Alain Robbe-Grillet
Encyclopedia
Alain Robbe-Grillet (18 August 1922 – 18 February 2008), was a French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

 and filmmaker. He was, along with Nathalie Sarraute
Nathalie Sarraute
Nathalie Sarraute was a French lawyer and writer of Russian Jewish origin.-Life:Sarraute was born Natalia/Natacha Tcherniak in Ivanovo , 300 km north-east of Moscow in 1900 , and, following...

, Michel Butor
Michel Butor
-Life and work:Michel Marie François Butor was born in Mons-en-Barœul. He studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, graduating in 1947. He has taught in Egypt, Manchester, Salonika, the United States, and Geneva...

 and Claude Simon
Claude Simon
Claude Simon was a French novelist and the 1985 Nobel Laureate in Literature. He was born in Antananarivo, Madagascar, and died in Paris, France....

, one of the figures most associated with the Nouveau Roman
Nouveau roman
The nouveau roman is a type of 1950s French novel that diverged from classical literary genres. Émile Henriot coined the title in an article in the popular French newspaper Le Monde on May 22, 1957 to describe certain writers who experimented with style in each novel, creating an essentially new...

(new novel) trend. Alain Robbe-Grillet was elected a member of the Académie française
Académie française
L'Académie française , also called the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution,...

 on March 25, 2004, succeeding Maurice Rheims
Maurice Rheims
Maurice Rheims was a French 'commissaire-priseur', art historian and novelist.-Partial bibliography:...

 at seat No. 32. He was married to Catherine Robbe-Grillet
Catherine Robbe-Grillet
Catherine Robbe-Grillet is a French theatre and cinema actress and photographer who has published BDSM-related writings under the pseudonyms Jean de Berg and Jeanne de Berg.-Biography:...

 (née Rstakian).

Life

Alain Robbe-Grillet was born in Brest
Brest, France
Brest is a city in the Finistère department in Brittany in northwestern France. Located in a sheltered position not far from the western tip of the Breton peninsula, and the western extremity of metropolitan France, Brest is an important harbour and the second French military port after Toulon...

, (Finistère
Finistère
Finistère is a département of France, in the extreme west of Brittany.-History:The name Finistère derives from the Latin Finis Terræ, meaning end of the earth, and may be compared with Land's End on the opposite side of the English Channel...

, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

) to a family of engineers and scientists. He was trained as an agricultural engineer. During the years 1943 and 1944, Robbe-Grillet participated in compulsory labor
Service du travail obligatoire
The Service du travail obligatoire was the forced enlistment and deportation of hundreds of thousands of French workers to Nazi Germany in order to work as forced labour for the German war effort during World War II....

 in Nuremberg, where he worked as a machinist. The initial few months were seen by Robbe-Grillet as something of a holiday, since, in-between the very rudimentary training he was given to operate the machinery, he had free time to go to the theatre and the opera. In 1945, Robbe-Grillet completed his diploma at the National Institute of Agronomy
Institut national agronomique Paris-Grignon
The Institut National Agronomique Paris-Grignon was a French grande école. It was created in 1971 by merging the Institut national agronomique and the École nationale supérieure d'Agronomie de Grignon, thus having a history that goes back to 1826.INA P-G disappeared as an administrative entity on...

. Later, his work as an agronomist took him to Martinique
Martinique
Martinique is an island in the eastern Caribbean Sea, with a land area of . Like Guadeloupe, it is an overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department. To the northwest lies Dominica, to the south St Lucia, and to the southeast Barbados...

, French Guinea
French Guinea
French Guinea was a French colonial possession in West Africa. Its borders, while changed over time, were in 1958 those of the independent nation of Guinea....

, Guadeloupe
Guadeloupe
Guadeloupe is an archipelago located in the Leeward Islands, in the Lesser Antilles, with a land area of 1,628 square kilometres and a population of 400,000. It is the first overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department. As with the other overseas departments, Guadeloupe...

, and Morocco
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...

. He died in Caen
Caen
Caen is a commune in northwestern France. It is the prefecture of the Calvados department and the capital of the Basse-Normandie region. It is located inland from the English Channel....

 after succumbing to heart problems.

Work

Robbe-Grillet's first novel, The Erasers (Les Gommes), was published in 1953, after which he dedicated himself full-time to his new occupation. His early work was praised by eminent critics, such as Roland Barthes
Roland Barthes
Roland Gérard Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, social theory, Marxism, anthropology and...

 and Maurice Blanchot
Maurice Blanchot
Maurice Blanchot was a French writer, philosopher, and literary theorist. His work had a strong influence on post-structuralist philosophers such as Jacques Derrida.-Works:...

. Around the time of his second novel, he became a literary advisor for Les Editions de Minuit and occupied this position from 1955 until 1985. After publishing four novels, in 1961, he worked with Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais is a French film director whose career has extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included Nuit et Brouillard , an influential documentary about the Nazi concentration camps.He began...

, writing the script for Last Year in Marienbad (L'Année dernière à Marienbad), and he subsequently wrote and directed his own films.

In 1963, Robbe-Grillet published For a New Novel (Pour un Nouveau Roman
Pour un Nouveau Roman
Pour un Nouveau Roman is a 1963 collection of theoretical writings by French author Alain Robbe-Grillet....

), a collection of previously-published theoretical writings concerning the novel. From 1966 to 1968, he was a member of the High Committee for the Defense and Expansion of French (Haut comité pour la défense et l´expansion de la langue française). In addition, Robbe-Grillet also led the Centre for Sociology of Literature (Centre de sociologie de la littérature) at the Université Libre de Bruxelles
Université Libre de Bruxelles
The Université libre de Bruxelles is a French-speaking university in Brussels, Belgium. It has 21,000 students, 29% of whom come from abroad, and an equally cosmopolitan staff.-Name:...

 from 1980 to 1988. From 1971 to 1995, Robbe-Grillet was a professor at New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...

, lecturing on his own novels.

Although Robbe-Grillet was elected to the Académie française
Académie française
L'Académie française , also called the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution,...

 in 2004, in his eighties, he never was formally received by the Académie because of disputes regarding the Académie's reception procedures. Robbe-Grillet both refused to prepare and submit a welcome speech in advance, preferring to improvise his speech, as well as refusing to purchase and wear the Académie's famous green tails (habit vert) and sabre, which he considered outdated.

Style

His writing style has been described as "realist" or "phenomenological" (in the Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...

ian sense) or "a theory of pure surface." Methodical, geometric, and often repetitive descriptions of objects replace (though often reveal) the psychology and interiority of the character. The reader must slowly piece together the story and the emotional experience of jealousy, for example, in the repetition of descriptions, the attention to odd details, and the breaks in repetitions, a method that resembles the experience of psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...

 in which the deeper unconscious meanings are contained in the flow and disruptions of free associations. Timelines and plots are fractured, and the resulting novel resembles the literary equivalent of a cubist
Cubism
Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...

 painting. Yet his work is ultimately characterized by its ability to mean many things to many different people.

Novels

Robbe-Grillet wrote his first novel A Regicide (Un Régicide) in 1949, but it was rejected by Gallimard, a major French publishing house, and only later published with minor corrections by his lifelong publisher Les Editions de Minuit in 1978. His first published novel was The Erasers (Les Gommes), in 1953. The novel superficially resembles a detective novel, but it contains within it a deeper structure based on the tale of Oedipus
Oedipus
Oedipus was a mythical Greek king of Thebes. He fulfilled a prophecy that said he would kill his father and marry his mother, and thus brought disaster on his city and family...

. The detective is seeking the assassin in a murder that has not yet occurred, only to discover that it is his destiny to become that assassin.

His next and most acclaimed novel is The Voyeur (Le Voyeur), first published in French in 1955 and translated into English in 1958 by Richard Howard
Richard Howard
Richard Howard is an American poet, literary critic, essayist, teacher, and translator. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio and is a graduate of Columbia University, where he studied under Mark Van Doren, and where he now teaches...

. The Voyeur relates the story of Mathias, a traveling watch salesman who returns to the island of his youth with a desperate objective. As with many of his novels, The Voyeur revolves around an apparent murder: throughout the novel, Mathias unfolds a newspaper clipping about the details of a young girl's murder and the discovery of her body among the seaside rocks. Mathias' relationship with a dead girl, possibly that hinted at in the story, is obliquely revealed in the course of the novel so that we are never actually sure if Mathias is a killer or simply a person who fantasizes about killing. Importantly, the "actual murder," if such a thing exists, is absent from the text. The narration contains little dialogue, and an ambiguous timeline of events. Indeed, the novel's opening line is indicative of the novel's tone: "It was as if no one had heard." The Voyeur was awarded the Prix des Critiques.

Next, he wrote La Jalousie
La Jalousie
La Jalousie is a 1957 novel by Alain Robbe-Grillet. The title of its English editions is Jealousy, but this fails to capture the ambiguity of the French title: "la jalousie" can be translated as "jealousy", but also as "the jalousie window"...

in 1957, one of his only novels to be set in a non-urban location, in this instance a banana plantation. In the first year of publication only 746 copies were sold, despite the popularity of The Voyeur. Over time, it became a great literary success and was translated into English by Richard Howard
Richard Howard
Richard Howard is an American poet, literary critic, essayist, teacher, and translator. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio and is a graduate of Columbia University, where he studied under Mark Van Doren, and where he now teaches...

. Robbe-Grillet himself argued that the novel was constructed along the lines of an absent third-person narrator. In Robbe-Grillet's account of the novel the absent narrator, a jealous husband, silently observes the interactions of his wife (referred to only as "A...") and a neighbour, Franck. The silent narrator who never names himself (his presence is merely inferred, e.g. by the number of place settings at the dinner table or deck chairs on the verandah) is extremely suspicious that A... is having an affair with Franck. Throughout the novel, the absent narrator continually replays his observations and suspicions (that is, created scenarios about A... and Franck) so much so that it becomes impossible to distinguish between 'observed' moments or 'suspicious' moments.

In 1984 he published what he described as an intentionally traditional autobiography, entitled 'Le miroir qui revient', translated into English as 'Ghosts in the Mirror' by Jo Levy (1988).

Films

Robbe-Grillet also wrote screenplays, notably for Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais
Alain Resnais is a French film director whose career has extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included Nuit et Brouillard , an influential documentary about the Nazi concentration camps.He began...

' 1961 film Last Year at Marienbad
Last Year at Marienbad
L'Année dernière à Marienbad is a 1961 French film directed by Alain Resnais from a screenplay by Alain Robbe-Grillet....

, a critical success that is considered to be one of the finest French films of the 1960s. It was followed by a number of films written and directed by Robbe-Grillet himself: Trans-Europ-Express
Trans-Europ-Express (film)
Trans-Europ-Express is a 1966 film written and directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet and starring Jean-Louis Trintignant and Marie-France Pisier. The title refers to the Trans Europ Express, a former international rail network in Europe....

(1966), his two French-Slovak
Cinema of Slovakia
The cinema of Slovakia encompasses a range of themes and styles typical of European cinema. Yet there are a certain number of recurring themes that are visible in the majority of the important works. These include rural settings, folk traditions, and carnival...

 films L'homme qui ment/Muž, ktorý luže
The Man Who Lies
The Man Who Lies is a 1968 French-Czechoslovak drama film directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet. It was entered into the 18th Berlin International Film Festival where Jean-Louis Trintignant won the Silver Bear for Best Actor award.-Cast:...

(The Man Who Lies) (1968), L'Eden et après/Eden a potom (Eden and After) (1970), Glissements progressifs du plaisir (The Slow Slidings of Pleasure) (1974), Le jeu avec le feu (Playing with Fire) (1975), La belle captive (The Beautiful Captive) (1983) and many others.

Cultural references

  • The Australian composer Lindsay Vickery
    Lindsay Vickery
    Lindsay Vickery is an Australian composer and performer.-Early life and education:Lindsay Vickery was born in Perth. He studied composition with John Exton and Roger Smalley at the University of Western Australia...

     has written an opera based on the novel Djinn
    Djinn (novel)
    Djinn is a novel by Alain Robbe-Grillet. It was written as a French textbook with California State University, Dominguez Hills professor Yvone Lenard using a process of grammatical progression. Each chapter covers a specific element of French grammar, which becomes increasingly difficult over the...

    .
  • Frédéric Beigbeder refers to Robbe-Grillet in his novel Windows On the World.
  • In the movie Sideways
    Sideways
    Sideways is a 2004 comedy-drama film written by Jim Taylor and Alexander Payne and directed by Payne. Adapted from Rex Pickett's 2004 novel of the same name, Sideways follows two forty-something year old men, portrayed by Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church, who take a week-long road trip to...

    , Miles (Paul Giamatti
    Paul Giamatti
    Paul Edward Valentine Giamatti is an American actor. Giamatti began his career as a supporting actor in several films produced during the 1990s including Private Parts, The Truman Show, Saving Private Ryan, The Negotiator, and Man on the Moon, before earning lead roles in several projects in the...

    ) explains to Maya (Virginia Madsen
    Virginia Madsen
    Virginia Madsen is an American actress and documentary film producer. She came to fame during the 1980s, having appeared in several films aimed at a teenage audience...

    ) that his unpublished novel "evolves - or devolves - into a kind of a Robbe-Grillet mystery - but (with) no real resolution."
    • In the commentary section of the Sideways
      Sideways
      Sideways is a 2004 comedy-drama film written by Jim Taylor and Alexander Payne and directed by Payne. Adapted from Rex Pickett's 2004 novel of the same name, Sideways follows two forty-something year old men, portrayed by Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church, who take a week-long road trip to...

      DVD, Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church
      Thomas Haden Church
      Thomas Haden Church is an American actor. After co-starring in the 1990s sitcom Wings, Church became well known for his film roles, including his Academy Award-nominated performance in Sideways and his role as the Sandman in Spider-Man 3.-Early life:Church, the fourth of six children, was born...

       discuss the Robbe-Grillet reference during the scene when Miles is explaining his novel to Maya in (what Church dubs) the "lair of the white grape." When the line is mentioned Church says: "I love that--Robbe-Grillet. That gets a very good laugh." Paul Giamatti chimes in with: "What the hell?!" Church adds, "it's the height of ostentation." To which Giamatti agrees: "Nothing could be more pretentious." Then he disparages his own character stating: "What a jackass!"

Fiction

  • Un Régicide (1949)
  • Les Gommes (1953) Fénéon Prize
    Fénéon Prize
    The Fénéon Prize , established in 1949, is awarded annually to a French-language writer and a visual artist. The prize was established by Fanny Fénéon, the widow of French art critic Félix Fénéon...

  • Le Voyeur (1955)
  • La Jalousie
    La Jalousie
    La Jalousie is a 1957 novel by Alain Robbe-Grillet. The title of its English editions is Jealousy, but this fails to capture the ambiguity of the French title: "la jalousie" can be translated as "jealousy", but also as "the jalousie window"...

    (1957)
  • Dans le labyrinthe (1959)
  • La Maison de rendez-vous (1965)
  • Projet pour une révolution à New-York (1970)
  • La Belle Captive
    La Belle captive
    La Belle captive is a 1983 French drama film directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet. It was entered into the 33rd Berlin International Film Festival.-Cast:* Daniel Mesguich as Walter Raim* Cyrielle Clair as Sara Zeitgeist* Daniel Emilfork as Inspector Francis...

    (1975)
  • Topologie d'une cité fantôme (1976)
  • Souvenirs du Triangle d'Or (1978)
  • Djinn
    Djinn (novel)
    Djinn is a novel by Alain Robbe-Grillet. It was written as a French textbook with California State University, Dominguez Hills professor Yvone Lenard using a process of grammatical progression. Each chapter covers a specific element of French grammar, which becomes increasingly difficult over the...

    (1981)
  • La Reprise
    La reprise
    La Reprise is a French novel in the Nouveau roman style by Alain Robbe-Grillet published in 2001 by Les Éditions de Minuit....

    (2001)
  • Un Roman sentimental (2007)

"Romanesques"

  • Le Miroir qui revient (1985)
  • Angélique ou l'enchantement (1988)
  • Les derniers jours de Corinthe (1994)

Essays

  • Pour un Nouveau Roman
    Pour un Nouveau Roman
    Pour un Nouveau Roman is a 1963 collection of theoretical writings by French author Alain Robbe-Grillet....

    (1963)
  • Le voyageur, essais et entretiens (2001)
  • Préface à Une Vie d'Ecrivain (2005)

Filmworks available as ciné-novels

  • 1960: L'Année dernière à Marienbad
    Last Year at Marienbad
    L'Année dernière à Marienbad is a 1961 French film directed by Alain Resnais from a screenplay by Alain Robbe-Grillet....

    Les Éditions de Minuit ASIN: B005MP60NO
  • 1963: L'Immortelle
    L'Immortelle
    L'Immortelle is a 1963 French-Turkish drama film directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet. It was entered into the 13th Berlin International Film Festival. The film won the Prix Louis Delluc at the Berlin Festival.L'Immortelle is set in Istanbul...

    Les Éditions de Minuit ASIN: B0014Q17Z6
  • 1974: Glissements progressifs du plaisir Les Éditions de Minuit ASIN:B0048IY7OK
  • 2002: C'est Gradiva qui vous appelle Les Éditions de Minuit ISBN-13: 978-2707317933

Filmography

  • L'immortelle
    L'Immortelle
    L'Immortelle is a 1963 French-Turkish drama film directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet. It was entered into the 13th Berlin International Film Festival. The film won the Prix Louis Delluc at the Berlin Festival.L'Immortelle is set in Istanbul...

    (1963)
  • Trans-Europ-Express
    Trans-Europ-Express (film)
    Trans-Europ-Express is a 1966 film written and directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet and starring Jean-Louis Trintignant and Marie-France Pisier. The title refers to the Trans Europ Express, a former international rail network in Europe....

    (1966)
  • L'homme qui ment / Muž, ktorý luže (1968)
  • L'Eden et après
    Eden and After
    Eden and After is a 1970 French-Czechoslovak drama film directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet. It was entered into the 20th Berlin International Film Festival.-Cast:* Catherine Jourdan - Violette* Lorraine Rainer - Marie-Eve* Sylvain Corthay - Jean-Pierre...

     / Eden a potom
    (1970)
  • N. a pris les dés... (1971)
  • Glissements progressifs du plaisir (1974), starring Anicée Alvina, Olga Georges-Picot, Michel Lonsdale, Jean Martin; editor Bob Wade; producer Roger Boublil
  • Le jeu avec le feu / Playing with Fire (1975)
  • La belle captive
    La Belle captive
    La Belle captive is a 1983 French drama film directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet. It was entered into the 33rd Berlin International Film Festival.-Cast:* Daniel Mesguich as Walter Raim* Cyrielle Clair as Sara Zeitgeist* Daniel Emilfork as Inspector Francis...

    (1983), starring: Daniel Mesguich
    Daniel Mesguich
    Daniel Mesguich is a French-Algerian actor and director in theater and opera, and professor of stage acting school.-Biography:...

    , Gabrielle Lazure, Cyrielle Claire, Daniel Emilfork
    Daniel Emilfork
    Daniel Emilfork-Berenstein was a Chilean stage and film actor.Emilfork was born in Providencia, Chile after his Jewish socialist parents from Kiev fled a pogrom in Odessa...

    , Roland Dubillard, François Chaumette
  • The Blue Villa
    The Blue Villa
    Un bruit qui rend fou is a 1995 crime thriller film with Fred Ward.- Plot :The complexly interwoven lives of the residents of an isolated Greek island form the basis of this psycho-sexual drama from iconoclastic film-maker Alain Robbe-Grillet...

    (1995), starring: Fred Ward
    Fred Ward
    Freddie Joe "Fred" Ward is an American actor. He began his career in 1979 alongside Clint Eastwood in Escape from Alcatraz. He is best known for his starring roles in the motion pictures Remo Williams, Tremors, Henry & June, Short Cuts, The Right Stuff and Exit Speed...

    , Arielle Dombasle
    Arielle Dombasle
    Arielle Dombasle is a French-American singer, actress, director and model. Her breakthrough roles were in Éric Rohmer's Pauline at the Beach and Alain Robbe-Grillet's The Blue Villa...

  • C'est Gradiva qui vous appelle (2006), starring: James Wilby
    James Wilby
    James Jonathon Wilby is an English film, television and theatre actor.-Early life and education:He was born in Rangoon, Burma to a corporate executive father...

    , Arielle Dombasle
    Arielle Dombasle
    Arielle Dombasle is a French-American singer, actress, director and model. Her breakthrough roles were in Éric Rohmer's Pauline at the Beach and Alain Robbe-Grillet's The Blue Villa...

    , Dany Verissimo
    Dany Verissimo
    Dany Verissimo is an actress and model.The child of a Malagasy mother and a French father, a financial director at Air France, Verissimo spent her childhood in France, the United States, and Nigeria. She began performing in pornography at 18 and a half years old, performing in films by John B...


External links


Further reading

  • Gardies, André (1972) Alain Robbe-Grillet. Paris: Seghers (étude par André Gardies; textes et documents)
  • Immoral Tales: European Sex & Horror Movies 1956-1984
    Immoral Tales: European Sex & Horror Movies 1956-1984
    Immoral Tales: European Sex & Horror Movies 1956-1984 is the title of a 1994 non fiction book by Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs, that won the Bram Stoker Award for Best Non-Fiction....

    (1994) by Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs dedicates a chapter to his films.
  • The Erotic Dream Machine: Interviews with Alain Robbe-Grillet on His Films (2006) by Anthony N Fragola, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Roch Charles Smith
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