LA BATARDE by Violette Leduc. 488 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $6.95.
Violette Leduc is 58 and, by her own admission, illegitimate, ugly and homosexual. She has managed to put all these dubious assets to some use: she is a writer of autobiographies, of which La Bâtarde, her fifth, was a considerable success in existential circles. It is a success based not on wit, wisdom or literary grace but on the unpleasant pleasure many people find in watching someone else behave shamelessly. Violette Leduc, shameless to the point of masochism, confesses to her...
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