Barbara Probst Solomon
MARGUERITE DURAS:
THE POLITICS OF PASSION
This past year, while I was reading both
The War: A Mem–
oir
and
The Lover,
the themes in those books reminded me of my
meeting with Marguerite Duras in New York in, I think, 1964.
Despite her success with
Hiroshima,
perhaps because it was during
the height of the anti-Americanism of French intellectuals, not much
fuss seemed to be made about her visit here. One of her American
editors, I believe at Grove Press, had sent out an S.O.S. to find an
American writer who spoke French, drove a car, and had some free
time to take her around the city and to Coney Island. I had just
published my first novel, and I was still so bewildered that it had ac–
tually been put in print, and that I was expected to do another one,
that I spent most of my time lazily doing nothing. In brief, I was
unemployed. So when I was recruited for the job, I was delighted.
Ed Lyons, the husband of my friend, Augusta Lyons, drove us out
to Coney Island in his battered old station wagon.
My relation to Duras that day wasn't of one writer to another,
but more like that of a professor on an outing with a promising
graduate student. She showed up at my apartment on Central Park
West wearing a brown suede jacket, low walking shoes, and one of
those well-cut wool sweaters atop an equally well-cut French skirt, of
the sort French Left Bank women wore then that made them look in–
tellectual yet stylish. Duras was definite about what she wanted. A
walk along the boardwalk, the seals, and she had been informed that
the hot dogs of Nathan's were not to be missed. Ed and I walked on
either side of her. Much later I realized that all of what we did, saw,
and talked about, that day, was stage-managed by Duras . She was
the most extraordinarily visual person I had ever met. We had
driven through Carnarsie, along the Bay , to get to Coney Island.
Marguerite Duras refused to believe that those commodious white
Editor's Note: This essay was first presented as a talk given at the 1986 spring collo–
quium on Marguerite Duras held by the New York University Department of
French in conjunction with the French Government and the Alliance Franffaise.
Copyright
0
1986 Barbara Probst Solomon.
