Marguerite Duras: A Life

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Overview

When Marguerite Duras was published in France in 1998, it reached the top of the bestseller lists immediately, and Duras, who had led an unapologetically controversial life, was propelled once again into the headlines. The author of The Lover, Hiroshima Mon Amour, and The War: A Memoir, Duras has long been a symbol of France's complex role in World War II and the country's troubled colonial relations in Asia, as well as a fascinating embodiment of the tensions between autobiography and fiction. Now available in English, Marguerite Duras confronts the truths and falsehoods in the life of the enigmatic author.

Adler, through her exploration of the events central to Duras's career, including...

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Overview

When Marguerite Duras was published in France in 1998, it reached the top of the bestseller lists immediately, and Duras, who had led an unapologetically controversial life, was propelled once again into the headlines. The author of The Lover, Hiroshima Mon Amour, and The War: A Memoir, Duras has long been a symbol of France's complex role in World War II and the country's troubled colonial relations in Asia, as well as a fascinating embodiment of the tensions between autobiography and fiction. Now available in English, Marguerite Duras confronts the truths and falsehoods in the life of the enigmatic author.

Adler, through her exploration of the events central to Duras's career, including her affair with and eventual denunciation of a Nazi collaborator and her childhood in Indochina, reveals Duras as the consummate pragmatist. She has combed through archives, unearthed letters, studied unpublished manuscripts, and interviewed scores of Duras's friends, lovers, enemies, and colleagues--as well as Duras herself--and she emerges with the richest portrait we have of Duras's life: her upbringing, her student days at the Sorbonne, her career as a novelist and filmmaker, and her involvement in French politics through the most complex decades of the twentieth century. "The masks and the truth" was the headline of a French review of Marguerite Duras, and Adler explores both, probing the line between fiction and selfhood and between political activities and personal responsibility.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly
Duras (1914-1995) is a figure of continuing interest to Francophiles, readers interested in women's writing and devotees of modern films like Hiroshima mon amour. With verve and poignancy, this bestselling 1998 French biography (available for the first time in English) reveals Duras as an intellectual diva and difficult woman pursued by the ghosts of her past and a lifelong call to write. Historian and journalist Adler is able to present this complex picture through her extensive use of intimate sources (including Duras's son Jean and his father, Dionys), as well as her understanding of the high drama of Duras's life. From her childhood in colonial Indochina to her involvement in the Resistance and the development of French postwar cinema and literature, Duras (born Marguerite Donnadieu) was at the center of 20th-century French history; Adler balances her subject and her times with a familiarity that draws readers in and makes reading particularly pleasurable. Moreover, Adler interweaves her discussion of Duras's writing with her life--and how each influenced the other. For example, on lover Dionys's infidelity, Adler writes, "Like all women, Marguerite knew the man she was living with was being unfaithful. Like all women, she knew even though she didn't want to know," a situation that is mirrored by Duras in her work The Little Horses of Tarquinia. Similarly, details of Duras's happy young motherhood and even her dark last years reveal her humanity and make this biography as much a tale of a person as of a cultural icon. Duras once said of herself, "I'm not sure I could put up with Duras"; readers may find themselves agreeing halfway through the book, but that won't stop them from reading to the end anyway--to catch all the jewels Adler strews in their path. The book's cover, with a photo of Duras, beautiful and luminous, will inflame readers' attention. Illus. not seen by PW. (Nov.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
Throughout her life, writer and filmmaker Marguerite Duras created several selves, and this well-researched biography often succeeds in sorting the facts from the fiction. Born in Indochina (the frequent focus of her writings) in 1914, Duras became sexually involved with a Chinese man when she was 15. This affair began a life of sexual pleasure and freedom. Estranged socially, she returned in her late teens to France, where she studied at the Sorbonne, married, had affairs, and began writing. There, her reputation as a novelist (The Lover; Hiroshima Mon Amour) is well established and honored, but her political views, as well as her private life, have been the subject of inquiry and controversy. Author, historian, and journalist Adler interviewed many people for this book, including Duras, whose memory was fading. The author admits to gaps in this biography, but what is here is admirable, readable, and haunting, especially considering that Duras--frequently at odds with reality and yet a committed realist--wrote, "The story of my life doesn't exist. Does not exist." After reading this biography, many readers will not agree.--Robert L. Kelly, Fort Wayne Community Schs., IN Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
More Reviews (2) Fewer Reviews
Booknews
Marguerite Duras lived a full artistic life as a novelist, journalist, filmmaker, playwright, and director. French journalist and historian Adler examines this prolific, brilliant, and troubled writer's life, aided by photographs, Duras's published and unpublished texts, and taped interviews with Duras. Adler also traces Duras's involvement in the key political events of her time, including her opposition to the Algerian War and her exuberant response to the events of May, 1968. Translated from the French edition (Editions Gallimard, Paris 1998). Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Kirkus Reviews
A thoroughly researched biography of the cult filmmaker and novelist. Duras (The Lover, Hiroshima Mon Amour, etc.) was not only a fabulously prolific novelist, but also a journalist, filmmaker, playwright, director, Resistance activist, communist, alcoholic, lover, and—perhaps above all else—voyeur. French journalist Adler's portrayal of her as the embodiment of paradox is simultaneously thrilling and repellent, for she makes it impossible to decide with any certainty whether her subject was a monstrous lunatic or a genius of self-creation. By turns arrogant and insecure, Duras was also megalomaniacal, infinitely needy, brilliant, calculating, generous, and petty. A child of colonial Indochina who never recovered from her effective prostitution by her mother, her incestuous relationship with one brother, and her abuse at the hands of the other, she was obsessed with all things sexual and criminal. During WWII she personally oversaw the brutal torture of her Nazi lover (whom she had denounced), and throughout her career she repeatedly fixated on real-life murders as the macabre material for her work. Addicted to sex, alcohol, and writing, this woman of inexhaustible energy and ambition left a long trail of discarded lovers and disowned novels behind her, but in the process she managed to become one of the most influential voices of her generation. Duras knew Mitterand during his early Resistance days, gave Depardieu his first film role, and regularly served dinner to Lacan. The author re-creates her life through interviews, correspondence, photographs, and her published and unpublished texts, capturing her voracious intensity with considerable skill and sensitivity. Afascinatingstudy of one of the strangest and most remarkable French writers of the last century. Carter, Robert A. BUFFALO BILL CODY: The Man Behind the Legend Wiley (512 pp.) Oct. 6, 2000

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780226007588
  • Publisher: University of Chicago Press
  • Publication date: 12/28/2000
  • Edition description: 1
  • Pages: 416
  • Product dimensions: 6.00 (w) x 9.25 (h) x 1.30 (d)

Meet the Author

Laure Adler is a historian and journalist who served as a cultural adviser to the Office of the French Presidency from 1989 to 1992. She is the author of numerous books, including L'amour à l'arsenic: histoirede Marie Lafarge, Les femmes politiques, and L'année des adieux.

Anne-Marie Glasheen's translations include two collections of plays by contemporary playwrights and seveal novel, most notably Oedipus on the Road by Henry Bauchau. She is a past Chair of the Translators Association, and in 1998 she was awarded the literary translation prize by the Communauté française de Belgique.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations Preface
1. A Child of Indo-China
2. The Mother
3. The Lover
4. Rue Saint-Benoît
5. From Collaboration to Resistance
6. The Road to Liberation
7. The Party
8. Motherhood
9. How Can Anyone Not Write?
10. The Journalist
11. Roots and Revolt
12. In the Dark Room
13. The Street and the Camera
14. The Duras Cult
15. Yann
16. The Lover
17. Eyes Wide Open to Nowhere
Notes
The complete works of Marguerite Duras
Acknowledgements
Index

Recipe

When Marguerite Duras was published in France in 1998, it reached the top of the bestseller lists immediately, and Duras, who had led an unapologetically controversial life, was propelled once again into the headlines. The author of The Lover, Hiroshima Mon Amour, and The War: A Memoir, Duras has long been a symbol of France's complex role in World War II and the country's troubled colonial relations in Asia, as well as a fascinating embodiment of the tensions between autobiography and fiction. Now available in English, Marguerite Duras confronts the truths and falsehoods in the life of the enigmatic author.

Adler, through her exploration of the events central to Duras's career, including her affair with and eventual denunciation of a Nazi collaborator and her childhood in Indochina, reveals Duras as the consummate pragmatist. She has combed through archives, unearthed letters, studied unpublished manuscripts, and interviewed scores of Duras's friends, lovers, enemies, and colleagues—as well as Duras herself—and she emerges with the richest portrait we have of Duras's life: her upbringing, her student days at the Sorbonne, her career as a novelist and filmmaker, and her involvement in French politics through the most complex decades of the twentieth century. "The masks and the truth" was the headline of a French review of Marguerite Duras, and Adler explores both, probing the line between fiction and selfhood and between political activities and personal responsibility.

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