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She Wanted to Be Seen as a Writer. The World Saw Her as a Sex Worker

Nelly Arcan turned her years as an escort into powerful fiction, but the persona trapped her for life

On September 16, 2007, Nelly Arcan appeared on Tout le monde en parle, a popular weekly panel show in Quebec with a viewership of 2 million people. The thirty-four-year-old writer was promoting her third book, Breakneck. Arcan had shot out of left field six years prior, when—in a turn of events every writer dreams about—the major French publisher Editions du Seuil read the manuscript she had mailed across the Atlantic in a brown paper envelope.

Her debut, Whore, published in 2001, is a furious, stream-of-consciousness, autofictional rendering of Arcan’s experiences as an escort. It oscillates between rage and weariness at the repetitive sexual script its narrator has had to perform for clients. When Bertrand Visage received the package postmarked from Quebec, the editor recalls experiencing a great “literary shock”: “It didn’t resemble anything I knew. I didn’t understand everything, but I thought it was beautiful!” He immediately bought a plane ticket to Montreal and flew out that weekend, concluding, after the visit, that Arcan was “the real deal.” Within two weeks, she had a signed contract.

The book was a critical success—selling 75,000 copies and landing on the shortlist for two of France’s top literary prizes. It was also a scandal. Critics immediately began asking to what extent it was really Arcan’s own story. The visceral first-person prose had an undeniable truthiness. Yet it was hard to reconcile the soft-spoken lit student at Université du Québec à Montréal with the ferocious, hypersexualized narrator. One journalist called her “a contradiction on two legs.”

This cognitive dissonance was on full display when Arcan walked onto the set that September day, clad in a black satin evening dress and accompanied by the song, unsubtly chosen by producers, “Quand on se donne (à une femme d’expérience)”—or “When you give yourself (to an experienced woman)”. From the first question, it was clear that the host, Guy A. Lepage, was there to interview the whore rather than the writer. After a reductive overview of her major themes (“the cult of beauty, the fear of aging, plastic surgery, and the problematic desire to please others at all costs”), Lepage launched into his first comment: “You are very preoccupied by your body image because the thing that gives you the most anxiety when you have to promote your books is not interviews, it’s not speaking to people, it’s the photo shoots.”

As Arcan began to answer, the camera crawled its way up her body, from her arms to her breasts, finally framing her face. When she tried to explain how women are tyrannized by an image-obsessed culture that forces them to perform femininity for the consumption of men and women alike, the all-male panel could not hold back its incredulity. “You denounce it but at the same time you uphold it!” exclaimed co-host Dany Turcotte. “I’m sure there are many audience members who are consuming your femininity right now!” Prominent stand-up comedian Martin Matte added: “And some panellists too!” eliciting riotous audience laughter.

The humiliations came hard and fast after that, culminating in an invitation to arm wrestle, the implication being that jacking off countless men must have certain muscular benefits.

In an essay entitled “Shame,” published in 2011, two years after Arcan’s tragic death by suicide at the age of thirty-six, she reflected in the........

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