Ahem. The masses are reading John Grisham, and James Patterson, and whatever Oprah just recommended. Some of us are reading (currently) John Connolly, Garrison Keillor, Neill Gunn (the Scottish Steinbeck, if you haven't heard of him) and Discover magazine. But who the hell even heard of Alain Robbe-Grillet? Yes, he probably turned off a few Eng Lit types who throw out words like "modernist" the way other people order a latte. But the "masses"? Give me a break.

Ben,

Films are more like short stories than novels. They are also a different medium, which can go where novels can't, but also cannot go where novels can. Principally in the depth department.

I always like novels over short stories, as short stories are slight. And many films are slight, just based on their format. It can take many hours to read a decent book, and maybe 3 hours to 'watch' a long flim.

Since many good films are based on novels, you might want to re-think that one. Or maybe not.

One is entitled to one's opinion to Robbe-Grillet (I am myself largely indifferent) but a previous commenter is exactly right in remarking how absurd it is to blame him for the decline of Anglophone experimental fiction. In the US Robbe-Grillet is more a literary figure of fun, an inspiration to mediocrities such as Paul Giamatti's Miles in the film Sideways. In France however ARG's influence is more strongly felt. The experimental novel is alive and well, particularly at his old publishing house Les Éditions de Minuit (which also published Beckett and Claude Simon); writers such as Tanguy Viel, Jean-Philippe Toussaint and Jean Echenoz all practice narrative (and sometimes formal) innovation and even more accessible novelists such as Patrick Modiano are known for their genre-bending. Of course some people claim that French literature is insular and irrelevant (such folk rarely read any) but it can hardly be any more insular than an American using a French novelist as a totem to claim that THE experimental novel is dead. Not all that is written is written in English Mr Marche.

If Mr. Marche has read these posts, I'm sure he's already regretting writing such an embarrassingly fatuous article. "Hooray! Robbe-Grillet is dead! At last we can write good novels again!" Deliciously absurd, really.

I stumbled on Robbe-Grillet many, many years ago (not in a lit. class - I only took two) and ended up reading everything from The Erasers up through Djinn. If one of the purposes of the novel is to change the reader's perception of the world in a profound way, Mr. Robbe-Grillet filled the bill for me. For all the accusations of sterility and distance, he wrote with an insidiously mesmerizing poetry and rhythm.

Robbe-Grillet did exactly what any good writer should do - push the boundaries of the art form. If the larger novelistic community failed to expand or learn from or counter his efforts, the fault is not his. The modern novel has serious problems, but "In the Labyrinth" is not among them.

Boring! I read one of his novels, in French, don't remember the title. I do remember an amazingly tedious description of minute ,uninteresting details of water as a boat navigated somewhere.

I also began to read Nathalie Sarraut's "Planetarium".

I didn't get very far, remember nothing.

I am an avid reader of what the publishing world deems "literary novels".

My recent favorites include Charles Bock's "Beautiful Children" + Vikram Chandra's "Sacred Games". Yes, it's long (900 pages) but is endlessly fascinating.

Thank you, Stephen Marche, for your article.

Stephen Marche is wrong, wrong, a 1000 times wrong about the experimental novel being dead, particularly during Robbe-Grillet's heyday (60s & 70s). At the same time R-G was making the experimental novel toxic for US writers (supposedly), John Barth, John Hawkes, Ron Sukenick, Kathy Acker, William Burroughs, Samuel Delaney, Don Barthelme--to mention the entire language movement in poetry, in West Coast and East Coast versions) were active and vibrant and, in some cases, respectable sellers. The 80s & 90s saw many experiments migrate into more conventional fiction, but there continued to be hard core practictioners, while more respectable writers like Roth and Mailer borrowed some of their tricks.

What Marche is really complaining about, and what is the source of his frustration, is the New Yorker, and its synecdochic relationship with what there is of a contemporary literary canon. He probably is also lamenting the institutionalization of the avante-garde, which is not just writers joining the professoriate, but the fact that we now can talk of schools, most of whom go back to Joyce and Stein, and the fact that the theoretical backing of many experimental gestures seems hyperbolic or pretty thin gruel these days. The revolution knows no genre and cares little about closure, we know now, but such claims are themselves endemic and necessary to movements from the margin to the center.

The later 90s did a retrenchment in mainstream publishing and the effect was that more experimental writers were dropped from the big houses and the major literary reviews became sclerotic (hello, NYRB, why did John Bailey do so many reviews well in the 21st century?). But that corner has turned to a degree and Salon is one the manifestations, along with Bookforum and the Believer. There are many vehicles for experimental fiction now and apparently none of them waited for Robbe-Grillet die. I suppose there are many writers who are happy to be mistaken for being French. My suspicion is that Marche's real grievance is not with the French nouveau roman but with "French" critical theory. He shares a prejudice with James Wood. We all have problems with Wood, but the way to deal with him (and the New Yorker) is to ignore him and happily read the most recent Alice Munro. Otherwise, Marche should write and not worry about being mistaken for liking to wear a beret.

Feature films have stories, characters, plot, setting, and language. These are the "Aspect of the Novel" as defined by E.M. Forester. Without all of them, you're out on the ledge, or probably French. (?!) In addition to that, movies are primarily a visual and auditory media that provides something written material cannot.

I think the vast majority of people are "visually and auditory" oriented rather than language oriented, which is why movies are so much more popular. These "death" of the novel prophecies are based on this in my view--not anything that has to do with the novel per se.

It's the kind of thing a graduate student makes up to please a teacher suffering from the fact that Americans don't read much any more and when they do it's mostly junk. I know dozens of otherwise well educated people who don't know what literature is. Call me a curmudgeon--I don't give a shit--it's true.

A lot of the publishers don't know what it is either. Most could just as easily be selling golf balls or farm tools rather than books. The agents are worse. They think in terms of "genre" but that refers to everything but literature, which is something a few publishing houses specialize in who are the last stand for the art form--experimental or not so experimental.

I don't know how you sell a "normal" novel any longer if you aren't simply god-damn lucky, marry an agent, or throw in a lot of thinly disguised smut--let alone an experimental one. I'd be careful not to use the word unless my name was Susan Sontag, and she's gone.

I don't think there's a difference between a movie made from a book and one that is not--except the writer has more to work with and most often (if it's literature like THERE WILL BE BLOOD) they tend to be character driven instead of plot driven.

Are you with me? What does "hang ten" mean?