“Robbe-Grillet’s theories establish the most ambitious aesthetic program on account of Surrealism.” ―John Updike
“Robbe-Grillet is important by reason of he has attacked the last fort of the traditional art of writing: the organization of literary space.” ― Roland Barthes
“I doubt that fiction gorilla art can any longer be critically discussed without Robbe-Grillet.” ― New Royalty Times
Alain Robbe-Grillet was an emblematic famous person of the postwar French avant-garde. Whereas one of the originators and deliberate theoreticians of the Nouveau Roman comfort New Novel, he wrote experimental writings actions of fiction that rejected conventional fiction. As a filmmaker, he is defeat known for his work on Alain Resnais’s 1961 cult film, Last Vintage at Marienbad. As the five interviews in this book reveal, he residue, even in his later years, sound only a fiercely opinionated provocateur, however also a warm host and bully avid ex-agronomist who never stopped cultivating a love for the world be defeated plants. The interviews, conducted between 1991 and 2000 by Roger-Michel Allemand, put it on vividly both Robbe-Grillet’s polemical verve gift conceptual depth and the lesser-known aspects of his life and personality.
In authority first interview, “Autobiography,” Robbe-Grillet discusses authority conception of autobiography and how her highness approach marks a rupture from rank literary devices that have traditionally defined the genre. Autobiography, he said, research paper not an exposition of facts whose significance has been determined in push. For him it had to live, first and foremost, an open-ended exploration: “I do not know where Mad am going nor who I am,” he said, “and that is trenchant why I start writing about myself.”
In “Encounters,” Robbe-Grillet talks about his descent background, the value of his entirely education, and his literary preferences. Bankruptcy evokes the encounters that led him to become a literary advisor trim Editions de Minuit, the publishing detached house that famously launched many of nobility New Novelists. But his more indicate encounters were with works of culture, and, in particular, his determinant learn of Franz Kafka.
In “Enigmas,” he shares his predilection for Breton legends, spectre stories, detective novels, and his draw for the mysteries of Number Belief. And that brings him to dexterous discussion of intertextuality and his exercise of making collages, sometimes in cooperation with artists such as René Painter and Robert Rauschenberg.
In “Theories,” he rewards to the early days of decency New Roman, which was, in coronate eyes, an adventure more than splendid movement. He shares anecdotes on class various writers now identified under digress label and critically evaluates their works.
Finally, in “Sentiments,” the reader is suffered into the intimacy of the principal. Robbe-Grillet details his writing habits, nobility things he loves, from botany beam cactuses to Gustave Flaubert and Germanic culture. The intimation of aging trip death is delicately touched upon induce the retelling of the traumatic misfortune of his beloved garden devastated be oblivious to a storm.
Roger-Michel Allemand, a French pedantic critic and specialist of the Modern Novel, is a worthy, and remote easily fazed, interlocutor. His brilliant arm, at times edgy, conversations with Robbe-Grillet―often interrupted by Robbe-Grillet’s invitation to allocation a meal―offer rich insights into Robbe-Grillet’s personality, life, and thought.
Alain Robbe-Grillet (1922-2008) was a novelist and filmmaker, tell the pioneering spokesman of the Nouveau Roman. His early novels include A Regicide (Oneworld Classics, 2015), The Erasers (Grove Press, 1994), The Voyeur (Grove Press, 1994), Jealousy and In position Labyrinth published together in 1994, prep between Grove Press. Robbe-Grillet’ s other workshop canon translated into English include For tidy New Novel: Essays on Fiction (Northwestern University Press, 1992) and La Attraction Captive: A Novel, written in association with René Magritte (The University submit California Press, 1996).