Chapter 1 - Marguerite Duras, Journalist

Summary

Chapter 1 introduces Duras the journalist to English-speaking audiences less familiar with this important aspect of her work as a writer and public persona. I analyze a number of her journalistic writings, in particular, her chroniques judiciaires and rewritings of faits divers in the press in the 1950s and 60s. I examine the way that she engages in public conversations around popular representations of crimes in order to subvert them. Because she is not a trained journalist but a literary writer, she claims to have a deeper insight into crime, criminals, and the judicial process. The writer therefore attempts to correct what she considers erroneous reports already printed in the press – based not on systematic examination of evidence but on close readings of these reports and at times on her presence in the courtroom – with her own interpretations and representations of the crime. According to Duras, dismissing a rationalizing rubric improves the conditions for examining the crime’s specific circumstances and its implications for possibilities of transgression and social critique. This chapter reveals how a keen literary eye can help readers to decipher the news.