In 2009 I took off on a journey to what was once known as French Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia and
Laos) on pilgrimage to the places where the childhood feet of the renowned French writer Marguerite Duras (MD) lived the first eighteen years of her life. And in the small hope that some of her greatness might rub off on me.
Four years later with a Master's degree under my belt (thanks MD, for providing the inspiration for my MA project), I begin this blog as a WAY OUT of or INTO, the book I said I would write on my return, and to document and re-examinine some of the things I learned on my journey to MD.
Love her, hate her, idealise her, idolise, adore her, loathe her..
Whatevever your take on MD, she has a way of getting under your skin.
You don’t know who MD is? Already I’m writing like her, using initials for real people instead of their names. Why make it easy for anyone? was MD’s philosophy. Why have a plot when you can have pages and pages where nothing happens but weeping and then weeping again. Why write a novel like a novel, why not write it like a film? Why not have actors reading the same novel as if it was a play, in the novel? Why not publish your most famous work as a tiny novella, based on your early life in Indochina, finally win the Big Prize, The coverted Prix Goncourt, then write another version of it a few years later with a new title? Why? Because you are MD and you can! Let me warn you, MD is not every one’s cup of tea, MD is an acquired taste. People who hail her as their hero (and there are others, much to my chagrin) have to earn the right to belong to the MD club. Following me, following her, may just be a way to do it, as long as you can keep this trip under your hat; we don’t want every person avec leur chien jumping on the bandwagon.
So lets get some biographical details out of the way...
MD was born Marguerite Donnadieu on the outskirts of Saigon, Vietnam, then called L'Indochine, to her French school teacher parents. When she was four, the family, along with her two brothers, moved to Hanoi where her father worked as a mathematics teacher. Her mother, unable to secure a teaching position, purchased a house and set up a school.
Despite its Frenchification they didn't like Hanoi and after a couple of years moved to Phnom Penh in Cambodia. (The French Indochina protectrate included present day Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos). They hadn't been in Phnom Penh long when Marguerite's father was struck down with a recurring tropical illness and sent back to France. He was no stranger to French hospitals where his wasting disease baffled the doctors. With no hope of recovery he discharged himself and went home to die in his village of Duras, from which Marguerite later took her name.
Left a widow, but without a widow's pension due to the maner in which her husband died, MD's mother struggled to support her three children, moving back to the Mekong towns of Vinh Long and Sadec in Vietnam, where she taught by day and played piano at the local cinema by night.
When Marguerite was around ten years old her mother bought an acreage of land 500 miles away in Cambodia and embarked on an ambitious plan to farm rice.
The crops were ruined when sea water flooded the rice paddies, but her mother became more determined to succeed and employed workers to build walls to combat the sea.
The battle went on for many years and became the subject of one of MD's early novels, Le Barrage Contre La Pacifique (published in 1950, made into a film by Cambodian director Rithy Pahn in 2007). MD left Indochina for France at the age of 19 never to return, but her early Indochine years were to be a strong influence on her writing.
Marguerite's most famous novel, The Lover ( L'Amant), wasn't written until much later in her life, when she was 70. It tells the story of a 15 year old girl's affair with a rich Chinese man. Said to be an autobiographical account of Marguerite's own romance, it began its life as captions for a photo album and ended up as a discontinuous narrative set around one single image that was never photographed.
So, I'm fifteen and a half.
It's on a ferry crossing the Mekong river.
The image lasts all the way across.
I'm fifteen and a half, there are no seasons in that part of the world, we have just the one season, hot, monotonous, we're in the long hot girdle of the earth, with no spring, no renewal.
That's it, that's all it takes, I just have to read a few sentences and I am bitten by the MD bug. I'm sucked right in to her melancholic landscapes, her great gaping panoramas of grief and loss. I want to lie down at the MD altar, sacrifice my life in the pursuit of desire, pain and pathos as she did, sacrifice it all — for writing.
I hope to use this blog as a digital scrap book for the writing process of this book and invite you to join me on the journey.
YOU TOO CAN FOLLOW THE FOOTSTEPS OF MARGUERITE DURAS
JOIN OUR 15 DAY INDOCHINE JOURNEY AUG 15- 30, 2014, BOOKING NOW!
`
Jan Cornall began writing in the 70s. She has written plays, musicals, screenplays, a novel, short stories, and three CDs of songs. Since 2004 she has led writer's retreats in inspirational international locations including Bali, Laos, Burma, Cambodia, Morocco and Fiji. In 2014 she is planning a Vietnam trip following the footsteps of M.Duras in Vietnam. More info here.
(c) Jan Cornall 2013
Four years later with a Master's degree under my belt (thanks MD, for providing the inspiration for my MA project), I begin this blog as a WAY OUT of or INTO, the book I said I would write on my return, and to document and re-examinine some of the things I learned on my journey to MD.
Love her, hate her, idealise her, idolise, adore her, loathe her..
Whatevever your take on MD, she has a way of getting under your skin.
You don’t know who MD is? Already I’m writing like her, using initials for real people instead of their names. Why make it easy for anyone? was MD’s philosophy. Why have a plot when you can have pages and pages where nothing happens but weeping and then weeping again. Why write a novel like a novel, why not write it like a film? Why not have actors reading the same novel as if it was a play, in the novel? Why not publish your most famous work as a tiny novella, based on your early life in Indochina, finally win the Big Prize, The coverted Prix Goncourt, then write another version of it a few years later with a new title? Why? Because you are MD and you can! Let me warn you, MD is not every one’s cup of tea, MD is an acquired taste. People who hail her as their hero (and there are others, much to my chagrin) have to earn the right to belong to the MD club. Following me, following her, may just be a way to do it, as long as you can keep this trip under your hat; we don’t want every person avec leur chien jumping on the bandwagon.
So lets get some biographical details out of the way...
MD was born Marguerite Donnadieu on the outskirts of Saigon, Vietnam, then called L'Indochine, to her French school teacher parents. When she was four, the family, along with her two brothers, moved to Hanoi where her father worked as a mathematics teacher. Her mother, unable to secure a teaching position, purchased a house and set up a school.
 |
| Marguerite aged 4, with her brothers and mother in the courtyard of their Hanoi house. |
Left a widow, but without a widow's pension due to the maner in which her husband died, MD's mother struggled to support her three children, moving back to the Mekong towns of Vinh Long and Sadec in Vietnam, where she taught by day and played piano at the local cinema by night.
When Marguerite was around ten years old her mother bought an acreage of land 500 miles away in Cambodia and embarked on an ambitious plan to farm rice.
The crops were ruined when sea water flooded the rice paddies, but her mother became more determined to succeed and employed workers to build walls to combat the sea.
The battle went on for many years and became the subject of one of MD's early novels, Le Barrage Contre La Pacifique (published in 1950, made into a film by Cambodian director Rithy Pahn in 2007). MD left Indochina for France at the age of 19 never to return, but her early Indochine years were to be a strong influence on her writing.
 |
| This early adaptation into film of the Sea Wall was also called 'This Angry Age'. |
Marguerite's most famous novel, The Lover ( L'Amant), wasn't written until much later in her life, when she was 70. It tells the story of a 15 year old girl's affair with a rich Chinese man. Said to be an autobiographical account of Marguerite's own romance, it began its life as captions for a photo album and ended up as a discontinuous narrative set around one single image that was never photographed.
So, I'm fifteen and a half.
It's on a ferry crossing the Mekong river.
The image lasts all the way across.
I'm fifteen and a half, there are no seasons in that part of the world, we have just the one season, hot, monotonous, we're in the long hot girdle of the earth, with no spring, no renewal.
That's it, that's all it takes, I just have to read a few sentences and I am bitten by the MD bug. I'm sucked right in to her melancholic landscapes, her great gaping panoramas of grief and loss. I want to lie down at the MD altar, sacrifice my life in the pursuit of desire, pain and pathos as she did, sacrifice it all — for writing.
I hope to use this blog as a digital scrap book for the writing process of this book and invite you to join me on the journey.
YOU TOO CAN FOLLOW THE FOOTSTEPS OF MARGUERITE DURAS
JOIN OUR 15 DAY INDOCHINE JOURNEY AUG 15- 30, 2014, BOOKING NOW!
`
Jan Cornall began writing in the 70s. She has written plays, musicals, screenplays, a novel, short stories, and three CDs of songs. Since 2004 she has led writer's retreats in inspirational international locations including Bali, Laos, Burma, Cambodia, Morocco and Fiji. In 2014 she is planning a Vietnam trip following the footsteps of M.Duras in Vietnam. More info here.
(c) Jan Cornall 2013
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