 |
A "sexy" header for Duras in Globe magazine (N° 30 juillet/août
1988) certainly helped sell extra issues: Duras' name was on the cover
page and the lead story begins with a man jerking off against her at a
very important reception. (*)
The "sexy" reputation of the author of L'Amant is no less marketable
with the photo used for the cover story: a large reproduction of the wrinkled
visage dévasté of the octogenarian. She wears the
inevitable "Look Duras" turtleneck and her diamond rings, the latter being
a legendary link to the "gift" from her Chinese lover. It is especially
in her later years that the press sensationalized the racy sexiness of
the author: the review of the English translation of L'Amant de la Chine
du Nord in the New York Times (27 December 1992) was simply
titled, "Immersed in the Ocean of Sex."
|
John Waters included
an homage to Dame Marguerite in Polyester
(his first commercial venture [1981] after his own eclectic films of the
1970s). At his drive-in movie theatre which impresses Francine Fishpaw
(Divine) as being "high brow," the marquee is lit with:
|
|
This very brief homage that has flashed across American movie screens is itself an ironic reflection of Duras' previous obscurity among the uninitiated suburbanites of middle America whom Waters ridicules and who would hardly break down the gates to sit through the triple feature of the marginally appealing films advertised. Duras does not aim for popular audiences in her own films, where the speed is slower than slow:
|
|
Hers are not common, action-packed, Hollywood adventures. Nor is she concerned with a reassuring realism: "Le ton réaliste des films, je ne peux plus le supporter" (Les Parleuses 134). Before the release of L'Amant, the Duras personality was shared among a select group of admirers who rarely brought her out of her relative obscurity.
As Duras became a massively best-selling author, the creation of her
character slipped out of her personal control. An amusing example of this
can be found in the satires of Duras that make a pastiche of her style
in Virginie Q. and Mururoa mon amour by "Marguerite Duraille,"
novels "presented" by Patrick Rambaud. Whereas John Waters' homage is comically
respectful, Rambaud's pastiche shows how the Durassian character can become
ridiculously stereotyped. Rambaud's facetious titles mock those of Hiroshima
mon amour and especially Emily L. and the Balland edition carefully
imitated the original Minuit cover. The first lampoon is omposed of clever
repetitions of words dear to Duras . . .
 |
PEUT-ÊTRE SOUVENT RIEN FORCÉMENT |
 |
. . . and ridicules such Durassian themes as "la douleur" and endless crying (seen in many works -- "écrire pour moi, c'était comme pleurer" [Yann Andréa Steiner, 39] -- but anticipating particularly well the excessive spouts of tears in L'Amant de la Chine du Nord). Rambaud successfully reduces the 1980s popularity of Duras to a joke, using her imitable style that includes, as she has qualified it, "un report à la fin du mot majeur. Du mot qui compte" (Le Nouvel Observateur 24-30 mai 1990). (For a sample of this parody, click on any fly on this page.) He parodies her talents as writer in a minimalist scenario of "Romeo and Juliette," through a Durassian fait divers, in an interview with a boxer named Ramirez, and in a story centered on garbage collectors and people drinking. Duras describes her syntax in terms which invite pastiche. Her infamous "écriture courante" can often sound more like a wheezing horse; as she says, "Je la laisse dans un état pantelant, la phrase" (M.D. à Montréal 64). Her prose invites cheap imitations of its self-conscious preciosity:
|
(Les Parleuses 16) |
Duras calls the dialogues toward the end of L'Amant de la Chine du Nord "chaotiques" (203, the quotation marks are her own); the examples given are curiously less "chaotic" than those found in her usual, fragmentary style. Rambaud's pastiche shows how Duras has become a popular icon. Imitations and reproductions of her style help shape an extratextual identity for which she was no longer entirely responsible.
 |
 |
 |
|
 |