Writing

2011
Author:

Marguerite Duras
Translated by Mark Polizzotti

Celebrated writer Marguerite Duras on the artistic process

Writing, one of Marguerite Duras’s last works, is a meditation on writing and her need for solitude in order to write. In the five short pieces collected here, she explores experiences that had an emotional impact on her and inspired her to write. Both autobiographical and fictional, Writing displays Duras’s unique worldview and sensitive insight in her simple, poetic prose.

Writing displays Duras’s unique, detailed perception to reveal great reverence for human life and respect for memory. An enthralling book.

Library Journal

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Literature

Writing, one of Marguerite Duras’s last works, is a meditation on the process of writing and on her need for solitude in order to do it. In the five short pieces collected in this volume, she explores experiences that had an emotional impact on her and that inspired her to write. These vary from the death of a pilot in World War II, to the death of a fly, to an art exhibition. Two of the pieces were made into documentary films, and one was originally a short film. Both autobiographical and fictional, like much of her work, Writing displays Duras’s unique worldview and sensitive insight in her simple and poetic prose.

Born in 1914 in French Indochina, Marguerite Duras was one of France’s most important twentieth-century literary figures. She wrote the screenplay for the French film Hiroshima mon amour, directed by Alain Resnais, and her novel The Lover won the Prix Goncourt in 1984 and was also made into a widely acclaimed film. Upon her death in Paris in 1996, Alain Juppe, then prime minister of France, mourned her as “a great writer whose magnificent and disturbing style, the symbol of the nouveau roman, turned contemporary world literature upside down.”

Mark Polizzotti is the author of six books and the translator of more than thirty, including works by Gustave Flaubert, Marguerite Duras, Jean Echenoz, and Maurice Roche.

Writing displays Duras’s unique, detailed perception to reveal great reverence for human life and respect for memory. An enthralling book.

Library Journal

Mark Polizzotti’s translation from the French captures the poetic simplicity of Duras’s style—a language delicate, yet rich in imagery.

Emily-Greta Tabourin, New York Times Book Review

Writing displays Duras’s unique, detailed perception to reveal great reverence for human life and respect for memory. An enthralling book.

Library Journal

Writing is a lovely little volume that would serve as a nice addition to a reader's other books by Duras, or as a great introduction to a very original thinker and artist.

blogcritics.org

Written in a bare, stream-of-consciousness style, these five essays are masterful. Duras compares the process of developing style to a dying fly in this stunning, nearly confessional work of writing from one of the most dynamic writers of the 20th century.

Bitch Media