Robbe-Grillet, Alain

Robbe-Grillet, Alain (älăN` rôb-grēyā`), 1922–, French novelist and filmmaker, b. Brest. Robbe-Grillet is considered the originator of the French nouveau roman [new novel], in which story is subordinated to structure and the significance of objects is stressed above that of human motivation or action. His first novel, Les Gommes (tr. The Erasers, 1964), was published in 1953. Among his many other novels, many of them marked by violence, are The Voyeur (1955, tr. 1958), Jealousy (1957, tr. 1960), In the Labyrinth (1959, tr. 1960), Snapshots (1962, tr. 1968), La Maison de Rendez-vous (1965, tr. 1966), Topology of a Phantom City (1976, tr. 1977), Djinn (1981, tr. 1982), The Last Days of Corinth (1994), and Repetition (2003). Robbe-Grillet's film works include the screenplays for Alain Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad (1960), and for L'Immortelle (1962), Trans-Europe Express (1966), The Beautiful Prisoner (1983), and The Blue Villa (1996), which he also directed.

Bibliography

See his memoir Ghosts in the Mirror (1984, tr. 1991) and his essay collection For a New Novel (1963, tr. 1966); studies by B. Morrissette (1965), J. Fletcher (1983), and B. F. Stoltzfus (1985); R. Armes, The Films of Alain Robbe-Grillet (1981); R. L. Ramsay, Robbe-Grillet and Modernity (1992); L. D. Roland, Women in Robbe-Grillet (1994); M. H. Hellerstein, Inventing the Real World: The Art of Alain Robbe-Grillet (1998); R. C. Smith, Understanding Robbe-Grillet (2000).

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Robbe-Grillet, Alain

(born Aug. 18, 1922, Brest, France—died Feb. 18, 2008, Caen) French writer. Trained as a statistician and agronomist, he became a writer and leading theoretician of the nouveau roman (“new novel”), the French antinovel that emerged in the 1950s. His narratives lack conventional elements such as chronological plot and are composed largely of recurring images and repeated fragments of dialogue. Among his works are fiction, including The Erasers (1953), Jealousy (1957), Djinn (1981), and Repetition (2001); the essay “Towards a New Novel” (1963); and the memoir Ghosts in the Mirror (1984). He was also a screenwriter and film director; his best-known screenplay is that for Last Year at Marienbad (1961).

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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