Book Review: "Practicalities" by Marguerite Duras (Pt.3)

If you've read the other two parts then you will know that this is a three-part series of book reviews on my reread of the Everyman Edition of Marguerite Duras' writing. This includes The Lover, Wartime Notebooks and finally, Practicalities - which is the section of the book that this review concerns itself with. The Lover covers Duras' piece of semi-fiction set in Indochina about a young French girl having a romantic escapade with an older Chinese man. It's written beautifully though I cannot get over the age difference feeling less romance and more Lolita. The next text, Wartime Notebooks, is a posthumous release, found in Duras' home concerning her life. Practicalities covers a dialogue, covering the author's own thoughts and processes when it comes to creativity and the depths of the soul she searches when making these stark, often romanticised yet brutally honest observations.

One thing I loved about reading this is that it presents Duras as a human being rather than this great and romanticised writer. We get insight into her very human aspects. She tells us about her cooking, her home decor and her lifestyle - covering all those things where we too, can relate. Even though I have to say that her language is still above and beyond the way in which you may hear a friend speak to you - she still reads like an artist, someone (as I mentioned in the previous review) who was born to be a writer. The mundane isn't romanticised, it's illuminated to be something incredibly important. It's hard to describe until you actually read it. It's not like you're getting inside her mind, it's like you're learning about how she sees something profound, some sort of importance, in every smaller aspect of her life as well as her writing. It is all part of the process.

Covering her creative process, the 'practicalities' of life are massively important but that doesn't mean that Marguerite Duras is ignorant by any means. Oh not at all. She is perfectly aware, almost too much so, that her rampant alcoholism threatens to destroy her life. Though she did ultimately live to the old age of 81, she was praying for death to come and take her since she was so sick and, if I remember correctly, could no longer really do anything. Be that as it may, she was still acutely aware of her faults, commenting on how she knew everything could fall apart because of them. This isn't really romanticised at all. Instead, there's something harsh and realistic about it. You don't really want to be in the same position but we are set face to face with her and her issues. This isn't as much about her creative process as it is about her lifestyle. Something sheds, something new forms in its place. Not everything is always good. Not everything is glitter. Not everything makes you an artist. Sometimes things just fall apart. Like a ticking time bomb for which we do not have a timer, we cannot see the countdown.

All in all, these three books have been great to revisit. I have to say that they are well organised as well. First we have that romantic and semi-fictionalised version of events in which a romance takes place. Then we have the realities of war and even the reality of the story in the first text - something less romantic and more realistic. The final book is not romantic, or at least it decreases in romantics as you go further and further into the text. This is from a woman who was expressing herself as a human who both has the capacity for romance and the capacity for brutalism. It's like reading someone's process all the way through. The language is slowly, but surely stripped away and ultimately what we are left with is a singular truth.

I would say that if you're going to read Duras' works then start with this as you can definitely see her differing styles. One where she is trying to tell us a story and the other in which she is giving us her life story and information. I haven't read much Marguerite Duras otherwise but now, I'm looking forward to it.

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