Two novels by Robbe-Grillet : Jealousy & In the labyrinth

218 Pages·1965·1.21 MB·English

by  Alain Robbe-Grillet & Richard Howard & Roland Barthes & Bruce Morisette & Anne Minor

TWO NOVELS BY ROBBE-GRILLET
WORKS BY ALAIN ROBBE-GRILLET
PUBLISHED BY GROVE PRESS
The Erasers
The Voyeur
La Maison de Rendez-Vous & Djinn
Two Novels: Jealousy & In the Labyrinth
Recollections of the Golden Triangle
Two Novels by Robbe-Grillet
Jealousy
and
In the Labyrinth
Translated by Richard Howard
GROVE PRESS
NEW YORK
Copyright © 1965 by Grove Press, Inc.
Jealousy copyright © 1959 by Grove Press, Inc. Originally published in 1957 by
Les Editions de Minuit, Paris, France as La Jalousie.
In the Labyrinth copyright © 1960 by Grove Press, Inc. Originally published in
1959 by Les Editions de Minuit, Paris. France, as Dans le labyrinthe.
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Published simultaneously in Canada Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 65-16711
ISBN: 978-0-8021-5106-3
eISBN 978-0-8021-9053-6
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: The essay by Bruce Morrissette is a revised adaptation of
an article which appeared originally in The French Review, Vol. XXXI, no. 5
(April 1958) under the title “Surfaces et structures dans les romans de Robbe-
Grillet," and is printed with the author's permission. Roland Barthe's essay
appeared originally in Critique, nos. 86-87 (juillet-août 1954) under the title
“Littérature objective Alain Robbe-Grillet," and was subsequently translated in
Evergreen Review, No. 5 (Summer 1958). It is reprinted with the author's
permission. Mme. Anne Minor's review of Jealousy originally appeared in The
French Review, Vol. XXXII (April 1959) under the title “La Jalousie,” and is
printed with the author's permission.
Cover design by Jackie Seow
Cover photographs by Minori Kawana/Phonotica (top), S. S.
Yamamoto/Photonica (bottom) Grove Atlantic
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th
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CONTENTS
INTRODUCTORY ESSAYS
Surfaces and Structures in Robbe-Grillet's Novels
by Bruce Morrissette
Objective Literature: Alain Robbe-Grillet
by Roland Barthes
A Note on Jealousy
by Anne Minor
JEALOUSY
IN THE LABYRINTH
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
INTRODUCTORY ESSAYS
SURFACES AND STRUCTURES IN ROBBE-GRILLET'S NOVELS
by Bruce Morrissette The rising curve of Alain Robbe-Grillet's literary star
continues its dazzling ascent As early as 1953, when Robbe-Grillet launched his
career with The Erasers (Les Gommes), Roland Barthes saw in the young
author's work a revolutionary aspect comparable to that of the “surrealist attack
on rationality.” His second novel, The Voyeur (Le Voyeur, 1955), amazed the
critics, won an important literary prize, and gained the attention of the literary
public. Robbe-Grillet thereupon began to reveal his talents as a theorist of the
novel form, publishing a series of articles in L'Express and two remarkable
essays, “A Fresh Start for Fiction” (Evergreen Review, No. 3) and “Old ‘Values’
and the New Novel” (Evergreen Review, No. 9) which led to his being
designated widely as the leader of the “school” of the New Novel in France. It is
thus that Jean-Louis Curtis depicts him in À la recherche du temps posthume.
This witty book describes Marcel Proust's return to earth to conduct an inquiry
into the state of modern literature. In the milieu where the master of the
psychological novel had expected to hear discussions of Henry James and his
disciples, Marcel is astonished to find even Gilberte Swann agreeing that “today
we ask something quite different of the novel,” and that “psychology nowadays
is out of style, obsolete, no longer possible,” since modern readers have only
scorn for the sacrosanct “characters” of the traditional novel. To prove to Marcel
redivivus that the modern novel “can no longer be psychological, it has to be
phenomenological,” Mme. de Guermantes introduces him to Robbe-Grillet
("with hair and mustache the color of anthracite") who promptly recites, in
parodied style, the “new doctrine.” One could also cite to illustrate the
uneasiness caused in certain literary quarters by this disturbing new force, a
cartoon showing the Tree of Literature with numerous well-known Novelists and
Critics clinging to its branches, while below, sawing away at the trunk, stands a
smiling Robbe-Grillet.
Things were at this stage when, in 1957, Jealousy appeared. Hostile critics
threw themselves on the novel. The old guard, with André Rousseaux and
Robert Kemp, hastened to denounce it, and to assure the reading public that the
so-called “new path” for fiction promised by Robbe-Grillet in reality led
nowhere. Robbe-Grillet was called a competitor with the “cadastre” or record
book of county property lines, because of his minute, geometric descriptions,
some of which (like the notorious “counting the banana trees” passage in
Jealousy) were read over the radio, for laughs. Well, the critics seemed to say, if
that's the renewal of the novel, the new objectivity or the “realism of presence,”
there is no need to get excited. A flood of articles, mostly antagonistic, inundated
Paris. Critics on the whole (but with some notable exceptions) showed a
complete lack of understanding of the new work. Shortly, copies of Jealousy
disappeared from book-store windows, unsold and returned to the shelves or the
publisher. The 6th arrondissement, the center of literary activities, buzzed with
rumors of Robbe-Grillet's “failure,” in which a number of well-known
proponents of the conventional novel took an ill-concealed delight. Yet the
impression was inescapable that some of these hostile critics sought to disguise a
disturbing uneasiness created in them by a profoundly original creation. Thus
André Rousseaux declared, in revealing fashion, toward the end of a long article,
“This is a rather extended commentary for a book that I detest.”
For then, as now, Robbe-Grillet's works conveyed a powerful impression that
“something,” as Samuel Beckett says in Endgame, "is taking its course.” This
“something” has taken time to reveal itself, and its meaning is still not finally
determined, but one can, with some confidence, survey the path covered thus far.
If many early critical problems seem to have been at least partially solved, other
new ones have risen. Space is lacking here to do more than indicate the principal
ones, and to suggest possible critical approaches to their solution.
Take the example of The Erasers (1953). The baroque plot of this novel may
be briefly summarized: In an atmosphere reminiscent of many films noirs or
crime movies, the detective Wallas arrives in an Amsterdam-like Flemish city,
traversed by canals and surrounded by a Circular Boulevard. His story unfolds in
an overlay of actions by other characters, seen at oblique angles and in reciprocal
relationships, in the midst of images twisting in a turmoil of syncopations,
displacements, and echoes of a kind that many critics did not hesitate to call
“metaphysical.” Wallas is seeking an assassin; he does not know, as we do, mat
there has been no murder. Twenty-four hours after this imaginary crime, Wallas
believes that he has found the criminal. He fires at this ambiguous murderer, and
kills him. But it is not the assassin, it is the presumed victim, finally slain by the
very hand which sought to effect a premature vengeance.
Fascinated by the various objets troublants of the novel, by the author's art of
description (in which some critics, like François Mauriac, saw a parallel with the
poems of Francis Ponge describing pebbles, wicker baskets, and the like), the
reviewers, following the lead of Roland Barthes’ early essays on Robbe-Grillet,