BookFox

RIP Alain Robbe-Grillet

So Alain Robbe-Grillet, the king of the French new novel, died on Monday at the age of 85. I find it just a little funny that back in October I wrote a piece linked to by The Guardian about Robbe-Grillet's new novel, "Un Roman Sentimental." The title: "And I Thought He Was Dead."

So now I guess I'm right.

Alain Robbe-Grillet was disliked in France, but admired internationally -- very similarly to Jacques Derrida, who received acclaim from many institutions in the U.S. and abroad, but wasn't well respected at home in France. And I can't help but laugh at the satire on the LA Times blog:

The Pope of the New Novel is dead.

Or, let me rephrase that: The body of Alain Robbe-Grillet is room temperature though seemingly cooler to the touch, with slack surface areas along its longitude and discolorations in transverse patterns. The anterior section is a faded beige while the dorsal area and extremeties show evidence of settlement.

Now if he repeated that about twenty times, with slight deviations that indicated a gradual and haunting psychological shift of an unnamed protagonist, then he would actually have a Robbe-Grillet novel.

But I'm joking as well. In actuality, I liked Robbe-Grillet work's very much, as it introduced an entirely new method of novel construction (the James-Wood-voice in my head is currently disagreeing). For me, his work was even entertaining, very much like a puzzle to piece together, although I know that many people were put to sleep by him. At least I admired his early work, since the later work tended to devolve into his erotic fantasies. But most of this is related in the article I wrote before.

Here's two more noteworthy obits:
Guardian obit which is mainly an examination of the significance of Robbe-Grillet's "new novel"
Times Online -- beginning is quick biography, but the rest details the implications of his literature

And I Thought He Was Dead

Which may not be far from the mark, figuratively or literally. As noted by Michael Orthofer at The Literary Saloon, Alain Robbe-Grillet just released a new novel, Un Roman Sentimental, but I would vouch that it's anything but sentimental. In fact, Orthofer calls it "(young teen) porn", but knowing Robbe-Grillet's penchant for lasciviousness in his later novels - such as Recollections of the Golden Triangle and La Mainson de Rendez-vous - and the telling fact that three of my six books by him are decorated by cover art depicting a woman in various stages of undress, this is hardly new. With his films and with his later books, Robbe-Grillet's been taken over by a rather unseemly preoccupation with his (highly idiosyncratic) sexual fantasies.

But, to disagree only slightly that "[Un Roman Sentimental is] pretty much the definitively last nail in the coffin of the Nouveau Roman", the later works have been called the New New Novel, as separate from the New Novel. Which seems to be a facile distinction until one reads the early work and the later work and realizes that there is some literary merit to the former while the latter has become enamored with its process, lost the heart of the cyclical/fragmentary nature and become obsessed by forbidden sexuality. The early novels - especially The Voyeur, Jealousy, and In the Labyrinth, are haunting examples of Robbe-Grillet's notion of objective subjectivity, explained in the collection of essays, "For a New Novel." The early novels are hardly beach books - in fact, they might be the polar opposite - but I think they're intriguing to read for how the repetition of scenes leads the reader through the psychological journey of the character, and also as an example of how to describe, say, smashing a centipede against a wall, in a way that reveals the progressive emotional states of the narrator.

Despite my defense of his early work, Robbe-Grillet is a prime example of a writer past his prime. And, as Orthofer points out, the public seems to know this - the initial sales numbers have been low and the buzz on the literary scene has been muted, to say the least. Well, it's just deserts for writing novels that only appear to be an overindulgent fleshing out (pun intended) of personal fantasies.