Practicalities

"Duras’s favourite authors were Proust, Ecclesiastes, and Marguerite Duras. I think those three are largely what she read. She also liked the screenplay of the great French film by Jean Eustache, The Mother and the Whore . She had a way of making declarations with a flair for the absolute. Here is a favourite, from Practicalities : “You never know yourself that you’re an alcoholic. In one hundred percent of cases, it’s taken as an insult.” And another: “You have to be very fond of men. Very, very fond. You have to be very fond of them to love them. Otherwise, they’re simply unbearable.” “It’s a “telling” of life, about life. A reflection.” The book is unique and fits in no genre except maybe one formed by its inclusion with Proust, Ecclesiastes, The Mother and the Whore , and the rest of the books written by Duras. It’s a “telling” of life, about life. A reflection. In one case, it is a list of items MD thinks any woman ought to have in her pantry. It veers into a page of discomfiting homophobia, my least favorite part, but that doesn’t disqualify the book for me. People are complicated. Duras, when she wrote this (or “told” it) was in a multi-year relationship with a gay man, Yann Andrea, and, according to her various biographers, angry and hurt that he did not love her in an erotic manner."