The Robbe-Grillet Generation

If Reality Hunger causes a rebirth of interest in Robbe-Grillet and the New Novelists, then that book will have done its job 100-fold. Andrew Gallix in The Guardian with a very worthwhile response to Hunger:

David Shields recently dismissed most contemporary novels as “antediluvian texts” that “could have been written by Flaubert 150 years ago”. “In no way,” claimed the author of Reality Hunger, “do they convey what it feels like to live in the 21st century.”

He has a point – albeit one that Alain Robbe-Grillet had already made in 1965 when he deplored the fact that young French novelists were praised for writing “like Stendhal” but castigated as soon as they refused to abide by the “dead rules” of a bygone age. Along with Michel Butor, Nathalie Sarraute and Claude Simon – the main proponents of the new novel (nouveau roman) – Robbe-Grillet stood resolutely in the second camp. In his essays, he returns time and again to the notion that the novel, from Stendhal to Joyce, has constantly evolved – hence the absurdity of using “the norms of the past” to judge the fiction of today. Far from representing a rejection of the past, the quest for a new novel was thus very much in keeping with the history of a genre which, by definition, must always be renewed . . .

In my opinion, this is a much more interesting response to Shields than the recent complaining that he’s denying fiction. I suppose in a sense he is, but he’s also promoting an aesthetic that maps almost perfectly onto a lot of the more interesting fiction written in the wake of Robbe-Grillet. So who cares if Shields doesn’t want more novels? His theories of literature do, and you’re free to adapt them to something that promotes fiction.

Actually, on second thought, I bet there’s a great essay to be written for someone who wants to compare For a New Novel to Reality Hunger.

You Might Also Like:

More from Conversational Reading:

1. Alain Robbe Grillet Ruined Your Fiction I don’t quite agree with this post-mortem on Alain Robbe-Grillet. The "new novel" or "nouveau roman," as Robbe-Grillet defined and explained it in his famous...
2. On Robbe-Grillet and Realism Dan Green has a great post on realism vis a vis Robbe-Grillet's style of writing: It is generally assumed that film provides a more...
3. In Praise of Robbe-Grillet I see little reason to take most of what passes for literary criticism in Salon seriously, much less to refute it 2 years after the...
4. Alain Robbe-Grillet and Jealousy I’ve now read Jealousy by the experimental French novelist and (generally credited) inventor of the "New Novel," Alain Robbe-Grillet. I like to think that I’m...
5. A World Without Past Alain Robbe-Grillet discusses his script for the movie Last Year at Marienbad. The universe in which the entire film occurs is, characteristically, that of a...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.