“An Excerpt by Madeline E.”, by alumni Gabriel Blackwell (fiction, ’09), appears online at The Collapsar:
[EXT. Redwoods (DAY)]
…
There comes a point in our lives when we are most often and most emphatically ourselves on those days when we like to think we are not ourselves.
(Geoff Dyer, Out of Sheer Rage)
…
Since Carlotta (like Judy) is a brunette, but Judy-as-Madeleine does not change her hair color when she goes into her trance as Carlotta, the woman whom Scottie follows at the start is Judy-as-Madeleine[-as-Carlotta] (brunette-as-blonde[-as-brunette]). Where Gavin hints that Madeleine is the reincarnation of a dead woman, Scottie first sees Judy, after the murder, as the resurrected form of what he (rightly) perceives as another dead woman, Madeleine. And one reason why Judy-as-Madeleine-as-Judy-as-Madeleine does not look quite right is because what Scottie really wants to see is Judy-as-Madeleine-as-Judy-as-Madeleine[-as-Carlotta].
(Wendy Doniger, The Woman Who Pretended to be Who She Was)
