SOURCE: Viti, Elizabeth Richardson. “Passion simple and Madame, c'est à vous que j'écris: ‘That's MY Desire.’” Studies in Twentieth Century Literature 25, no. 2 (summer 2001): 458-76.

In the following essay, Viti draws comparisons between the definition of desire in Ernaux's Passion simple and Alain Gérard's Madame, c'est à vous que j'écris.

No two texts better exemplify the contemporary “he said, she said” phenomenon than Annie Ernaux's Passion simple (Simple Passion) and Alain Gérard's Madame, c'est à vous que j'écris (Madam, It Is To You That I Am Writing). Ernaux's book, published in 1991, recounts the author's heretofore hidden affair with a foreign businessman living temporarily in France. Dissatisfied with Ernaux's account, Gérard assumes the lover's identity and chronicles events from his perspective, making Madame, c'est à vous que j'écris, published four years later, an explicit response to Passion simple. The result is a rare literary “tac au tac...