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hailed by Nabokov as one of the greatest novels of the century ...
hailed by Nabokov as one of the greatest novels of the century ...
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----- Original Message -----
From: Sandy P. Klein
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Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2004 8:59 PM
Subject: Jealousy, hailed by Nabokov as one of the greatest novels of the century ...
http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/life/story/0,4386,234886,00.html?
The hole truth
Frenchman Alain Robbe-Grillet, father of the new novel, uses 'holes' to illustrate how the literary form is different from the old novel
By Clarissa Oon
RULES are meant to be broken for French literary iconoclast Alain Robbe-Grillet, whether in his novels or screenplays.
GOING AGAINST THE GRAIN: Breaking the rules is almost second nature for Robbe-Grillet, seen above with his wife Catherine.
One of his country's most distinguished living authors, the first thing the still spry 82-year-old tells Life! yesterday, in perfectly enunciated English, is: 'I do not speak English.'
He gives you a firm handshake and then moves on to the patio of the French ambassador's home in Cluny Road, where he proceeds to have breakfast with his wife of 46 years, Catherine.
HIS WORDS
"English had a very rich vocabulary in the old days, but it has gone downhill ever since it became the language of international communication."
- On being dismissive of the English language
"In the modern world, where a lot of meaning and coherence has been lost, how is it possible to write lik in Balzac's time?"
- On developing the nouveau roman
"In the old novels there were no holes. In the new novel there are holes and because of that it is still living."
- On the difference between old and new novels.
In town to give a talk in French on Monday at the Alliance Francaise, the author's opening remark tantalises as you survey him spreading marmalade on his brioche through the glass doors of the patio.
Is his refusal to blather away in English a sign of Gallic pride? An anti-American political gesture?
Or simply that the father of that avant garde literary form known as the nouveau roman (new novel) is entitled to say no when he feels like it?
As the minutes tick away, head thick with questions, you feel like one of the hapless narrators of his novels.
Beginning with The Erasers, or Les Gommes, his critically acclaimed 1953 debut, they may be described as lush, metatextual mysteries where conventional ideas of plot and logic are scrambled, and comprehension endlessly deferred.
He also wrote the happy puzzle of a screenplay for director Alain Resnais' groundbreaking 1961 art film, Last Year At Marienbad.
In the surreal film, in which various versions of events are replayed, a stranger tries to convince a woman of an affair they had, which she cannot remember.
When the jet-lagged author, who arrived in Singapore on Wednesday afternoon from Paris, finally sits down for an interview scheduled to have begun an hour ago, some clarity is restored regarding his position on the English language.
With three cultural attaches from the French embassy in attendance to translate his French, he tells you that 'English had a very rich vocabulary in the old days, but it has gone downhill ever since it became the language of international communication'.
Leaning forward from his corner of the sofa and thumbing the air emphatically, he dismisses the English language today as 'not an interesting language to learn. The language of Shakespeare was more interesting'.
As a result, despite having taught French literature at American universities like New York University and Washington University for 25 years, he claims: 'I never learned one word of English.'
FARMING FIRST
GOING against the grain has come almost instinctively to Robbe-Grillet, who studied agronomy, or the science of agriculture, before becoming a writer at the age of 30.
Born in Brest in north-western France, his father was an engineer and his mother a French-language teacher. His only sister had, like him, graduated from the National Institute of Agronomy in Paris.
While working part-time in his sister's biology lab in 1949, he wrote his first novel, A Regicide, out of frustration from reading canonic 19th-century French writers like Honore Balzac.
As he tells you, 'the basis of Balzac's writing is that the world is consistent and the narrator has complete mastery of the facts'.
'But in the modern world, where a lot of meaning and coherence has been lost, how is it possible to write like in Balzac's time?'
Thus the shape-shifting form of the nouveau roman was born, developed by Robbe-Grillet and other Gallic literary lions like Claude Simon, Marguerite Duras and Nathalie Sarraute. Simon and Robbe-Grillet are the only surviving authors among the foursome.
Even though Robbe-Grillet would turn his back on a scientific career to produce more than 15 novels and volumes of essays, he says that his background made him even more of an enfant terrible in the world of literature.
Dressed in all-black, his thin legs stretched out in front of him on the sofa, he begins to hold forth as though chatting with fellow intellectuals in a salon.
'When publishers turned down my works in the 1950s, I realised that literature is very respectful of the past whereas science is always going forward,' he tells you.
His first novel to be published was The Erasers in 1953. A Regicide, which had been written earlier, was not published until 1978 when he was already a well-known name.
At this point, Robbe-Grillet quotes Einstein, who once said of science: 'If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.'
The author likens science to 'a living body with holes.
If there are no holes, then all the answers are given and there is no science'.
Drawing a quick parallel with literature, he adds vigorously: 'In the old novels there were no holes. In the 'new novel' there are holes and because of that it is still living.'
Despite his age, the octogenarian author is still prolific.
His last novel, La Reprise, about a spy in post-war Berlin whose mission turns into a sado-erotic experience, was published in 2001.
He now lives in the countryside of Normandy in France with his wife, herself a famous writer of feminist novels in France who publishes under the pseudonym Jeanne De Berg. They have no children.
He also enjoys a parallel career in films.
Apart from Last Year In Marienbad, he directed or wrote the screenplays for some 10 films between 1961 and 1996, such as 1963's award-winning L'Immortelle (The Immortal One).
As recently as 1999, he even acted in a small role as Goncourt in a French film, Le Temps Retrouve or Time Regained - an adaptation by Chilean film-maker Raul Ruiz of Marcel Proust's novel Remembrance Of Things Past.
But as a final gesture of rebellion in this interview, he declines to say, between film and literature, which he regards as his wife and which his mistress.
'I didn't marry either of them. It's like asking: Which do you prefer, your Dad or your Mum?'
Thinking a little more, he adds with a chuckle: 'Since literature is a solitary exercise and film is not, the difference would not be between wife and mistress, but between masturbation and sex.'
a.. Alain Robbe-Grillet will give a talk in French on the Nouveau Roman And Autobiography at the Alliance Francaise Gallery, 1 Sarkies Road, on Monday at 6.30pm. English subtitles will not be provided but participants are free to ask questions in English. Call 6833-9306 to register.
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HIS LIFE AND WORKS
1922: Born in Brest in north-western France
1944: Graduated from the National Institute of Agronomy in Paris
1948: Went to Martinique in the Caribbean where he did scientific research at banana plantations
1953: His first published novel, The Erasers, wins acclaim
1955: Became literary consultant at famous French publishing house Les Editions de Minuit
1957: Published the novel Jealousy, hailed by contemporary Vladimir Nabokov as one of the greatest novels of the century
1961: Wrote the screenplay for Alain Resnais' groundbreaking film Last Year At Marienbad
1963: Compiled his essays into the literary manifesto For A New Novel. Also wrote and directed another award-winning film L'Immortelle (The Immortal One)
1995: Completed his autobiographical trilogy Romanesques
2001: Most recent novel La Reprise (Repetition) published
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