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Title: A Monument Not a Diary
Review: "Memoirists who reveal turbulent pasts are faulted for exhibitionism," writes Greg Lichtenberg in his essay, "Life is also Here: Toward a Manifesto of Memoir," while those with superficially quiet lives are blamed for having no story." Marguerite Duras has a profound story to tell, whether it's exhibitionism or not. Her intent, which has a much larger scope than a memoir with the structure of a simple diary, seemes to be to humanize and personalize the wartime chaos and utter dehumanization of 1940s France under Nazi domination. She sets a record about the Holocaust. She makes a monument rather than writes a diary. This is why her memoir rises above those that Lichtenberg criticizes, those that "seem a pornography of emotions, offering up whatever excess of misery will provoke a fleeting response"; what he calls, "a talk-show between book covers." The War is crafted not written. You won't find mind-numbing cliches but only imaginative language. And the language will move you.
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