Marguerite Duras and Xavière Gauthier: Les Parleuses (1974)

Les Parleuses is a collection of five long interviews Xavière Gauthier* had with Marguerite Duras: one in May 1973, four in July 1973. The novelty here is that the interviews are in their original form, unedited, a transcript including pauses, errors, repetitions, glasses of wine, etc. Sometimes, Gauthier writes in her Foreword, the women got so involved in their conversation that the tape recorder band had long finished.

Inevitably, some of the material here – perhaps the talk of the male-female relationship, and certainly of French politics (this being only five years after the événements of May 68) – comes across as dated, but there is a great deal of fascinating information here about Duras's aethetics both as a writer and as a film-maker. It was also published a little before Hélène Cixous's Le Rire de la Méduse (1975), which outlined the theory of l'écriture féminine, an expression Duras and Gaulthier are seen groping for here.

Both speakers here are clearly very left wing, and Duras is shown here as a revolutionary artist in more ways than one. Duras (apart from her earlier work) wrote books and made films often using the names of her her previous characters, although it isn't always clear who they are, and indeed Duras (who sometimes forgets what she's previously written because it isn't important) often doesn't know the answer. She sees writing as an activity for the reader to fill in their own answers to, or (perhaps better) to make their own suggestions about: she calls herself an 'echo chamber'. There is something very palimpsestic about her work.

These conversations further strengthen the fact that Duras was not only a most original writer, but also an extremely important one.

* Xavière Gauthier's doctoral thesis was on surrealism and sexuality, which she turned into a book. She also wrote a book on the surrrealist artist and writer Leonor Fini (1973), and La Vierge: Biographie de Louise Michel (1999).
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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