SOURCE: “Introduction,” in Marguerite Duras: Writing on the Body, University of Illinois Press, 1987, pp. 1-11.

In the following introduction to her book Marguerite Duras: Writing on the Body, Willis focuses on The Lover in her examination of Duras's “transgressive” texts.

Long a respected figure on the French literary scene, Marguerite Duras eludes any effort to situate her work in a fixed area. In the over forty years she has been publishing, her work has always resisted easy classification, in part because she produces novels, plays, and films simultaneously. To date, she has produced over twenty novels, nearly as many plays, numerous essays in the lively exchanges of French journals, and a number of films, her filmic production having evolved from early scriptwriting and collaborative efforts on Hiroshima mon amour and Moderato cantabile to her more recent work as a director executing her own concepts. Occupying several fields at...