I read La jalousie and Les gommes when I was in university. My classmates and I agreed that the former was a superb novel and that the latter's ideas, even though they presented fresh perspectives on the Oedipus myth, did not fulfill their potential (especially, after having read La jalousie).

Everybody has a right to their opinion, so I will not argue Marche's thoughts on Robbe-Grillet. What I find interesting is that I was not aware that Grillet was influenced by Bioy Casares' La invención de Morel, a novel that, as a Latin American, I admit to my shame not having read, even though it was mandatory reading, at least, when I was in high-school.

I have my own theories about La jalousie, though: that the narrative's focalization and its narrator's extreme subjectivity is based on Marcel Proust's La prisonnière. (I would also argue that the birth of magical realism started with Proust, but that's another subject entirely.)

I want to read a story, or explore a setting, or both. The traditional novel form is very good at supporting stories and not bad at supporting settings. (Some appendices, short stories, etc. can do wonders for settings).

Writers can still experiment within the traditional novel form, just as painters can still experiment on a traditional canvas. Or wall. Or other flat surface. They can also experiment with other supports, it all depends on the work.

Well, this brightened up my day. Rarely does one come across such a fitting object lesson in the fatuousness of accusing others of fatuousness, particularly when the subject (insomuch as we can agree to sustain the notion of a subject) is cultural literacy and the author trumpets his position as an employed paragon of linguistic insight just before misspelling the word "the" (though in homage to the clumpy experimentation of Robbe-Grillet, let's say we cannot really "know" the order in which these narrative moments occurred). Kudos, too, for the suave deployment of the "Well, Mr. Literary Critic/Actual Novelist, neither I nor any of my esteemed colleagues at this cow-pasture college have ever heard of your commercially successful output because we're just too darn busy doing French mouth-to-mouth on the avant-garde" offense. What a delicious souffle of bull-crappery, except for the part where I must wonder what this person thinks of the people he's being paid to educate, considering the contempt he heaps on here. Perhaps a ticket back to the land where monkey-grinders roam the streets and the cafes are filled with talk of the subtle complexities of comparing window-blinds to jealousy would be best for all involved.

If I understand Mr. Marche's argument correctly, "Atonement" is hardly the best example of the peaking of a trend toward 19th-century forms that shun experimentation. Although it may mimic the Victorian novel sentence by sentence, its structure is completely experimental, and in a way I might have thought Marche would welcome, since the experimentation in no way threatens the novel's readability. If anything, "Atonement" is less a 19th-century pastiche than an interrogation of the supposedly unassailable narrative omniscience of the 19th-century English novel.

Fine. Writing can be experimental or traditional, who cares? Just try to get anything remotely experimental published today. In fact, try to even find an agent to promote anything remotely experimental, much less a publishing house willing to take the gamble. Novels, movies, music - it's all under the thumb of the publisher/studio bean-counters who demand convention - preferably warmed over from a previous success in the genre - to reduce risk of failure in the hands of the unwashed masses. This is the driving force of the last forty years - the conventional and bland hand of the publishers and studios, not the ivory-tower critics and theorists.

I read everything Robbe-Grillet came out with, and, at the time, it immersed me in a different world. The narrative was twisted into repetition, the objects of the world became smaller, time lengthened, people became quieter, and mysteries were behind every corner and door. Whatever the 'theory', it is the pyschological impact that counts.

Stoned? No. Just good writing. And it was not for 'snobs' or 'intellectuals' only. I was only a kid in college. Robbe- Grillet didn't kill the novel, or the 'experimental' novel, Corporate America did that, along with the astounding lack of cultural diversity and anti-intellectualism in the U.S. The 'masses' had nothing to do with it. Marche's Americo-centric view of Robbe-Grillet is far off.

But then, maybe I am a 'surrender monkey.' Just using that term, in fake jest, shows Marche's criticism is located somewhere around John McCain's politics.

Someone I've never heard of, in spite being a literature major in college and having taken two European literature in translation classes, supposedly "ruined" the novel. Better alert John Updike, Phillip Roth, Ian McEwan, Pat Barker, Richard Russo, and Kingsley Amis (who's dead but would tell you to go fuck yourself if he heard such nonsense).

And, by the way. "experimental" writing (whatever that is) is more likely to "ruin" the novel that "conventional" writing. I mean, just how much magical realism or John Irving can one really read?

Let me just add my voice to those who think this is simply a ridiculous article. Robbe-Grillet was not even a particularly difficult author to read - La Jalousie is actually quite absorbing, and accessible to almost anyone - it's also a very short novel - concise and to the point, which is a quality today's wordy 19th century novelist wanna-bes should consider emulating. I wonder if Marche has ever even read La Jalousie, or if he's basing the whole article on watching the Resnais film of Marienbad.

I gave Robbe-Grillet and so many of the other "experimental" novelists the benefit of the doubt going back to even earlier French attempts to "expand the form" but just couldn't get past the artificiality.

The major 20th century contributors, Joyce, Mann, and Kafka pulled it off because they stayed within E.M. Forster's definition, but nothing beyond that seems to work and still be called a novel, rather than poetry, or some kind of verbal cartoon or puzzel.

I have to admit Gertrude Stein made me laugh, and Beckett was clearly a genius who can get me going when I see the work performed, but it doesn't have the "feel" of a novel so much as theatre or poetry. It's the pure sound of the words that carry it, or some conceit that plays upon the old forms.

What they always said would happen, i.e. a new generation released from the old forms by exposure to the new at a younger age doesn't seem to have worked either. I simply think newer forms, such as films have taken over the space the experimentalists saw but could not fulfill.

That's what's made the novels time come and gone. Not any one practioner. There are undoubtedly ideas that can be harvested from their experiments, but I have a feeling South Americans and Europeans in particular are doing it a lot better job of it than in the US at this point, and I'm including Pynchon.

I'm being totally personal and intuitive here, but American novels of any quality at all are so cerebral and detached I can barely get past the first page. And poetry, which has more potential than any form has either been homogenized to death by the universities, or the street poets telling everybody to get fucked, or to stop fucking them.

I also suspect that whoever is editing, selling, and buying manuscripts these days are the last to actually know when they have a product in their hands that is truly original. Education is killing art. That's who the houses hire. I've corresponded with them. Nice kids. They went to the right schools, did their homework, but haven't got a clue.

Movies are clearly the more creative media because the business is still a free-for all, where people are still trying to learn from it rather than put together the next package to please their boss and meet the next deadline. A movie by Almodovar has more "genius" in the first ten minutes than half the novels published in this country in a year.