Marguerite Duras: Détruire, dit-elle | Destroy, She Said (1969)

In a play-like novel which was later the same year turned into a haunting film with many slight changes in the dialogue and the action, four characters spend a few days in a hotel (or possibly a kind of hospital) and talk and act in ways which are not always completely sane, not always completely civil.

In fact much of this is not a little crazy, or at the very least highly off-centre, often played against the 'pock' of tennis balls in the adjoining court. There is the husband and wife team Max Thor and Alissa: Max is a teacher of the history of the future, although he has nothing to teach so his students doze; Alione, at eighteen, is half the age of her husband, and says a number of things that don't appear to make sense. Then there's Stein, who is in the process of being a writer, perhaps, and certainly he asks a number of probing questions. Completing the quartet is Elizabeth Alione, who sleeps a deal during the day, taking a number of pills as she's recovering (mainly mentally, it seems) from a miscarriage and waiting for her husband to collect her.

The quartet become to some extent closely attached, with Stein watching Max and Max watching Elizabeth, Max saying he's in love with Elizabeth, Stein snuggling up to Alissa, and Alissa apparently in love with Elizabeth, although she contrives to allow Stein to see Max making love to her in the hotel bedroom: shades of Lol V. Stein in the field watching the lovers in the hotel in S. Thala.

And of course there's the forest, a fear but an enticing fear, which Xavière Gaulthier said represents childhood, and Duras agreed. Things fall apart at the end, when Bernard Alione comes to collect his wife.

Duras said that Détruire dit-elle came out of her own despair. Her biographer Laure Adler says that the novel 'celebrates the cult of nothingness against a background of voyeurism and latent homosexuality'. Furthermore, 'The writer must be an active agent in the destruction of the bourgeoisie and the old social rules. [This novel] is only a beginning. We must continue the fight by publishing others.'

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