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Passion Simple And Madame, C'Est À Vous Que J'Écris: "That's My Desire" , Elizabeth Richardson Viti

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

No two texts better exemplify the contemporary "he said, she said" phenomenon than Annie Ernaux's Passion simple and Alain Gérard's Madame, c'est à vous que j'écris. Ernaux's book, published in 1991, recounts the author's heretofore hidden affair with a foreign businessman living temporarily in France, and Gérard's, published four years later, is an explicit response in which the writer, dissatisfied with Ernaux's account, assumes the lover's identity and chronicles events from his perspective. The result is a literary "tac à tac" very much in the public eye in which a man and woman both wish to tell their side …