Dangerous Liaisons

In one of the most famous letters in the book, Valmont composes a love note to the devout Madame de Tourvel while lying with a courtesan, using her body as his writing desk, each pious phrase doubling as a lewd joke the woman he is courting will never catch. That is Dangerous Liaisons in miniature: a war fought entirely on paper, where seduction is a military campaign and tenderness is only another feint. Laclos, an artillery officer who wrote only this one novel, lets the letters do the damage; sincerity and its counterfeit grow impossible to tell apart, even by the people writing them. Valmont sets out to ruin Tourvel as a proof of skill and is genuinely undone by her, unable to find the line between his performance and his heart. The Marquise de Merteuil is the colder, finer mind, a woman who forged her intelligence into a blade because her century handed her nothing else to hold. They believe they are the players. The letters they cannot stop writing are the trap.