Alain Robbe-Grillet

Robbe-Grillet, Alain 

Born Aug. 18, 1922, in Brest, department of Finistere. French writer and film director; one of the founders of the “new novel.”

Educated as an agricultural engineer, Robbe-Grillet was first published in 1953. In his depersonalized, flat narratives, Robbe-Grillet’s obsessive description of objects pushes aside both the narrative and the characters (for example, the novels The Voyeur, 1955, and Jealousy, 1957). Gradually these verbal still lifes grow into hallucinations of a chaotic, capricious, and defective world (the novel In the Labyrinth, 1959, and the film screenplay Last Year at Marienbad, 1961). This world cannot be animated by criminal events (the novel La Maison de rendez-vous, 1965), by a speculative response to political issues of the day (the novel Project for a Revolution in New York, 1970), or by morbid eroticism (the novel and film Glissements progressifs du plaisir, 1973).

WORKS

Pour un Nouveau Roman. Paris, 1963.
In Russian translation:
“V labirinte.” lnostrannaia literatura, 1961, no. 1. (Excerpt.)

REFERENCES

Velikovskii, S. “V laboratorii raschelovechivaniia iskusstva.” In the collection O sovremennoi burzhuaznoi estetike, vol. 1. Moscow, 1963.
Zonina, L. “‘Novyi roman’: vchera, segodnia.” Voprosy literatury, 1974, NO. 11.
Eremeev, L. A. Frantsuzskii “novyi roman.” Kiev, 1974.
Morrissette, B. Le Roman de Robbe-Grillet. [Paris, 1963.]
Ricardou, J. Pour une Théorie du nouveau roman. Paris [1971].
Gardies, A. A Robbe-Grillet. [Paris, 1972.]

S. I. VELIKOVSKII