
I never went back to her writing
after High School. I guess she was the “it” girl in French literature by the
time our French teacher made us read her. I missed the point of the hype then. I could gladly
have finished my days without ever hearing her name again. But the other week I
went to the local flea market and there she was on the cover of a secondhand
book, posing in front of a typewriter, a few pages of a manuscript and a packet
of Gauloises cigarettes next to it .
When I began to read the
English translation of her wartime notebooks it came back why I remembered her from
the French lessons from forty years ago: Duras is easy to read, even in a
foreign language. I don’t pretend to like all her stories and I could never stand her films but I love
her simple and straightforward style of writing. This becomes even more
poignant in the telegram style of her rough drafts. I’m glad I found Duras again.
I won’t be going back to her novels but I urge every aspiring writer to get a
copy of “Wartime Notebooks” as a reminder that it doesn’t take big words to
tell a story – just the right ones.
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