Week 9: Liaison: The True Story of M. Butterfly by Joyce Wadler (Bantam, 1993, hardcover)
In 1964, Bernard Boursicot met Shi Pei Pu in a China opera house. He was a French diplomat; Pu was an opera singer. After a romance that lasted decades and appeared to produce at least one child, both were on trial in France for espionage—Boursicot had given Pu government documents. The scandal went beyond politics. It became an international sensation because it raised fundamental questions about gender, love, and the intimacies of sex; for the near entirety of those years, Boursicot believed he’d been in love with, and been sexually intimate, with a Chinese woman pretending to be a man. In truth, Pu was a man pretending to be a woman.
Wadler’s book is an exploration of this scandal, based on interviews with Boursicot and Pu. The book intermixes chapters on the story with “duets” between Wadler, as the reporter, and Boursicot. These duets go to the primary question that drove the story—how could Boursicot believe for all those years that Pu was a woman and that they’d conceived a child? Wadler gets to the nitty-gritty, asking questions about sexual copulation in a rather tabloid attempt to understand how Boursicot could have sex with a man while believing that Pu was a woman.
The more revealing truth of the story and of Boursicot and Pu come in the chapters between these “duets.” Here, Adler provides a more nuanced and insight exploration of Boursicot’s sexuality (he was admittedly bisexual), his rather inept political skills, and his long-standing devotion to Pu. The answer to the question of Boursicot’s deception is as complicated as any relationship and doesn’t fall to simply the question of sex. He is at the same time a naïve romantic, a deceived fool, and a charming scoundrel. Perhaps he deluded himself; perhaps he was afraid of fully recognizing publicly his sexuality; perhaps he desired to be a father. While no clear answer comes out as to why he believed Pu was a woman despite the doubts of others, it is clear that he believed.
Wadler’s story, between the “duets” is interesting and informative. The writing is clear and the story engaging.In particular for me, it provides depth to the well-written play “M. Butterfly” by Henry David Wang which was based on this story. I’d recommend this novel, particularly for those familiar with the play. Wadler’s book, while interesting of its own, really gains depth for me in playing off the issues explored in Wang’s play.
Next week . . . The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien.