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For a New Novel (Essay index reprint series)

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Here is a collection of critical essays about the so-called New Novel, the quite frankly bizarre genre that sent shockwaves through the French literary community back in the '50s, as interpreted by one of its foremost practitioners. Anyone who found themselves gazing blankly at the pages of Robbe-Grillet's "Jealousy" will at least get a general idea of the New Novel from this book.

As yet another literary technique based on the idea that we mere mortals cannot know anything for certain, the New Novel restricts itself to elaborate physical description (usually visual), disregards characterization in the traditional sense, and ignores symbolism altogether (because objects MEAN nothing, they just ARE). It also plays havoc with the linear time-schemes of conventional novels; if you're familiar with the jumping-back-and-forth plot of "Pulp Fiction" (or if you've seen the notorious art-house film "Last Year at Marienbad," which Robbe-Grillet wrote) then you're already aware of one of the New Novel's most distinguishing features. In sum, it tends to be deeply ambiguous and not a little confusing.

Luckily for Robbe-Grillet, he's honest enough not to set himself up as a dogmatic theoretician. The definition of the New Novel, he claims, must be open-ended; the theory must interpret the fiction, not the other way around. Fair enough, I'd say. I think he's correct in claiming that novelists today can no longer write like the naturalists of the 19th Century; but I also doubt--as he optimistically says at one point--that we'll ever come to view the techniques of the New Novel as a "normal" form of fiction, against which other novels will be compared. The New Novel is just too WEIRD and, unlike, say, the novels of Flaubert, it is difficult to approach it unless you're already familiar with the theories and philosophical ideas it operates under. But then, theories of literature must always take a back seat to literature itself, which is why the curious reader might be better off tackling Robbe-Grillet's fiction first.

"For a New Novel" can be safely ignored by the general reader, but it's worth a look for fans of the French avant-garde.

This is an excellent translation of Alain Robbe-Grillet's 'Pour Un Nouveau Roman'. The original French is not easy to understand so this is a very useful translation for those whose French is less than perfect.

Structuralism, post-structuralism, postmodernism, and every other "post" have made this work a bit obsolete. Although I sympathize with his desire to let the object "just be," he seems doomed to failure. Don't get me wrong, I love his novels but this bit of theorizing just doesn't hold up, though it gets 3 stars for being thought provoking and straddling the modern and postmodern.