So what did I think of Destroy, She Said? I wasn't really sure until I read the interview that was included in the book involving the author and two pretty easily-identified friends of hers. The book was made into a film, as Duras's books were routinely treated, and the bulk of the discussion revolved around the differences between the book and the film, and through this I gained a better understanding of how little direction the basic story really had. As a curiosity, it isn't bad, but not anything I would recommend as something one would need experience in order to better appreciate literature or the art of storytelling in general. It meanders (which you would think might be something I would enjoy) but without any real point other than Duras's apparent political agenda, which was to move civilization past its present form and into communism. The book was published in 1969, and thusly she talks a lot about hippies and how they were an indication of the type of movement that would be needed to wipe the then-prevalent mindset away and allow for a new beginning to take place. She believed that the hippy mentality of passivity would lead to an entire generational apathy that would wipe the slate clean. It's never made clear whether Duras believed in functional communism or actual communism as witnessed already in history by that point. Russia had already been buried by it, and China was well on its way. I can only hope that she wasn't still so deluded as to believe communism would work with the present society and mindset, but perhaps that was the reason for her emphasis on a new start.
At any rate, I thought her reasoning was simplistic and she was most likely not interested in it being anything else. There're other things to read, and thankfully this book was short and quick, so it's more or less out of the way now, aside from the discussion in class I still have ahead of me. Those are always interesting...
um, and here's my site again: Age of Mouldwarp
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