If "La Bâtarde" describes the weight of a malediction—the stigmata of [Leduc's] birth, rejection by her mother, guilt and will to self-annihilation, narcissism and first homosexual loves—"Mad in Pursuit" is the story of this malediction redeemed and forged into a vocation…. The book is in part the story of a salvation through writing, through assumption of the risks of confession and the effort to fix one's perception of the world on paper, and daily struggle with pen and notebook to render exactly what has been seen. This is the interior "madness" referred to in the original title, "La Folie en tête." She chooses imprisonment—in the "black den" of her room, in the solitary labor of writing—in order to escape the inner prison.

A phrase runs through the book like a leitmotif: Simone de Beauvoir's question, "Have you been working?" By working she...