Mad
in Pursuit by
Violette Leduc, Derek Coltman
She stunned the literary world with La
Batarde Now her second remarkable book of memoirs will
galvanize and inspire a new generation of readers.
With La
Batarde, Violette Leduc described a turbulent Paris of
World War II--where she struggled to survive, to create an
identity, and to find a voice.
In the second remarkable volume of her life story, Mad In
Pursuit, the war is finally over. A new generation of writers
has appeared in Paris, among them Camus, Genet, Sartre, and
Cocteau, and every day, they can be seen writing at the
marble-topped tables of the Cafe de Flore. Already in her
thirties, Leduc burns with hero-worship and an obsession to become
a celebrated writer herself. When she finds a mentor in none other
than Simone de Beauvoir, she is pulled into the center of Parisian
literary life--"a beehive gone mad." In the
no-holds-barred style that made her a legend, Leduc paints a
vibrant picture of the brilliant minds around her--and the dark
passions and insecurities that drove her to write.
* Includes a Reader's Guide bound in the back of the book with
questions also pertaining to La
Batarde
"It is hard to know whether the incalculable distress she has
suffered all her life is the price she has had to pay for writing
so beautifully." --The Times Literary Supplement
"The richness of her narratives comes less from the
circumstance depicted than from the burning intensity of her
memory: at each moment she is completely there through all the
thickness of the years."--Simone de Beauvoir
About the Author
Violette Leduc was born on April 7, 1907, in Arras, France. Along
with Mad In Pursuit and La Batarde, she was the
author of ten other books. She has been referred to as France's
greatest unknown writer, and was a contemporary of de Beauvoir,
Sartre, Camus, Genet, and Cocteau.
Therese
and Isabelle (1968)
Radley Metzger's most acclaimed film is a
melancholy tale of a woman wandering through the landscape of her
memory to relive the joys and sorrows of the first love of her
adolescence. We flash back on the young Therese (Essy Persson),
who has grown up as the only person in her single mother's life,
but due to her mother's abrupt marriage she has now been banished
from the family home to a finishing school. Feeling abandoned,
Therese becomes friends with the vivacious and lively Isabelle
(Anna Gaël), but their relationship grows past friendship to
love, and together they taste the forbidden fruit of sex. Based on
the autobiographical novel Le Batarde by Violette Leduc,
Metzger's handsome black-and-white film (elegantly shot by Hans
Jura) is constructed as a prismatic set of flashbacks, constructed
not in chronological order but rather along thematic lines,
intercut with the adult Therese revisiting the ghosts of her past
in the now-deserted school. The tasteful restraint of the first
half gives way to discreet sexual explorations and finally nudity,
which may be troubling to some viewers in light of the age of the
characters (who are played by adults), but Metzger never exploits
the situation. The poignant scenes have a tenderness and raw
emotion that captures the mix of excitement, fear, and confusion
of adolescence, and ultimately the film becomes about the tragedy
of loss that continues to haunt the adult Therese. --Sean
Axmaker
