Marguerite Duras: L'Homme assis dans le couloir | The Man Sitting in the Corridor (1980)

Marguerite Duras began the original version of L’Homme assis dans le couloir, an erotic short story, in 1962, during her relationship with Gérard Jarlot. She asked Jarlot if she should ditch it, start it again, but he said no, it’s great, you must finish it.

Duras made three copies, gave one to Jarlot, one to her friend Madeleine Alleins, and kept one for the bottom drawer – all of this according Laure Adler, who, according to Wikipédia, turned down the post of Ministère de la Culture in 2016 as she thought the offer was a hoax. Laure Adler in exchange for the clueless Fleur Pellerin? Uh?

I digress. Adler continues to say that Duras discovered the typescript in 1968 (after Jarlot’s death) and in 1969 anonymously sent it to Jérôme Lindon (of Minuit, of course), who almost immediately recognised the writing style as coming from Duras. Not too sure what happened between, although Duras re-wrote this slight story and it was published a number of years later.

Here, we have a narrator who at times gets close up to the characters. There’s a woman dressed just in a very flimsy silk dress in front of a man sitting in a corridor, she sucks him, he penetrates her, they come, he beats her and it’s not certain at the end if she’s asleep or.

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 Pluie d'été