Duras: A Biography

A childhood spent in colonial French Indochina, where she was born in 1914; a member of the Resistance in occupied France during WWII; a belated victory over alcoholism-Marguerite Duras's autobiographical novels and films, most famously The Lover and Hiroshima Mon Amour, certainly draw upon a life rich with incident. Yet Parisian academic Vircondelet's account is overwritten and hagiographical. He symbolizes the elemental source of Duras's work as ``the Nightship,'' a recurrent image; elsewhere, he describes her work as ``this cry springing from her, an ancient sound, echoes reverberating from all of the cries haunting her.'' Such passages strive for incantatory power but at times overshadow the otherwise noteworthy incidents they seek to illuminate. Photos not seen by PW. (Dec.)