L'Amant by Marguerite Duras (review)

Book Reviews141 such new critical approaches as those of the structuralists, the feminists, and the students of black culture. He also suggests expanding the canon of Southern literature to include more works by blacks and women, as well as such "non-literary" works as Hinton R. Helper's The Impending Crisis and Thomas Dixon, Jr.'s propaganda (the novels and The Birth of a Nation film). Unfortunately, the rest of this collection does not live up to the vigor promised by Holman's fresh approach. Essays in the first half take a broad overview of the field; those in the second examine particular authors. In neither section are there many surprises. The old fear that the New South will eradicate the Old is reaffirmed. The traditional debate about regionalism, provincialism, and universality is renewed. The standard writers — Faulkner , Welty, Ransom, Chopin, O'Connor, both Percys — are examined in essay after essay. (Outside of Holman's essay there is no mention of Ralph Ellison, Ernest Gaines, Richard Wright, Tennessee Williams, Reynolds Price, Mary Chesnut, or Lillian Hellman; there is no mention anywhere of Alice Walker or Anne Tyler.) Most of the critics are white and male. Finally, the collection serves largely to entrench "The Southern Literary Pieties" which Noel Polk ostensibly attacks in his essay by that title. There are two exceptions to this standard fare. One, Miriam Shillingsburg's "The Ascent of Woman, Southern Style" uses works by Caroline Lee Hentz, Grace King, and Kate Chopin to examine the status of women (as writers and as people) in the nineteenth-century South, and to suggest a background against which to examine later Southern women writers. The other, Michael Millgate's "William Faulkner: The Two Voices," although reminiscent of John Irwin's 1975 study of Faulkner, Doubling and Incest: Repetition and Revenge, has such a clear style and sensible approach that its insight into the ways contrasting voices work both within and between various Faulkner novels at least seems fresh. The traditional biases of this collection are clear. They are also, in some way, its main advantage. This volume provides yet another briefintroduction to the major critics and critical themes in Southern literature. It concentrates more on the heritage of the title than on the promise, but it is nevertheless solid and convincing work — a reminder of what has been accomplished in the field as well as a clear indication of what needs to be done. HELEN LOJEK Boise State University MARGUERITE DURAS. L'Amant. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1984. 142 p. Marguerite Duras' literary production has spanned four decades, from her early books written in a traditional manner, such as Un Barrage contre le Pacifique (Sea Wall) or the celebrated Moderato Cantabile or Hiroshima Mon Amour, to the more esoteric though sparse and simple small volumes of the 80s, L'HommeAtlantique, Savannah Bay, or La Maladie de la Mort. Duras has always rightly refused the label of"Nouveau Roman" writer, since she has, in fact, little in common with Robbe-Grillet, Simon, Oilier, Nathalie Sarraute, or others. From her traditional novels to her more complex novelettes, reduced to the 142Book Reviews bare essentials, with no story line, apparently static motifs created with impressionistic touches, a constant theme recurs: The eye of a third person, a voyeur, spies on a couple of characters, usually man and woman. The triangle of voyeur and couple spins the tale of the difficulty of love and the "no man's land" (pun intended) between female and male protagonists. Variations on this basic theme converge and diverge to render form to the tragic experience of life. Under the sketchy stories, the reader suspects an autobiographical line. The autobiographical perspective went out of fashion in France in the last decades, but is coming back to the forefront in the middle of the 80s. This partly explains the incredible success Duras' novel L'Amant (The Lover) enjoyed, when it first appeared in the fall of 1984. The French intelligentsia applauded, the wider public raved at Duras' feat. The Prix Goncourt was awarded to the writer: a well-deserved honor, no doubt, but unexplainable unless the shift in the public's interest towards autobiography is not taken into...