Culture January 1, 1

I must start with the ending: In a postscript to her collection of highly crafted stories of desire, French novelist and professor Anne Garréta undermines the project she has developed in the preceding chapters. Throughout, she conjures past lovers and those she has wanted—one woman after another, fashioned into words from memory. Then she casts doubt on the entire pursuit. Why write about women who incited desire—even if the desire held a terrifying sway—when we live in the time of the logorrhea of desire? There’s surely nothing transgressive left about it in our age of “pornocracy.” How to write about