Marguerite Duras: La Pute de la côte normande (1986)

Marguerite Duras’s La Pute de la côte normande (lit. 'The Normandy coast tart') is a brief booklet first published in November 1986 in Libération and called a ‘complément nécessaire’ to reading Yeux bleus cheveux noirs (see my post below), in which she wrote about her appartment in L’ Hôtel des Roches noires in Trouville, where she lived with the homosexual Yann Andréa, an impossible love relationship.

She describes him typing the account for her, his anger, yelling at her, calling her the title of this piece that she later wrote about him: ‘La Pute de la côte normande’, shouting at her. He goes cruising, looking for handsome men, searches the hotels, even in golf clubs, but she is frightened to lend him the car. She dedicates Yeux bleus cheveux noirs to Yann, who after Duras’s death was named her literary executor and received ten per cent of her royalties, which Thierry Ardisson made clear on French TV when Yann – on the publication of his book ‘Cet amour-là (1999) – sat next to Jean-Luc Mélenchon, hardly said a word to Ardisson’s questions, and left the programme after a few minutes: not out of any malice on anyone’s part, but he didn’t have anything to say.

In retrospect, what could he have said that wasn’t in his book, which he partly pointed out, but then there must be an obvious problem here: what could Yann have expected from the eagerness of the media to gain footage from him, and what could the media have expected to achieve from an author reluctant to say anything?

My Marguerite Duras posts:
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Marguerite Duras: La Pute de la côte normande
Marguerite Duras: L'Homme assis dans le couloir
Marguerite Duras: Agatha
Marguerite Duras: Emily L.
Marguerite Duras: Les Yeux bleus cheveux noirs
Marguerite Duras: L'Amant | The Lover
Marguerite Duras: Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein
Marguerite Duras: L'Amante anglaise
Laure Adler: Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Duras: Cimetière du Montparnasse
Marguerite Duras: Un barrage contre le Pacifique
Marguerite Duras: L'Après-midi de Monsieur Andesmas
Marguerite Duras: Les Petits Chevaux de Tarquinia
Marguerite Duras: Le Marin de Gibraltar | The Sailor from Gibraltar
Marguerite Duras: La Douleur | The War: A Memoir
Yann Andréa: Cet amour-là
Marguerite Duras and Xavière Gauthier: Les Parleuses
Marguerite Duras: Savannah Bay
Marguerite Duras: Détruire, dit-elle | Destroy, She Said
Marguerite Duras: L'Amour
Marguerite Duras: Dix heures et demie du soir en été
Marguerite Duras: Le Square | The Square
Marguerite Duras: Les Impudents
Marguerite Duras: Le Shaga
Marguerite Duras: Oui, peut-être
Marguerite Duras: Des journées entières dans les arbres
Marguerite Duras: Suzanna Andler
Marguerite Duras: Le Vice-Consul | The Vice Consul
Marguerite Duras: Moderato cantabile
Marguerite Duras: La Vie matérielle
Marguerite Duras: La Vie tranquille
Marguerite Duras: La Pluie d'été