O Amante da China do Norte

The Lover #2

by Marguerite Duras, Tereza Coelho (Tradução)

Marguerite Duras recorda a sua infância passada na Indoxina e a paixão da criança que ela foi, por um chinês oriundo de uma família muito rica, de novo, como em toda a sua obra - no teatro, no cinema, na literatura - afirma num estilo de beleza inconfundível, que ninguém consegue libertar-se da infância, mesmo que a ela não fiquem ligadas só recordações agradáveis, como foi o seu caso, em que os problemas familiares se revestiram de enorme gravidade. Neste romance há lágrimas e risos, temores e paixões, todas de grandezas e misérias da vida.

Genres: Fiction, France, Romance, Classics, French Literature, Literature, Asia

256 pages, Paperback

First published June 13, 1991

About the author

Marguerite Germaine Marie Donnadieu , known as Marguerite Duras, was a French novelist, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, and experimental filmmaker. Her script for the film Hiroshima mon amour (1959) earned her a nomination for Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards.

Reviews

[Celeste Corrêa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quando li «O Amante» pela primeira vez, senti-me desconfortável, não pela diferença de idade, mas pela idade da criança. Finalmente, com a história recontada neste «O Amante da China do Norte», consegui entender a voz de Marguerite Duras. Há muito de sórdido nesta história de uma sensualidade exacerbada, mas a frase «Não me vai acontecer mais nada na vida além deste amor por ti.» triunfou sobre aquilo que me incomodou.

Foi uma reconciliação com esta história de amor até à morte, que, no entanto, exige uma mente aberta, mesmo aos leitores com maturidade de anos, vida e experiência.

[Luís · Rating 4 out of 5]

A novel built on chaotic, jerky speeches (it's intentional, and that's what makes its charm), light, pleasant to read, and based on a value that is, for me, the most beautiful in the world, that of love.
I had never read this book before for fear of being shocked by the descriptions of incest and the like, but now I realize I was wrong because it is not.

[julieta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reencuentro con esta historia, la del Amante chino, que claramente atravesó la vida de MD. La contó varias veces, se ve que le afectó y le cambió la vida, lo cual también me parece muy hermoso. Recordaba la historia, pero no la manera en como está escrita. Con esas pausas, esa vista en tercera persona, que parece impersonal, pero que es lo más personal del mundo. Esa historia tan hermosamente trágica, porque sabes perfecto que va a terminar. Con toda su belleza, con lo excepcional de toda la situación. Con el descubrimiento, deseo, todo lo que significa. No creo que vaya a releer el amante ahora, porque es la misma historia, me llama la atención la necesidad suya de contarla en todos los formatos que tiene a la mano, y hasta me parece hermoso, como si esa niña se hubiera quedado atrapada en el tiempo, y necesitara contar la misma historia, una y otra vez.

[Sofía (Софья) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Esta novela es un cuadro escrito. Con cortas y precisas pinceladas Marguerite Duras dibuja para nosotros una historia. Una historia de amor, de deseo, de pasión. Una historia franca y hermosa.
Ella. Él.
Una francesa. Un chino.
Una adolescente. Un hombre adulto.
Ella es de una familia adeudada. Él es uno de los hombres más ricos en China.
La personalidad de ella es increíble. Es franca, directa, curiosa, de carácter fuerte.
Él sorprende con su sensibilidad y generosidad. 
La noche. 
Un calor insoportable. 
Dos cuerpos entrelazados. 
Dos almas hechas una.
Será cierto que un verdadero amor siempre es imposible?
Ella tiene que volver con su familia a Francia. Él tiene que casarse con una china de su misma clase social. Mientras tanto... "el espantoso dolor de aquel deseo".

Es uno de mis libros favoritos. Por su belleza, por su contenido explícito, por la investigación de lo que es el amor, por su lenguaje tan simple y mágico, por su poderoso erotismo, por reconocerme a mí en Ella. Reconocer a esa "niña que transgrede el miedo. Ella es quien quiere saber, quien lo quiere todo, lo máximo, todo, vivir y morir a la vez." 

[Will · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marguerite Duras must have led an extraordinary, emotionally complex, devastating childhood if any of the scenes of this work are real. Because my French is a work in progress, I read L'Amant de la Chine du Nord (The North China Lover) in short bursts over the summer when I was in the mood, but in the last few days I decided to devote a few hours to it every day, and I don't regret it at all.

Reading in other languages really is such a different experience, and that first moment when you go a whole page without looking up a single word is triumphant. Before Duras' work I could ramble about unemployment, politics, immigration, current events, etc., but the concept of love and loss in the language of love and loss had evaded me. Duras changed that.

Colonialism in South East Asia is possibly the most complicated version of Western colonialism: the Dutch in Indonesia, the British in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc., and the French in Indochina. None of it ended prettily or cleanly. Even today (especially today), SE Asia is a sometimes unfathomable mix of territory disputes, rebelling ethnic groups, human and drug trafficking, and shipping. In Duras' time of the 1930s, Vietnam was under French rule, and this novel is the story of her affair with an older, opium-addicted Chinese man.

Emotions break, tears flow, and anger sparks, the flow of the French creates an emotion of itself. The story flows with these emotions, as does the speed of the text. The atmosphere of Vietnam is so important for Duras, and the events of the novel haunt me and more importantly Duras, positively and negatively. I know I'll always remember why it happened, long after I forget what happened. The flow of the river, the buzz of the rice fields, and lying in a bed for hours, blankly staring, waiting for something to end.

[Emily]

Inspired by Richard's commitment to multi-lingual reading and blogging, I've decided to try to work on my languages as well, and read more novels in the original French. How many is "more"? Well, last year I read a grand total of one. So, in order to top that, this year I'll need to read...two. Maybe the year after that I'll read three. As you can tell, I'm practically signing up for À la recherche du temps perdu already.

Considering that last year's pick, J.M.G. Le Clézio's Ourania , was something of a struggle for me and took several months to complete, I'm startled to find that I've already finished my first French book of 2010: Marguerite Duras's L'amant de la chine du nord (available in English translation as The North China Lover). Duras's book is actually a re-working of her earlier novel L'amant; it re-envisions the story as a film, and retells it from a more complete, possibly mature angle. Both L'amant and L'amant de la chine du nord are fictionalized memoirs dealing with Duras's sexual coming-of-age as a young - very young - Frenchwoman in 1920s Vietnam (then French Indochina). Well, let me be blunter: it tells the story of her first consummated affair, with a wealthy 28-year-old Chinese man, when she was fourteen.

Given that plot there's obviously a lot to talk about here vis-a-vis sexual and gender dynamics, but let's get some formalist stuff out of the way first: Duras's prose is vivid and lush, and the fact that she wrote this novel as if giving screen directions (including camera pans, fade-ins and fade-outs, etc.), makes the reading experience overwhelmingly visual. This kind of narration is often a turn-off for me; I tend to find it choppy or overly mannered. But in Duras's case I think it works perfectly for two reasons. In the first place, this is one of those books in which the setting is almost as much of a character as the characters themselves. The hot monsoon nights, the flooded rice fields, the night sounds of the young Vietnamese night guards singing outside the gates of the main character's colonial boarding school - presenting all this to the audience front-and-center brings it to the foreground, and persuades the reader to concentrate on it, to see it. And secondly, in a film all the viewer knows about a character's motivations is how she sees them acting - she has no direct access to their interior monologue. A cinematic approach, then, plays perfectly into one of Duras's main themes in this novel: the ambiguity of human actions.

Because L'amant de la chine du nord does not leave the reader with any clear answers about why the characters act as they do, or how we ought to feel about it. Compared to, say, Lolita, which argues pretty plainly for Humbert as a delusional, dirty old man and Delores Haze as his victim, Duras's moral universe is extremely murky. The main character, known only as "l'enfant" ("the child"), comes from a desperately poor family of French settlers in Indochina; we later learn that she has already had several offers of marriage/concubinage from men in their thirties, which her mother has pressed her to accept in order to alleviate the family's poverty, but which she has refused. In her boarding school, certain teachers and even students choose to prostitute themselves in the streets. In this light, her meeting with and choice to pursue her wealthy lover (known in the novel as le Chinois or The Chinaman) seems a clear economic decision, the best she can do in a bad situation.

But things are not so simple. There's no question that l'enfant lusts after le Chinois - that her psyche is, in fact, super-saturated with lust. She has incestuous thoughts about her younger brother, with whom she is extremely close. She is already involved in a semi-sexual relationship with one of her female school friends, and the two of them fantasize about taking the place of their prostitute teacher - the idea of forbidden sex being thrilling to them. From practically the moment she meets le Chinois, she is fascinated by his physicality - she is the aggressor in their relationship, and it seems as though she is acting from real feeling, not just aping the actions of adults in order to produce a desired effect.

At the same time, it's not completely positive for her, or comfortable to read; her experiences of actually having sex, especially at first, involve a lot more pain and suffering than pleasure, and she seems perplexed by the strength of Le Chinois's emotions when he falls in love with her. He is weeping about how his magnate father will disinherit him if he marries her, and she is teasing him and wanting him to tell her more about life in China. Duras does a creepily effectual job at blending L'enfant's precocious sensuality and sexuality with certain other, very kid-like, qualities in her. She kind of just wants to experiment and learn about the world, and also to have sex. Would she want to have sex if it weren't for her family's poverty, and the possibility of getting her hands on some of Le Chinois's money? Would she want to have sex if she hadn't been prematurely sexualized by the men who want to buy her from her mother, and by her feelings for her brother, and by the boarding school atmosphere? One can't help asking these questions, but at the same time they're a bit pointless: if those things had been different, she would have been a completely different person.

And here's another thing that's unusual in this type of story: L'enfant and Le Chinois enjoy each others' company. You never get the sense that Lolita and Humbert ever have fun together, but L'enfant and Le Chinois go out late at night to restaurants in the Chinese section of town, tell each other stories, laugh at each others' frankness. To be fair, there is also a lot of crying in the book, and overall it's somewhat melancholic, but unlike Kristin Lavransdatter it also has its fair share of mutual enjoyment of the present moment. And although the affair (inevitably) ends, and everyone feels sad about that for a while, L'enfant doesn't really suffer as a punishment for having sex, in the way that Lolita, Tess Durbyfield, and other literary sexual victims do (dying in childbirth, no less! Talk about sexual punishment). Duras's protagonist goes through a mixed emotional experience and then gets on with her life, but one never gets the sense that she is suffering, or enjoying herself, as a vehicle for the author to make a point about who is right and who is wrong. Duras's book is the most non-judgmental treatment - in either a positive or negative way - of sex between a very young person and an older person, I've ever come across. I wouldn't call it primarily a love story, but neither would I say it's primarily a tale of oppression. (And speaking of oppression: the racial dynamics among the transplanted white French, colonized Vietnamese, and wealthy landowning Chinese are another whole fascinating subject.)

The whole tale brings up interesting questions about the triangulation of love, lust, liking, and money. If L'enfant is more or less engaging in sex work, does that mean she doesn't love Le Chinois? Does it mean she doesn't like him? If her first feeling upon seeing him is one of lust, does that invalidate the money motive? To what extent are the desires for money and sex interwoven? And what should we, as readers, be hoping for as we read this story? Duras allows all of these elements to coexist in uneasy harmony, which in itself is an admirable feat.

[Carlos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Combien de fois les histoires qui composent notre vie sont-elles ravivées dans l’esprit ? Une image, un son, une saveur suffisent à rappeler ce qui nous a profondément marqué à jamais.

Elle raconte qu'en mai 1990, elle a appris qu'il était mort il y a des années, qu'il avait été enterré à Sadec et que sa famille et ses enfants vivaient toujours dans la maison. Elle a également appris qu'à Sadec, il était apprécié de tous grâce à son bon cœur. Elle a donc décidé de chercher dans ses souvenirs cette jeune fille de quinze ans qui est tombée follement amoureuse de lui ce jour-là où elle a traversé le Mékong dans le bac de Vinh Long.

Bien que L’Amant ait été écrit en 1984, Marguerite Duras décide en 1991, quelque peu déçue par le film paru la même année (réalisé par Jean-Jacques Annaud) d’écrire cet autre roman pour entrer au pays du roman « un pays libre et désintéressé ». Elle a investi un an de sa vie dans ce nouveau projet qu’elle a appelé L’Amant de la Chine du Nord, qui n’est certainement pas une répétition de l’autre roman. Ici, l’intrigue est presque souterraine et la langue décrit beaucoup plus ; on pourrait même dire que le style du récit est plus descriptif et cinématographique, mettant l’accent sur l’aspect visuel. Dans certaines sections, l’auteur ne peut s’empêcher de donner des indications, au cas où l’œuvre aurait été emmenée au cinéma. En outre, les dialogues sont beaucoup plus étendus et visent à mieux peindre la personnalité de chaque personnage.

L'histoire est en principe la même, une histoire d'amour impossible, destinée à la souffrance et à la séparation. Tout au long du roman, les deux amants ne sont nommés à aucun moment, presque comme s'il s'agissait d'ombres projetées sur un mur, qui en ouvrant la fenêtre et en laissant entrer le soleil de midi, disparaissent complètement de la surface de la terre. Il est just l'Amant Chinois et elle l'Enfant. Ainsi, sans jamais se référer à eux par leurs prénoms, les personnages ont plus de poids dans le récit.

À la fin, Marguerite Duras nous raconte que des années après la guerre, il l’a téléphoné. Sa voix tremblait et elle a reconnu l'accent de la Chine du Nord :

« Il avait dit que pour lui, c’était curieux à ce point-là, que leur historie était restée comme elle était avant, qu’il l’aimait encore, qu’il ne pourrait jamais de toute sa vie cesser de l’aimer. Qu’il l’aimerait jusqu’à la mort.
Il avait entendu ses pleurs au téléphone.
Et puis de plus loin, de sa chambre sans doute, elle n’avait pas raccroché, il les avait encore entendus. Et puis il avait essayé d’entendre encore. Elle n’était plus là. Elle était devenue invisible, inatteignable. Et il avait pleuré. Très fort. Du plus fort de ses forces. »

Un roman intime et douloureux à la fois.

[Lyudmila Spasova · Rating 4 out of 5]

Маргьорит Дюрас пише "Любовникът от Северен Китай" през 1991 година, защото не харесва филма на Жан-Жак Ано "Любовникът" по едноименния и роман от 1984 година, удостоен с Гонкур.
Жанрът е роман- сценарий. Фрагментарен е, но всъщност не повече от другите и романи. Дюрас е автор и на пиеси, които все още не съм чела. Тя има силен усет за сценичното и кинематографичното и това е една от причините да помня толкова ярко сцени от книгите и.
Маргьорит Дюрас, е родена и израсла в Индокитай, и тя няма никога да забрави драматичното си детство там. И как би могла? Баща и умира, когато е едва на 4. Майка и се бори смело и се опитва да осигури по-добро бъдеще за трите си деца, Маргьорит и двамата и братя, като влага всичките си спестявания в закупуването на негодна, постоянно заливана от Меконг земя. Колониалните чиновници от кадастъра я измамват и семейството е напълно разорено..
Защо ви разказвам биографията на авторката? Защото и тази, както почти всички нейни книги, е автобиографична, но не от този линеен тип автобиографии, а като поток от спомени и подновени опити на Дюрас да разбере това свое непонятно детство. То приключва на 14 с любовта и към един манджурец, връзка скандална и отчаяна, белязана от болката на раздялата, от срама заради унизителната бедност на тези изпаднали бели, позора от това бащата на любовника ти да изплаща дълговете на брата наркоман и крадец. "Малката", както е наречена в романа, изпитва толкова болезнено съчувствие към "братчето", по-малкият си брат Поло, психически увреден вследствие постоянните побои на злонравния си брат Пиер, въплъщение на "чистото зло".
Няма място за свян, когато си на дъното. Те приемат пари, все едно "малката" е за продан, всички се страхуват до смърт от онзи, на когото "злото му идва отвътре", и в същото време се обичат като обречени корабокрушенци. Тази драма се разиграва край величавата река, в зноя и сред пороите на мусона.
Срамът, страхът, насилието, безумието, безпомощността се сливат със страстта и любовта, един възел от силни емоции, които ще бележат "малката" и тя ще го носи докрая на живота си.
Сърцето ми се къса, когато чета за 14 годишното момиченце с крехко, недоравито телце, с двойно преоценени ламени обувки и нелепа сламена шапка, защото майката изобщо не се интересува от дъщеря си, обича единствено сина си престъпник. А малката е безстрашна и безсрамна. В книгата има сцени, които може и да ви шокират. Опитайте се да разберете тези хора, които живеят на ръба! Дюрас никога не успява да разбере себе си, нито майка си, нито красивия си, невероятно зъл брат. Тя ги възприема като природни сили. Историята на нейното семейство и любовта и с Китаеца ще бъдат разказвани и изследвани отново и отново и така тя никога няма да умре.

[Evan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maggie Duras was a hot little firecracker, giving up her 14-year-old stuff to the family, the natives, and so on.

But seriously, folks....

This is an expanded recast of a tale Duras had already told in the earlier, shorter and much better autobiographical novel, The Lover , and although this one starts off just as beautifully and has lovely bits throughout, it gradually becomes stultifyingly repetitive and dull and fizzles out.

The earlier version, much more internalized, focused, concentrated and concise, was a far finer distillate -- dreamy and swoon-inducing throughout -- whereas this version, with its more removed and distant perspective, conventional linear progression, ampler narrative and autobiographical detail, and extended dialogue passages saps the material of its poetic power and essence. This may seem counterintuitive, but truth is not necessarily to be had in piling on more and explicit detail; and I would challenge anyone to do a side-by-side comparison of the two versions to prove my assertions. The earlier version had more heart and replicated the lover/narrator's non-linear internal thought processes which made the reader feel closer to the mind of the storyteller, of the teller's thoughts. I cared and felt when I read that. Not so much with this one.

The intrusion into the narrative of what seem to be instructions for filmmakers to follow in the filmed version of the story came off as a tad crass to me, as though I was reading a work of art one minute and a "property" the next.

One thing I did like about this version is that the child's family is treated more sympathetically, especially compared to the movie version where their pettiness is almost two-dimensional.

The question for me is: Which version comes closest to the aching sense of longing, the essence of wistful memory? For me, it is the first version.

I really wanted to like this and did, for about a hundred pages, but eventually found myself whittling it down from four stars to three stars to two stars.

In essence, I thought this was a case of more is less.

[Alshia Moyez · Rating 3 out of 5]

You know, I don't even want to give this book 3 stars, but I'm being generous and sticking to my rule (even thought I had to break it with this author not too long ago) of never giving below a 3-star rating, except in extreme cases.

Maybe there's something wrong with me or perhaps my tastes have changed, but I used to be SUCH a hardcore fan of hers-truly, a fangirl. Especially of The Lover and this book (even though it's just The Lover with bigger font & more white space).

Today, though, it's like I'm taking a cold, hard look at her work-an "investigation" triggered by reading Blue Eyes, Black Hair (one of the worst 60 pages I've had to get through in my whole life). Now, I don't want to be a hater (because I had such a love affair with The Lover early on), I might give her another chance. But at the same time I wonder if all her work is erotica (not my choice genre to read), and more importantly, if all her work is erotica between 14 year old girls & 35 year old, grown men.

The man she was screwing in book 1 should've been with her mother since they were about the same age, instead of going with her little teeny bopper daughter. Sickening and silly. In hindsight I (the reader) was supposed to be so blown away by him because he was rich, had a nice car, nice clothes, and a decent place to live. So in exchange for all the material things the loser main character didn't have, I'm supposed to turn a blind eye to the fact that every passage I'm reading where he "ripped her clothes off", "couldn't even make it to the bed," and so on, is describing sex between a 14 year old child and an adult male.

So,I'm more upset with myself for embracing such work, paying for it. I don't want to support that kind of writing. And frankly, I wonder what the author sees in that kind of stuff. But anyway, enough. The review is over and I've talked for far too long on this. Thanks for reading.

[Emi Yoshida · Rating 2 out of 5]

I disagree with the rave reviews for this "fascinating retelling of the dramatic experiences of Marguerite Duras's adolescence." The blurbs all over this book make it look like a tragic love story between a French person and a Chinese person in pre-war Indochina. But this is pedophilia. Granted, the main character lies and says she's 16 but the whole premise is prurient; she is actually referred to throughout the book as "the child". The exotic backdrop is hauntingly gorgeous but the "family of scum" in hysterics in the foreground is wracked by economic and moral poverty; I found their constant cries alternating with incessant laughter, the mother's mental state and the problems of the brothers (one a sadist and the other involved with her sexually) completely overwhelming.

[Nhi Nguyễn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cuốn này là bản Marguerite Duras viết lại câu chuyện tình ở cuốn tiểu thuyết nổi tiếng của bà - Người tình - thay đổi ngôi kể thành ngôi thứ ba và có thêm hai nhân vật mới là Thanh - chàng trai người Xiêm được mẹ của cô bé da trắng đem về nuôi và sau này trở thành tài xế riêng của bà, và Alice - cô nữ sinh lai da trắng, đêm nào cũng trốn ra khỏi trường nội trú để bán thân. Một số thay đổi khác cũng được thực hiện, đặc biệt là ở việc xây dựng hình ảnh của chàng trai người Hoa - người tình Hoa Bắc của cô bé da trắng, từ một người đàn ông có dáng vẻ ốm yếu, mềm mại và là người-tình-đã-run-rẩy-sẵn-ở-trong-lòng trong “Người tình”, anh trở nên “táo bạo hơn”, “tuấn tú hơn, khỏe mạnh hơn”.

Thế nhưng điểm khác biệt lớn nhất và khiến mình thích cuốn này hơn cả “Người tình”, đó chính là mạch kể chuyện của tác giả. Không còn những chi tiết lộn xộn về gia đình của cô bé da trắng, những hồi ức không đầu không cuối trộn lẫn vào trong câu chuyện tình, ở “Người tình Hoa Bắc”, Marguerite Duras đã dành thời gian để sống cùng câu chuyện bà viết ra, để sắp xếp l��i thành một thể thống nhất những diễn biến theo đúng trình tự thời gian, không gian của sự kiện. Câu chuyện tình yêu của cô bé da trắng và người tình Hoa Bắc của cô hòa quyện một cách hài hòa và đáng nhớ vào những chi tiết, những trường đoạn liên quan đến gia đình cô bé, những bất ổn, những nỗi hãi sợ của người anh thứ, gây ra bởi chính người anh cả Pierre, vốn là một tên nghiện thuốc phiện nặng, trở nên hư hỏng và nguy hiểm vì chính tình yêu thương mù quáng, thiên vị và hành vi dung túng của người mẹ. Cá nhân mình đánh giá rất cao cách kể chuyện có trình tự hẳn hòi này, đặc biệt là cái điểm nhìn của người kể chuyện, như thể cả cuốn tiểu thuyết là một bộ phim, được quay dưới góc nhìn của Marguerite Duras. Ngôn ngữ đậm chất điện ảnh, nhiều trường đoạn dữ dội, có những đoạn lại vô cùng nên thơ.

Và quả thật, đọc cuốn tiểu thuyết này, mình như thể sống lại những hình ảnh trong bộ phim “Người tình” mới xem vài ngày trước. Có cảm giác như những nhân vật trong phim là lấy từ cuốn tiểu thuyết “Người tình”, còn những diễn biến của phim thì lấy từ “Người tình Hoa Bắc” mới phải. Vì đa phần các diễn biến trong cuốn tiểu thuyết này đều giống y như trên phim, đặc biệt là trong những cảnh đáng nhớ. Ví dụ như cảnh khi chàng trai người Hoa gặp cô bé da trắng trên chuyến phà, nhã nhặn mời cô hút thuốc. Rồi cảnh khi hai người ngồi chung trong xe của chàng trai người Hoa, một sự thinh lặng tránh né bao phủ không gian của họ, sự thinh lặng báo trước một tình yêu chói lòa mê hoặc, một mối tình đã có sẵn ở đó rồi, không sao tránh khỏi:

”Cô đã bảo rằng chỉ riêng sự thinh lặng ấy, những từ ngữ mà sự thinh lặng ấy tránh né, ngay cả cách ngắt, nhấn, sự lơ đãng của nó, cả trò chơi ấy nữa, tính trẻ thơ nơi trò chơi và những dòng nước mắt của nó, tất cả những cái đó đã có thể khiến người ta nói rằng đây là một mối tình.”

Và còn nữa cái cách Marguerite Duras miêu tả cảnh hai nhân vật chính trong căn hộ độc thân, cái cách mà tình yêu bước vào qua khung cửa, và ở lại đó mãi mãi, cuốn họ đi trong một cơn bão tình mà cuối cùng chỉ còn lại đớn đau, đớn đau của sự chia ly vĩnh viễn. Một tình yêu chói lòa mê hoặc bị thu lại chỉ còn lại là những ký ức cùng một câu chuyện để kể lại cho những người tình tiếp theo của họ, cho những người chồng, người vợ của họ. Một tình yêu cần có nỗi đau để giữ cho ký ức về nó sống mãi. Và sự tiếc nuối không sao tỏ bày, rằng rồi đây, cô bé da trắng và chàng trai người Hoa của cô sẽ phải làm tình với những người khác, sẽ phải yêu những người khác, có con với những người khác, trong khi cả hai mới chính là mối tình vĩnh hằng của nhau - mối tình đã được định trước là sẽ không thể nào có kết thúc có hậu, không thể nào chào đón những đứa con chung. Trong tiểu thuyết, có một đoạn khi cô bé da trắng bị chậm kinh nhiều ngày và cứ ngỡ là mình đã mang thai con của chàng trai người Hoa, để rồi sau đó thất vọng. Thật đau đớn làm sao.

Khác với cô bé da trắng của “Người tình”, cô bé da trắng của “Người tình Hoa Bắc” đã biết là mình yêu chàng trai người Hoa của cô từ lâu lắm rồi, đã tuyên bố với anh rằng mình sẽ yêu anh mãi mãi, như cái cách anh tuyên bố với cô, sau này, qua điện thoại, rằng anh sẽ yêu cô cho đến chết. Điều này lại càng làm cho sự chia ly của họ đau đớn hơn, khắc khoải hơn. Nhưng Marguerite Duras không làm cho tình yêu ấy trở nên bi lụy, bởi bên cạnh việc khắc họa một mối tình chói lòa và ám ảnh, tác giả còn khám phá bản năng phụ nữ, khát khao tính dục và ham muốn thể xác thầm kín của cô bé da trắng - một người đàn bà đầy nhục cảm ẩn bên trong thân thể của một thiếu nữ vẫn còn nét trẻ con - trong mối quan hệ với Thanh, với người anh thứ Paulo, với cô bạn Hélène Lagonelle. Tất cả đã làm nên một “Người tình Hoa Bắc” còn dữ dội hơn, ám ảnh hơn và nhiều màu sắc hơn cả ”Người tình”. Một câu chuyện không thể nào quên...

[Rad · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite books, by my favorite writer. I first read Duras when I was 15 and i think, that has made all the difference. Her writing touched me where no other writer has been able to reach till date. The story, the plot, the characters - are all irrelevant in her book. You can't pickle it under fiction or non fiction. No flowery language, no melodrama. Reading her is just an experience, very intense, often tumultuous. This book is about her love affair with the rich North Chinese guy - you could say - but i could never call it a love story or say that it had romance. Impossible to contain her in such lame labels. In fact, each time i've picked up any of her books, i've just ached to pick up the pen and paper and start writing...about what? I don't know. It's just this overwhelming feeling to be with yourself and let the whirlpool inside flow out. Sometimes i'd be able to write and sometimes i'd just return to her book, admitting to myself that she knows best how i feel. Often i've felt my discovering her was not just a random event...she's almost like a planet squaring your moon....affecting your life choices, influencing your destiny, without you being able to crack the code of the scheme of things.

[gaultier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Parfois tu vas bien puis tu couches avec ton ex et il te passe son exemplaire de l’amant de la chine du nord de duras puis tu pleures toutes les 10 pages car il te manque et que ses annotations c’est comme lui qui te guide personnellement à travers le roman et que vous partagiez un seul cerveau laisse moi entrer dans ta TETEEEE non en vrai si tu lis ca reviens ca peut plus durer non je plaisante tu sais quoi je suis heureux que tu sois en couple en vrai reviens toi et moi cetait special bebew

J’ai enlevé une étoile car l’inceste mais sinon oklm

[Nate D · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book.
This is a film.
This is night.

In the wake of sudden and resounding success of The Lover, Duras second-guesses her own telling, coming at it again with an odd darting between distancing of narrative apparatuses -- is she telling a story or planning out its adaptation? -- and a confessional immediacy, disclosing much more of her family and context. But by this point, all Duras' experience and words, and even films, are part of a single body of work. There's no clear novelization or confession here, it's just her own self-distillation beyond fact of fiction. As such there's nothing unnecessary in this doubling of The Lover, even if it may not necessarily be truer or more essential (despite a few telling details withheld til this point). Probably most interesting at most aware of its impending conversion to film, and in its portrait of Duras mother and the dynamics of her by-this-point "ruined" family. But each work, even or especially those that revisit or recompose, adds another piece to Duras' life of literature.

[d · Rating 5 out of 5]

—¿No trabajas?
—No. Nada.
—Nunca haces nada, nunca... nunca haces algo...
—Nunca.
Ella le sonríe. Dice:
—Dices «nunca» como si dijeras «siempre».
[...]

La historia de la niña y el chino. El quilombo más grande del mundo. No voy a escribir sobre el grueso de este libro, eso sería escribir demasiado sobre mi vida. Sólo algunas observaciones un poco offtopic: ¿por qué la madre es imbécil y ciega? La madre en Orgullo y prejuicio también es así. Marguerite Duras, Jane Austen. Minas inteligentes y escritoras brillantes que escriben sobre la idiotez y ceguera de las madres. Incluso en Los juegos del hambre la figura de la madre es similar. La mujer inteligente debe matar simbólicamente a sus padres, sobre todo a su madre. Estúpido y sensual psicoanálisis, dejá de meterte en mis análisis…

Acá se repite algo de Hiroshima mon amour (el guión suyo y la película de Resnais). Es la frase“no sabes nada”, dicha por el hombre que la protagonista desea. El japonés le recrimina a la francesa “no sabés nada, no conocés Hiroshima”. Acá, el chino le recrimina no saber sobre las erecciones. Es una frase cruel – las mujeres de Duras siempre quieren saber todo. Conocer Hiroshima (su historia y sus hombres), conocer Saigón/Vietnam (su historia y sus hombres) es también conocer el amor.


P.D/ En Duras el amor es una reflexión sobre el tiempo. Una de sus obsesiones es determinar cuando aparece. Punto vital: transmitir a la forma literaria la experiencia amorosa, el tiempo vivido por los cuerpos amantes, por los momentos de calentura, etc.
P.D. 2/ Mientras leía, un pensamiento entre los tantos que se me venían encima: “Esto es como un In the mood for love literario”. Los que la hayan visto sabrán que es una película donde todo desborda, donde todo es lujoso, donde todo es digno para una visión del mundo erótica/amatoria. Lo mismo que en Duras. La obsesión de Duras es una de las obsesiones del cine y de la filosofía.

[Edita · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the first meeting two strangers know that they are doomed to love and separate. They know it as deeply as only it is possible to know anything. One of them is inhabited by terrible mourning, the other is overwhelmed by unspeakable sadness. They feel as if nothing will ever happen in their life except this love.

"They were about to separate. She remembers how difficult, how cruel it was to speak. They couldn't find words, their desire was so strong. They hadn't looked at each other again. They had avoided each other's hands, eyes. It was he who had imposed the silence. She would say later that you could have told they were in love by that silence alone, the words the silence skirted, its very pace, how it diverted them, and the game too, the childishness of that game and the tears.
[...]
The story is already there, already unavoidable,
A story of blinding love,
Always about love,
Always about to be,
Never forgotten."

[H.A. Leuschel · Rating 4 out of 5]

J'ai préféré le premier livre de l'écrivaine où la relation entre l'amant et la jeune fille est beaucoup plus subtile et émouvante mais relire leur histoire d'une manière plus élaborée m'a impressionné aussi. C'est l'écriture et une vision plus sobre et détachée qui offre aux lecteurs plus de détails sur leurs circonstances, les lieux qu'ils visitent et les conversations qui ont tant marqué leurs vies d'après. Ca en vaut le détour tout comme le premier livre.

[Andrés Cabrera · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cinematográfica y contundente, como si de una película de Wenders se tratase, "El amante de la China del Norte" es una novela de imágenes fragmentarias, mas no desperdigadas. En ella, múltiples momentos en los que Duras recuerda la relación que tuvo con un chino de clase alta durante su residencia en Vietnam, le permiten trazar todo un diálogo a propósito del amor, de la pérdida, que irrumpe de lleno contra las convenciones sociales de su época y, de paso, permite al lector cuestionar su propia vivencia del amor.

De entrada, la novela se muestra como un diálogo fragmentario, en el que los personajes muestran una interioridad cohibida que, de cuando en cuando, surge como una exterioridad desbordada, reclamante y contradictoria. En medio de silencios y conversaciones cambiantes e intempestivas, Duras reconstruye el diálogo angustiado de dos personas que reconocen que su amor es imposible, destinado a un fracaso irremediable. De ser un diálogo entre dos corporalidades desbordadas, el amor irrumpe a la manera de una negación, del imposible fáctico, como si del remanente de ese cuarto pequeño que el chino tiene para llevar a sus amantes se tratase: allí, ambos cuerpos se rozan y conversan, se dicen que se aman y rechazan dicho sentimiento, mientras los besos y las caricias son arrulladas por música americana y la luz que se filtra por las ventanas. Allí, Duras y su amante conjugan eso que Godard retrató después en su "Elogio del amor": el amor es eso que transcurre a la par de la vida, hasta que llega el día en que sólo se puede vivir en función de ese sentimiento...de una afección que sirve de razón, de fundamento para una vida que siente que apenas empieza a vivirse, como si todo el pasado fuese tan sólo letargo, espera, un sonido incomprensible que aguardó al compás de la existencia.

Pero el amor entre Duras y su amante no es una imposibilidad fáctica tan sólo por los valores sociales que ambos ostentan y la extracción social a la que pertenecen; antes bien, dicha afección está teñida de un impedimento mayor: el hecho de que Duras es tan sólo una niña de catorce años. Al momento de abordar este punto, la genialidad de la escritora permite al lector cuestionar una relación que es, a todas luces, pedófila. Eso sí, quedarse en ello es reduccionista. La profundidad psicológica y el desfase entre gestos-palabras que ambos personajes manifiestan en el curso de la historia, permite ahondar en la condición misma de aquellos que reclaman un sentido para el tiempo que se pierde entre el ir y venir de una cotidianidad absurda, asesina, que pide cuerpos que la habiten para justificar la existencia de otros más audaces (que son pocos, que no solemos ser nosotros). Y es que, aunque sea reiterativo en esto, Duras esconde algo entre los silencios y los gestos de cada personaje: allí se siente la tensión entre aquello que puede vivirse y lo que no, entre la palabra que mata el sentimiento pero no se dice, así sea la más sensata, y esa que deambula entre cada beso y caricia, en el trasegar de la mano sobre el cuerpo del amante: palabra vana, aunque sincera, que no dice nada porque todo aquello que se debate yace en el silencio, en eso que no se dice, y también en el gesto que acompasa a la palabra, porque se puede reír mientras se llora, porque hay cosas que no pueden decirse o que, si se dicen, sólo pueden comprenderse en la acción misma que comprende el acto de hablar.

Todo ello, Duras lo logra a partir de pequeñas imágenes que transcurren en medio de la cotidianidad de los abrazos, de "pequeñas muertes" mutuas que terminan en sufridos episodios masturbatorios de un cuerpo que rinde culto al otro, porque el amor es algo que puede darse a pesar de la pasión. La escritura, sentida y fragmentaria, engloba un todo que reclama comprensión; pero que nunca será del todo comprendido. Comprender el amor es matar a los hombres y mujeres que lo habitan: Duras lo sabe. Aquí sólo somos voyeuristas.

[Louise · Rating 1 out of 5]

Je suis à la moitié de cette lecture, et j’ai développé beaucoup de ressentiment pour Marguerite Duras... Vraiment je lui en veux pour ce qu'elle m'inflige. Ces simagrées, ce genre qu’elle se donne, ces dialogues improbables, qui n’existent que dans sa tête, mais qui sont imbitables du début à la fin... Si encore c’était poétique… C’est juste fade et prétentieux. Une vraie purge pour moi. On sent la frustration de ne pas avoir eu un film à la hauteur de son premier L'Amant (pardon mais c'était déjà pas ouf), et elle, toc toc toquée complètement par son histoire fantasmagorique, qui en remet une couche.
Je sais bien qu'elle est une papesse du nouveau roman, et que ça se fait pas de dire que "Duras c'est médiocre", mais moi je trouve ça même indigeste : on dirait les dialogues imaginaires que je me faisais dans ma tête d'ado, faussement intello et mystérieux. Stop Marguerite, ça suffit les manières, personne ne parle comme ça. Et ENCORE, après tout elle a le droit d'imaginer une histoire et une narration qui soient à côté du réel, mais j'ai trouvé ça horripilant et mal maîtrisé. Décidemment pas pour moi.

[Theresa A · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pædofili og incest er begge elementer, der indgår i denne historie, og lad mig gøre det klart: jeg er ikke specielt begejstret. Hvis man ser bort fra dette (Som om, man kan.. men lad os nu lade som om) er jeg imponeret over, hvordan personernes øjne i denne historie ikke er tørret ud endnu. De græder HELE TIDEN.
Jeg læser denne historie i en historisk kontekst med fokus på Indokina, men wow... jeg hader alle personerne i denne historie (Thanh virker okay, indtil han begynder at kysse 'barnet' (med fokus på BARN)). Jeg ved, at den er baseret på rigtige mennesker, men det gør det langt fra bedre. Faktisk gør det det hele værre.
Bogen er skrevet smukt og beskrivelserne af sceneriet er interessante, men udover det: 1/5. ville ikke genlæse, men jeg er sikkert stadig nødt til at lave min store opgave på den.

[Nimitha · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is kind of a screenplay for her more famous book The Lover. While the Lover was concise and deep, this one gives a peeping Tom perspective of the same story. There are many things wrong with this book. First-glorifying child abuse as a romantic relationship between two consenting individuals, when the female in question is 14. Second- presenting incest as something done out of love when the girl herself becomes the abuser of a younger vulnerable sibling. Third-presenting adolescent girls as whores in the waiting. Four- The smug tone while describing the Chinese culture or any non-white culture. What this really is a sad story of a poor, hungry and dysfunctional white family in Vietnam prostituting their girl child for money and safe passage to France. Love seems like a later invention to ease memories.

[Caley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Long, overdone, and repetitive. The prose was so sparse that the book ended up feeling disjointed and slightly pretentious. I liked that I was given more insight into her relationship than "The Lover" provided, but that's the only positive aspect of this novel. By the end, I was so sick of reading "We cried. We laughed. He laughed. I cried" that I too almost cried. Out of frustration. Wouldn't recommend this book.

[Dina Batista · Rating 4 out of 5]

As vezes um poema...
As vezes inocência...
As vezes repetitivo...
As vezes atração...
As vezes amor...
As vezes sofrimento...
Uma história que marca e surpreende. Não será o meu único Duras que irei ler.

[Lee Foust · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are so many reasons why human beings copulate: the obvious love and lust, sure, but also curiosity, fear, monetary gain, thrill of a power struggle, transgression and taboo breaking; the mental, physical, and the emotional. We are complex. We change over time. Often we do things without really understanding why. The reasons combine, mingle, and again change over time. These facts, so true to life, are often difficult to depict in art which tends to simplify and to give a reason for or logic to characters' actions or indeed create an overall moral to the story as a whole. I, myself, have faulted 19th century literature for it's inability to speak of copulation except indirectly through the convention of marriage and, more grievously, its inability to offer any reason for marriage other than money or love, obviously often juxtaposing the two. I betcha a lot of Darcys arrived at the age of 25 or so and just got married to see what sex was like, damn the other consequences, I guess if they were too shy or poor to visit the local whore house.

What makes this novel really good then, if not great, to me, is how well it manages to depict the layered and changeable reasons why two people go to bed together. Despite the artiness, say, of the nouveau roman style (really only Duras' own approach and period as I've never heard her avow or disavow the movement, if it really was a movement rather than just a sort of tendency to experiment among French postwar writers)... Anywho, despite the impressionistic use of short declamatory sentences and different spacing between sections that Duras's later novels especially make use of to shake up the more common bland, expository prose approach to realism, oddly, the beauty here is the heightened realism achieved by telling this tale of the sexual liaison between a 14 year old French colonial girl and a 27 year old Chines aristocrat in French Indochina in the late 1920s. The POV and the shifting situational explanations of the experience make it all too real and comprehensible despite the taboo situation which would otherwise demand a socio-political-moral response from us, which would shut down our receptivity to the story qua human experience.

So, hats off there, it's quite difficult to reduce or judge the events as described here because of the approach and the complex depictions of the shifting elements of sexual desire colliding with the various intersectional power associations of the colonial situation, the gender, race, and wealth of the individuals involved, all of which make a reductive oppressor/oppressed reading rather difficult.

I suppose it bears mentioning that this is a kind of rewrite of Duras's late (considering her complete oeuvres) bestselling success, The Lover a novel drawn very closely obviously from her own experience. This one began as a kind of film script or notes toward a film script for that novel but obviously became a novel in its own right even as it includes footnotes to a director and references back to the other, original novel. Interestingly, although a huge fan of Duras's earlier writing and her fabulous script for the Alain Resnais-directed Hiroshima Mon Amour, I read The Lover when it first came out in the 1980s and remember hating it. At this distance I can't exactly say why, perhaps the artsy approach to the prose, the impressionistic dashes of information struck me as phony, I dunno. So I'm glad I read this and really enjoyed it. After all, French experimental postwar prose allows for footnotes, impressionistic sentences, and odd spacing. I must revisit The Lover at some point.

[Mina Widding · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nu var det ett tag sen jag läste Älskaren, som jag förstås får lust att läsa igen för att se hur det skiljer sig. Älskaren är romanen, det här ska vara, om jag förstår det rätt, mer självbiografiskt som det var. Duras är ju dock Duras, så tonen är ju distinkt hursomhelst. Men kanske ändå mer av en "straight story"? Jag minns Älskaren som "luddigare", mer poetisk. Det var intressant med hennes kommentarer kring hur boken skulle filmas om den filmas, och visar hur påverkad hon måste ha varit av att ha arbetat med det mediet - till berättandets fördel tycker jag, det är ett speciellt grepp när det kommer in.
Ur en synvinkel är ju det här en Lolitaberättelse ur Lolitas perspektiv. Hur ska man förhålla sig till det? Hon skriver ur den vuxnas perspektiv, som minns och att hon på alla sätt var helt med i kärlekshistorien, att det var just en kärlekshistoria, hon beskriver hur hon åtrårbocv njuter, hon skriver med agens. Men "barnet", som hon också kallas genom hela berättelsen, är ju just fortfarande ett barn. 14 när relationen inleds. Sexualitet och en viss krasshet inför den, inför realiteter, är ju lite av Duras signum. Hon följer inte en gängse moral, tack och lov. Jag finner att eftersom jag tror på barnets åtrå, och på hennes redogörelse för känslorna såsom trovärdiga, närvarande och äkta, och på kinesens välvilja och uppriktiga kärlek, så går jag med på det.
Vi har ju för övrigt det incestuösa spåret också, så att det är komplext är väl minst sagt.
Men ändå ligger ju den där moralen och gnager lite under ytan. Jag finner mig kontemplera Duras komplexa personlighet. Det här kanske är en kontroversiell och dum tanke, men finns det inte något autistiskt över hennes sätt att förhålla sig till det som sker, och över sättet att skildra det? Jag vill inte förminska eller förvanska åt endera hållet (autismen i sig, Duras i sig), men någonstans får det något att gå ihop för mig.
Hursomhelst, filmisk (duh), och poetisk läsning, trots (eller kanske på grund av) sin lite redogörande, dokumentära stil.

[Writerlibrarian · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you haven't read the first book and seen the movie it's probably rubbish with pretty words. But I've read the original, I've seen the movie, I've read some about Duras' life so this remixing of the most important part of her life in reaction to the movie (which she did not approve of) in a time where she was battling alcohol addiction, was in and out of hospital is brutally raw. I like it. I like it even more than the original and it makes me want to read about the novel she wrote about her mother's life and the first time she wrote about the 'affair'.

Lots of stream of conscience type of writing. Repetitions of words, phrases. The main characters do not have names still, except for the brothers and others real life characters. The style is raw, like open wound raw. It does give the story an urgency that original didn't have. Which makes it better for me as a reader.

[Dina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Que excelente manera de volver a contar una historia, con la nostalgia de lo que nunca se volverá a ver. Si les gusto el amante tienen que leer este con partes de la historia mucho más detalladas y abiertas.

[وليد الشايجي · Rating 3 out of 5]

جميلة كما هو متوقع... تكنيك فرنسي محض، ولكنه عميق جدا. حب، ألم، شغف، استعمار، لا اظنه ببعيد عن السيرة الذاتية للكاتبة.

[Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Looking back on the time when I first became interested in Duras' The Lover, I can see how this interest was highly influenced by the complex alienation and exhaustion I was operating under. I was raised and continue to live in a very unique sector of the US that has a far greater Asian population than usual for that country, and nascent experiences with romantic relationships were largely of an interracial nature that was rarely, if ever, reflected in the annals of the sort of literature that I was, at that time, using as a life raft of self worth. So, to find The Lover, a colonial Lolita with far more complicated aspects of race and Orientalism, was a beacon to me, and is likely why I pushed through the novel narrative structure and themes that, if published today by someone without Duras' standing, would likely be far more controversial than it was way back when. Reading this, the purported sequel, a number of years later at twice the age of the narrative's protagonist was rather informative as I watched my US-bred, Puritanical/abstinence centered sex ed trained self throw alarm bells out and then subside as I continued to traverse through the prepubescent sex work, incest, and glib, practically flattered, auctioning off of girls for a family's welfare. Amongst all this were true spots of beauty, not to mention that I continue to value literature such as this that has an immense potential for generating analysis in academic directories. Even now, having finished the book several days ago, I feel the urge to watch at least one of those highfalutin types of films with their weird Frenchy focuses that this particular work is overtly framed as an uber-literary script for, but the story, for all its taboo material, is nothing special, and the build up of images was uprooted from its crescendo by a rather heavy handed ending. Perhaps that was what really happened in Duras' experiences: all I know is that it might have made for a better movie, but in prose, it lays it on rather thick.

Much as I've seen talk of the 21st century bringing back the Roaring 20s, the 20th century really will, in all its horror and wonder, never happen again. Here we have an esteemed author recounting a bildungsroman that is almost always framed as being destined to end in trauma, disease, and other forms of ruin, and yet the story is one that observes the taboo nature and then, in a sort of conscientious blitheness, moves on. Beyond that, the landscape and invoked balances of light and shadow and sound do appeal, and when Duras chooses to, she is capable of conjuring magically nostalgic vistas of a world that will never again exist, for even if an apocalypse resets humanity's clockwork, it won't fully wipe out the impact interconnected technologies and consequent burgeoning international anti-bigotry awareness has had in the hundred years or so that separated this work's child figure from the modern day. I won't deny how visually seductive the work is, but the impact that poverty, racism, and lack of comprehensive sexual education have on the mores of the work is physically tangible, and the fact that Duras survived and even prospered is not something that happens often, judging by how few other authors have dwelt on such a life and reached such a height of esteem. A gorgeously crafted dagger riddled with tetanus, rabies, and the devil knows what else, then, and this time around, Duras wasn't as successful at seducing me into appreciating the interplay of memory and form as she was seven years ago. Indeed, at this point, I believe I've had my fill of her works in general, so until some 1001-type list or other form of elitist indoctrination succeeds in swaying my reading choices, I'm content with leaving this author and her retold stories behind.

It was by fortune that I acquired this book out of a desire to give a long ago experienced woman in translation a second go and by fortune that I ended up reading it this year (a challenge required reading a book published during one's birth year, which in my case is far more contemporary than the challenge creators intended). After all these coincidences, I'm content to leave a record of how I responded to this singular work that, in many ways, was comparatively more informed and straightforward when juxtaposed with its prequel: something that can also be said when comparing I as a reader to my self of 2013. However, loss of mystique entails less opportunity for those who engage with this sort of material to lie to themselves, and in these fraught times of presentation and taboo, some have taken it upon themselves to scold those who write about their experiences for being explicitly honest about them. As it stands, this work covers ground similar to that of Bastard of Carolina, albeit with more Oriental ghosts and their residual poison (just look at Euro/Neo-Euro mass media treatment of a particular illness in China while (white) US anti-vaxxers bring the tremendously more contagious measles back from the grave on an international scale). With that, it's simply time to move on, until I next feel the need to revisit an author who, for lack of a better term, continues to haunt me.