Chekhov's Mistress
Edmund White on Marguerite Duras
Having recently read Marguerite Duras’ absolutely gorgeous if it weren’t so ultimately sad Yann Andréa Steiner, Edmund White’s piece in the New York Review of Books comes as an education as to just how dour her life was. Frankly, from what I read in White’s piece her life was so destructive it’s repelling at the same time it’s interesting:
“Before her cure, she was holed up in her château dictating one much-worked-on line a day to Andréa, who would type it up. Then they would start uncorking cheap Bordeaux and she’d drink two glasses, vomit, then continue on till she’d drunk as many as nine liters and would pass out. She could no longer walk, or scarcely. She said she drank because she knew God did not exist. Her very sympathetic doctor would visit her almost daily and offer to take her to the hospital, but only if she wanted to live. She seemed undecided for a long time but at last she opted for life since she was determined to finish a book that she’d already started and was very keen about.”
comments
I agree, it was a very illuminating piece!
Have you read L’amant or seen the film adaptation? They paint a very sad picture of Duras’s youth, even if, as White points out, they were revisions of the truth.
– Maitresse (07/07 at 07:03 PM)
I’m not saying she and her writing are above criticism, or that she wasn’t capable of being self-absorbed and ridiculous and maybe even — judging by her censor work — amoral, but I don’t believe the author of the magnificent The Lover can be so smoothly consigned to the role of camp diva.
– house painters (08/12 at 09:21 AM)
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About this Post
- Posted by: Bud Parr
- Date: June 09, 2008
- Filed Under:
Wise Men Fish Here: Literature
- Comments:2
- Links to this Post: Technorati
