over 2 million copies in the first 5 years. Wow.

Two pulp novels published together by the Quality Paperback Book Club: Women's Barracks by Tereska Torres (1950) purports to be "the frank autobiography of a French girl soldier," and tells of the sordid goings-on (lesbian and otherwise) in the women's barracks during WW II. Three Women by March Hastings (1958) is "An intimate picture of women in love -- with each other!" Loads of drama and an ending that's unhappy (for the dyed-in-the-wool lesbians) and happy (for the girl who wasn't REALLY a lesbian). Both are cheesy good fun and also historically interesting.