Interestingly, the 85-year-old Robbe-Grillet has a new novel
just out in France, and it's stirring up controversy. Here's
an account from the excellent weblog The Literary Saloon (at
The Complete Review website);
http://www.complete-review.com/saloon/index.htm
<Robbe-Grillet's Un roman sentimental
They seemed to have
hoped for considerable attention and maybe a bit of scandal
with the publication of Alain Robbe-Grillet's new novel, Un
roman sentimental, which finally came out last week, but it
seems to have all fallen a bit flat. Oh, sure, people are
still expressing their outrage and disgust, but they don't
seem to be nearly as excited about it as one might have
expected.
Coming out so late
in the season the novel had the advantage of less competition
-- but even dangling it in front of the foreign crowds in
Frankfurt didn't seem to raise its profile much. Published in
a shrink-wrapped protective cover, the pages uncut, with a
warning (of sorts) on the cover, and no preview copies for
the press they certainly went to great lengths to keep the
contents
(literally) under wraps -- perhaps, so the general thinking,
because of the pedophilic aspects of the story (which are
apparently the main aspects of the story) and concerns that
interfering politicians might want to set another example (as
one who has since risen to greater prominence did with
another book a few years ago ...); see, for example
Jacques-Pierre Amette's account in Le Point.
Yes, it's
apparently pure (young teen-)porn: in Alain Robbe- Grillet:
Rosse Bonbon in L'Express Baptiste Liger thinks it's
shocking, filled with:
une s鲩e de sc讥s de barbarie naus饵ses difficilement
descriptibles, dignes de Sade ou de Restif de la
Bretonne.
[a series of nauseating barbarities that are hard to
describe, worthy of de Sade or Restif de la Bretonne.]
(Apparently the de Sade and Restif de la Bretonne-comparisons
are not complimentary .....]
Few abroad seem to
have taken much notice, either, but Julia Emcke did tackle it
-- and tear it to pieces -- in the Frankfurter Allgemeine
Sonntagszeitung, in Er will doch nur spielen, where she sees
it as pretty much the definitively last nail in the coffin of
the Nouveau Roman.
There is some
debate about it -- witness the 849 'commentaires' at La
r鰵blique des livres in response to Pierre Assouline's
blog-comments, but last we checked the Amazon.fr-sales- rank
was a pretty unsensational 1.087.
See also the Fayard
publicity page.>
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