Weekend Guide: 08.06.2021
live wildly love madly
At the conclusion of an interview with a celebrity, Howard Stern will say “well, you’ve said it all!” Sometimes the celebrity has really said it all — often it’s said in jest. Most people can’t or won’t ever really say it all. How could we? Our thoughts, the inner workings of our mind — are our most private possessions.
But what about someone with nothing to lose? What about someone who truly does not give one fuck? What about someone who is screaming out from the void? From the depths of loneliness. Someone who doesn’t even care if they exist.
🌺 Enter Violette Leduc. 🌸
What happens when they speak their truth? What happens when they say it all?
La Bâtarde
This book is truly on fire 🔥 . It’s electric. It’s a sizzling memoir. The New York Times even described La Bâtarde as “the book that has scorched France”. Hot. hot. hot!
**From a literary perspective, you would think it would be tough to scorch France. Keep in mind France produced the king of ‘I don’t give a fuck, let’s burn. it all down’ Louis-Ferdinand Celine1
I know. La Bâtarde is a harsh title for an autobiography that is full of animals and children and plants and food and drink and weather and girls falling in love with girls.
But.
It’s true that Violette Leduc was the illegitimate daughter of a domestic servant who was seduced by the consumptive son of her employer, but to choose such a melodramatic and reductive title, “The Bastard,” tells us how hard it was for Leduc to escape from the way her mother described her, and in that description gave her daughter an internal crucifix on which to nail her life’s story. - Deborah Levy
It’s not a beach read. If you are a wuss, please do not read this book. It’s one of those trophy books — one you wish you could wear around your neck like a gold medal after you finish. It’s long and complicated. Filled with tangents. Dreams. Desires. Passion. and sex. A lot of sex. Sex with women. Sex with Men. Sex with people watching. You get the picture.
Her life to a passerby is pretty normal. She goes to work. Drinks in bars. Writes. This is not a book about happenings or events. This is a book about a woman burning from the inside. The inside of a brain. The inside of a heart.
It’s a self portrait of a woman on fire. 🔥
I have never read the autobiography of anyone I was not already obsessed with. This is a complete 180 🌀. I had never even heard of Violette Leduc prior to coming across La Bâtarde. It is such a singular work. It’s a work of art. It may also be one of the wildest books I have ever read.
From my cursory internet research on Leduc it’s obvious —she is criminally underread. I still haven’t read any of her novels. The Paris Review called her an ‘autofiction pioneer’. Very on trend. She was beloved by Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Cocteau, and Jean Genet. Oh, and she didn’t start writing until she was 35 years old.
Violette Leduc may be my new favorite person. Moving forward, I will be spending a bunch of time with her. If you like Celine, Sartre, Genet, Proust, Henry Miller, Joan Didion — you know the true badasses — Leduc deserves to own some shelf space in your house.
Thanks for sticking around. I would love to hear how you are doing, and what you are reading. I am fascinated by what books people choose to read.
When we read we aren’t just skimming works. We are giving ourselves away. Taking time from the people in our lives to devote to an other. Choose wisely.
I have a way to judge a used bookstore. Walk back to the friction section. Find C. Look for any book by Celine. If they have some and they are expensive it is a good Used book store. If there are no copies of Journey to the End of the Night or Death on the Installment Plan. Turn around and leave the store.