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Jean Vallier. C'était Marguerite Duras, 1914-1945. Paris: Fayard, 2006. 703 pp. ISBN 2-2136-2884-X, Euro27.
This new biography was published in May 2006 on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of Marguerite Duras's death. It was preceded by an album, entitled Marguerite Duras, la vie comme un roman, compiled by the same author and retracing the main steps of Duras's life through photographic documentation of her familiar settings, parents, friends, and acquaintances. After Alain Vircondelet's Duras, biographie and Christiane Blot-Labarrère's Marguerite Duras, writing a biography of Duras seems to have been an exercise avoided by Durassian scholars. Duras specialists, nurtured by the anti-positivism of French criticism since Roland Barthes, which dissociates literary production from the "author's" existence, are overly cautious when it comes to analyzing her fictional texts in the light of her life. Furthermore, they have been constantly reminded of the uncertainty of her life story, by the mixture of concealment, distortion, and revelation she has embedded in her autobiographical accounts, from Un barrage contre le Pacifique (1950) to L'Amant de la Chine du nord (1991). Therefore, the most recent biographical accounts have been confined to journalists or para-scholar researchers (Frédérique Lebelley, Laure Adler, Jean Vallier). Their common point: distinguish the fictional elements of the narratives, which in the case of Duras have acquired legendary dimensions, from the truth. Jean Vallier is certainly conscious of the perilous and ambiguous path he takes. Nevertheless, his work aims to expose scrupulously the facts of Duras's life, and thus contrasts that which took place in her life...