NOT LONG AGO, I WAS CONTEMPLATING A VISIT TO THE renowned Institute for Contemporary Publishing Archives. There, in a magnificently renovated former abbey just outside of Caen, visitors may make an appointment to consult, among other treasures, the original manuscripts of Marcel Proust and Marguerite Duras. Before going, I searched the internet for a list of the authors whose archives are preserved there, and, to my astonishment, there was the name of G.M. A few months previously he had donated to this noble institution all his manuscripts, including the correspondence from his love affairs. At last, his posterity is guaranteed. His works are now a part of literary history.

For the time being, I have decided not to visit the Institute. I picture myself sitting down in the grand reading room in solemn silence to decipher the spidery handwriting of one of my favorite authors, all the while wondering if the person sitting next to me is consulting the letters I wrote when I was fourteen. I imagine myself applying for permission to access these letters. I’d have to invent some untruth, a thesis on transgression in the fiction of the second half of the twentieth century, a dissertation on the collected works of G.M. Would my request have to be submitted to him first? Would his authorization be required? What an irony, to be obliged to employ such a ruse for the right to read my own letters.

In the meantime, and although the thought of book burning has always filled me with horror, I wouldn’t be opposed to a great carnival of confetti made from my signed books and all the letters from G. I found recently at the bottom of a box left at my mother’s apartment for all these years. I’ll spread them out around me, and with a big pair of scissors I’ll snip them carefully into tiny bits of paper that I’ll throw in the air on a windy day in some secret corner of the Luxembourg Gardens.

At least posterity won’t have them then.