Letters to the Editor
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That just makes me furious
This article really upset me for two reasons: first of all, I am a great fan of Robbe-Grillet's novels, especially Jealousy, which ought to be considered moderately famous. More importantly, Marche gets the facts wrong. I will just mention one sentence that truly misrepresents a creative genius: "[The new novel] applied rules and regulations, opposed subjectivity and tried to dissolve plot and character into description." Jealousy has a plot involving the discovery of suspected adultery, and portrays an extreme form of subjectivity: everything is seen through the eyes of the narrator, whose perception has been distorted by his own emotions. The reader is immersed in a vertigo in which memory, imagination, and direct sense perception are all confused. It's a wonderful book, even if it did contribute to the rise of American literary conservatism.
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poor ARG
I am so sad to see another bad review of the life and career of ARG. From what I know, ARG was an unpleasant person, and probably pretentious and all that, but what his novelistic achievement represents is a belated (Modernist) attempt to keep the novel form alive as art. Far from damning subsequent efforts in the experimental novel, he should, along with Beckett, give hope that it still might be possible to write artistically and philosophically challenging novels rather than long prose entertainments that mimic obsolete forms from the 18th and 19th centuries.
As far as his films go, Marienbad is NOT his film. Everyone in the obits says - well, at least there was Marienbad. That's Alain Resnais folks. ARG did make films, but no one seems to have seen any of them. With two or three exceptions this is probably fine, for none of them are as good as Resnais. But they show a similar, uncompromising commitment to art: not simply experimentation, which is a misnomer here. But to sabotage, to undermining the obsolete props of the novel (and film) - linear narrative, stable characters, and so forth - and thus attempting, in the only way art can, to undermine the ideologies that the standard novelistic machinery reproduces. The fact that no one seems to see this any more in ARG's work is a sign that we should be mourning much more than _his_ death.
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Good Novels Get Read
Good novels get read and survive the test of time and are still read.
Most fiction (experimental or otherwise) fails and is unread.
I've read about a novel a week for about 25 years now; I've never managed to finish a Joyce (except Dubliners), have struggled through most of Gravity's Rainbow and some of Faulkner.
Frankly outside a sort of high intelligence/highly trained academia these sort of books will never be read because they are too difficult for most readers to appreciate.
So I suppose the nearest thing I get to experimental now is Brett Eastern Ellis and Cormac McCarthy...
Is that a problem with the form, or with myself?
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Ruining the novel, by producing them?!
English_roG:
"Is that a problem with the form, or with myself?"
Perhaps it's not a problem at all?
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Francophobia
This article is really just an excuse to bash the French. Why the offensive (and unoriginal) epithet "cheese-eating surrender monkeys?" This kind of thing is the refuge of scoundrels who are too lazy to debate an issue in an intelligent manner. When a reasoned argument fails, just remind the French that they capitulated in WWII. Works every time.
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Horizon
Cool article. I came across Robbe-Grillet in college. He was being read by some sniffy class mates. I sampled some of that stuff; it didn't sit well in my gut. Since then my stomach has gotten stronger, another bite or two might be in order. Just out of curiosity. Also, your description of the novel's creative anarchy was very refreshing. Cheers.
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The man who ruined petty contrarian obits.
In order for Stephen Marche to justify gleefully pissing on the corpse of a little known writer, he must persuade us Robbe-Grillet actually had influence over the world of letters.
He fails. Marche barely defines Robbe-Grillet's ideas, names only one of his works and quotes just six words of his writing.
Marche also delights in pointing out Robbe-Grillet's lack of success and visibility, which undermines the idea the author had some effect on novels.
The real point is another midlist author whining about The State of The Novel, which he deems bad probably because he isn't as famous as Nabokov.
Like one of Nabokov's characters, Marche decides to blame this dubious claim on a dead Frenchman with increasingly absurd reasoning: "It is entirely appropriate that six months before Robbe-Grillet died, James Wood became the principal literary critic at the New Yorker."
Why, um, sure Steve. Also, Atonement was made into a movie just a year before Robbe-Grillet died. Get it? Get it?
I guess there's a subculture of grad students who resented having to read Robbe-Grillet. If so, just admit this grudge, this rambling attempt to make the petty significant just makes Stephen Marche seem like a vengeful twerp.
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Never heard of ARG...
But it was a very interesting obit / commentary. Thanks for the early morning education and a good read.
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I'm all for progressive fiction
experimentation with form, and so forth. But if people are still reading 19th century style novels and enjoying them, then they are neither archaic nor obsolete. Those styles will not be supplanted entirely until someone offers something else more appealing, and not before - that is the definition of obsolete.
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Essay questions
1. "Marche also delights in pointing out Robbe-Grillet's lack of success and visibility, which undermines the idea the author had some effect on novels."
Compare the sentiment above with that, famously ascribed to Brian Eno, that only one hundred people bought the first Velvet Underground album, but all of them started a band. That is, does "influence" require a popular audience, or does an audience of productive elites suffice? How about an audience of influential theorist-critics?
2. If England never produced an avant-garde (and Woolf was not avant-garde, no matter what you think) (and neither was Lawrence, you idiot--Mama's Little Bertie was also a Victorian) (and, to fill out the Big Four, forget about the Irish Joyce and Polish Conrad), wtf about Wyndham Lewis?
Five hundred words on each. Spelling counts, though there is some leeway given the on-demand nature of the assignment. Give yourself time to prrofread (haha!) and edit.