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
an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
154 West 14th Street
New York, NY 10011
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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