It can't really be called "writing." I found myself looking at pages regularly filled with small, calm, extraordinarily even handwriting. The War is one of the most important things in my life. The first time I thought about it was when the magazine Sorcieres asked me for a text I'd written when I was young. How could I have written this thing I still can't put a name to, and that appalls me when I reread it? And how could I have left it lying for years in a house in the country that's regularly flooded in winter? One thing is certain: it is inconceivable to me that I could have written it while I was actually awaiting Robert L.'s return. When would I have done so, in what year, at what times of day, in what house? I can't remember. But I can't see myself writing the diary. I can see the place, the Gare d' Orsay, and the various comings and goings. I recognize my own handwriting and the details of the story. I know I did, I know it was I who wrote it. I have no recollection of having written it. I found this diary in a couple of exercise books in the blue cupboards at Neauphle-le-Chateau. Duras the woman reminds us that we may all come to such days. Duras the writer demonstrates that the monumental themes of existence leap to life most unforgettably in small stories of the overlapping lives of individuals. You must read this gentle meditation on the concessions of the heart and mind that basic survival can require. Her protagonists remain fluid in the face of crisis - not because they are selfish, weak, undeserving, or inconstant, but because they cannot, will not, should not, maintain the hypocrisy of absolute position that the triumph of tyranny demands. Duras gives us characters that are neither right nor wrong, invincible nor immoral. Despite the obvious possibilities for polemicism, The War is not an account of mortal enemies. She is co-director of an outdoor classic film series, Films on the Haywall.ĭuras also writes of her complicated acquaintanceship with the Gestapo officer who first arrested her husband. Hilary Thayer Hamann is the author of Anthropology of an American Girl. Indeed, in her introduction, she claims to have no recollection of having written it : "When would I have done so, in what year, at what times of day, in what house? I can't remember." Her language is spare, her voice riveting. Duras describes war and its tragic consequences with heart-wrenching simplicity. In this slender memoir of World War II, Duras shares episodes from her life in occupied Paris, where she belonged to the French Resistance under the leadership of the country's future president, Francois Mitterrand. Whenever I need to be reminded of this beautiful implausibility, I reach for my copy of Marguerite Duras' The War. The best writing does not resist, but confirms this. Everyone knows that the bonds between humans are messy and their behaviors are mystifying. Of course, in real life, it's impossible to impose a logical grid over the baffling oddities of mature existence. The master planner in me wants to know, needs to know, the "why" of everything: love, loss, perhaps even death.
#MARGUERITE DURAS THE WAR PLOT WINDOWS#
The thinking goes like this: If character provides a story with architecture, then motive shores up the building, giving it substance, giving it style, supplying the walls and windows of conflict and resolution. As an author of character-driven fiction, I can spend countless hours considering motive.