Snapshots. [Paperback]

Alain, Robbe-Grillet (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Grove Press (October 1972)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394177843
• ISBN-13: 978-0394177847
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,460,558 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Studies for the Nouveau Roman, August 18, 2005

By 

David C. Rive Jr. (New Orleans, Louisiana) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Snapshots (European Classics) (Paperback)

The short prose pieces comprising the collection, SNAPSHOTS, are studies in literary objectivity and minimalism.

Honing his craft in post-war France, Alain Robbe-Grillet sought to strip from his work the hallmarks of French literature, indeed, nearly all of the literary conventions thought to add color and depth and psychological insight to prose. Instead, Robbe-Grillet endeavored to develop new techniques-largely based in visual observation-that would present scenes and characters and situations stripped of the customary subjectivity seemingly inherent in authorship, and the linear plotlines typically associated with fiction.

The short pieces collected here, written between 1954 and 1962, demonstrate Robbe-Grillet's urge to experiment with a reductive technique. At the same time, the author adumbrates many of the themes that characterize his later and more fully developed works like JEALOUSY, THE VOYEUR, IN THE LABYRINTH--classics of the "nouveau roman."

In this translation by Bruce Morrissette, the prose is stripped down to a level that makes Hemingway seem rococo by comparison.

The pieces-one hesitates to call them stories-present scenes coldly and objectively, yet they also reveal Robbe-Grillet's erotic obsessions and his skillfully concealed manipulation of the reader's point-of-view. Despite the author's professed desire to "trust" the reader, he often cunningly and covertly rigs the game so that the reader must engage in mental twists and turns to visualize such subtle complexities as a mirror reflecting the contents of a room ("The Dressmaker's Dummy"), or a landscape mirrored on the surface of a pool of rainwater ("The Wrong Direction").

In the pieces, "Scene," "The Way Back" and "The Shore," the author opens up a bit to add snatches of dialogue, but the sketches in SNAPSHOTS largely describe a silent world. Even in the three pieces describing the movements of a crowd contained in the section "In the Corridors of the Metro" seem like a silent film played back at half speed. These works seem an attempt to slow down the world, and to blur the distinctions between "background" and "foreground," or "form" and "content." In "A Corridor," for instance, the author focuses as much attention on the motions of the people streaming through a hallway as he does on the identical posters advertising soda on the very walls that they pass through.

The final piece in the collection, "The Secret Room," is an uncanny homage to the 19th Century decadent French painter, Gustave Moreau. Applying his objectivist techniques in the service of Symbolist sado-eroticism, Robbe-Grillet effectively conveys the very liquid quality of Moreau's painting technique, as well as the almost suffocating layering of details that characterize the painter's works. The author skillfully presents this erotic scene in a way that suggests a painting in motion, rather than a conventional narrative of the scene.

Richly ambiguous, the short prose pieces in SNAPSHOTS admirably demonstrate Robbe-Grillet's development of the formal techniques and thematic fixations that typify his work. Though created almost a half-century ago, these pieces seem as immediate and audacious as the day they were written.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Fairly weak performance, April 15, 2000

By 

"elljay" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Snapshots (European Classics) (Paperback)

I count myself among Robbe-Grillet's admirers, but this collection of six early stories really isn't the ideal place to begin if you're unfamiliar with his work. Robbe-Grillet's method is, in part, to replace psychological analysis (a hallmark of French literature) with objective visual description. His work is often hauntingly ambiguous precisely because the author refuses to impose, at least overtly, any kind of meaning on his narrative, or allow us to enter his characters' minds. He simply writes scenes--and let the reader make of it what he will.

In "Snapshots," though, the author generally comes up empty. I just don't know what to think of these stories, which present the reader with a simple sequence of events, elaborately detailed, and then stop. One can pick them apart and find more to them than might be immediately clear, but there isn't much here worth dwelling on. "The Secret Room" is probably the best of an undistinguished lot.

Perhaps the author needed to write these little exercises before he could go on to bigger and better things. I'd advise the interested reader to skip the stories and go straight to the novels, in which Robbe-Grillet's peculiar talent displays itself more fully.

4.0 out of 5 stars Nouveau Roman, April 22, 2004

By 

alexander laurence (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Snapshots. (Paperback)

It seems that when this book came out that it was very radical. It was very visually oriented. It was like looking at paintings. This is not Robbe-Grillet's best book, but it distills what was so great about him. When I was a younger writer, this stuff was a big influence. It was very existential, minimal, and bare. I think that some of this style is better suited for film.