Marguerite Duras (post 3): Puzzling novels like this are often seen as “experimental” or “the madness of art,” but puzzling may mean multiple personality.

The Lover, an 84-page novel that often makes no sense (see post 2), was a bestseller, translated into 43 languages, and awarded France’s Prix Goncourt.

Did readers think that its unexplained jumps from one subject and time to another, and between first and third-person narration, were “experimental technique” or “the madness of art”? (Search “experimental” for past posts on that misnomer.) (Also search “madness of art.”)

“Marguerite Duras” is a pseudonym. An author’s pseudonyms may be the names of alternate personalities. It is an obvious possibility, once you think of it. (Search “pseudonyms” for further discussion.)

Although the novel was touted by the author as autobiographical, one of the narrators says near the beginning: “The story of my life doesn’t exist. Does not exist…There are great spaces where you pretend there used to be someone, but it’s not true, there was no one” (i.e., no one of which that personality was aware). She is being honest, but most readers don’t believe her.

In spite of its puzzling aspects, The Lover was, in fact, a bestseller, translated into 43 languages, and winner of the Prix Goncourt. It joins many other works in world literature that violate common sense, but are otherwise well-written, engaging, and even coherent, in their own way: a puzzling combination, suggestive of multiple personality.