Paul Valery’s Monsieur Teste is a book cut-up—a book composed of fragments, or maybe more accurately, a book as evidence of the fragmentary nature of experience.

In fact while Valery published a slim volume titled Monsieur Teste in 1896, Valery kept scribbling about this Teste figure in his notebooks, using him as a sort of philosophical alter-ego throughout his life: “The systematic use of Me as He.” Or, “I confess that I have made an idol of my mind, but I have found no other.”

The Princeton UP edition I read begins with the original publication, followed notes and fragments the translator collected together.

and I added, repeating what all rather simple-minded people think: “So, what am I doing here?”
“Well…,” said Monsieur Teste, “you are wondering what you are doing here….”