The Women Writers Who Destroyed Their Own Work

How the French writers Marguerite Duras and Barbara Molinard first met is unclear, but their friendship was one of such mutual admiration that it now seems a fated union. Different though their lives were, the two women shared an important characteristic: In their fiction, they both offered intimate depictions of the misogyny they suffered. This was unusual, even shocking, for women writers at the time.   

By the mid-1960s, Duras was a prolific writer and an acclaimed filmmaker within the French intellectual class. No one knew Molinard. In her 40s, she began to write short fiction and did so with an unusual fervor, sometimes working for weeks without pause. To this day, little is known about Molinard precisely because she did not wish to be known. She went to great pains to ensure this, destroying nearly every page she wrote.

“Everything Barbara Molinard has written has been torn to shreds,” Duras announced in the preface to , Molinard’s collection of grotesque and bleakly antic stories, first published in France in 1969 and released last year in the U.S. in a brilliant translation by Emma Ramadan. Duras was, which were rescued by Duras and by Molinard’s husband, were spared.