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Intertextual Assemblage in Robbe Grillet: From Topology to the Golden Triangle
84 pages, Unknown Binding
Published January 1, 1978
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 26, 2019
250319 from later addition 1 April 2014/210511.
this is not an april fools', and no, i would not say his works are such. just thinking of his work- in translation from french, compared to translations from japanese of murakami ryu. i finished his massive work 'from the fatherland with love'- and am trying to understand how the manner of writing is, in r-g, so dedicated to imagistic, hypnotic, images of dream or act. versus ryu in this mode of examining, relating, the consciousness in thoughts and emotions, of his characters, and not so much depiction of the world in dispassionate prose of r-g. opposites... and i like both! maybe because they are so indelible. i do not know if i will ever read that particular ryu again, but i am already impatient to read r-g again...
i will get back to this after some thought about golden triangle... OK, so now i have read 12 major published works of fiction by robbe-grillet, 1 selection of his essays, 1 memoir, this 1 lit crit on him. what did i learn? can i now reasonably critique his work? i have never studied him but just have read him, on him, his essays, other essays on his work...
i learn, again, that i have trouble getting into work that requires having read other works. i do not think i am particularly unread, but i have tried many works just by myself, so have no educated explication of given texts. i have had, perhaps naively, the idea that the artwork has to appeal on an immediate level, in writing the 'poetics', or all the 'extras', allusions, plots, subplots, politics, thematic resonance etc, do not matter. thus, i cannot claim to have truly read ulysses by joyce, because when i do recognize one reference it is page 239 or something, and i realize how much i have probably missed by that point. i decide to maybe read it with a guide, person or book. i have done none of these…
for robbe-grillet, i so enjoy his earlier work- erasers, voyeur, jealousy, in the labyrinth- that the momentum carries me through later work. i do not know if i ‘get’ all of them. i do enjoy them. i read crit work, somewhere i do not recall. i read that erasers was built on oedipus, but that is missed by more than just me, and it does not affect the remembrance. and now read that this might be not reference to the myth but to any search for meaning (detective/reader).... i am very impressed, enjoyed greatly, technique with which he tells erasers. style is content. i read jealousy but my review there tells you more than you need to know about my reading of jealousy and in the labyrinth. how the story is told is what the story is told. i remember seeing marienbad, enjoying it but preferring the cine-novel. i have not seen his other films, except clips on youtube…
robbe-grillet’s later work- topology, le maison de rendezvous, project for a revolution, golden triangle, belle captive, djinn, repetition- i do not enjoy near as much, once i learn what i do not know, which in these cases seem to be mostly freud, de sade, surrealism (which i know a bit). sometimes images, collages, of the work is interesting- topology, djinn- but, whether misogynist or unrecognized satire, the repeated images of sadism, of torture, of various blonde girls, are hard to read. am i supposed to read this as de sade and freud and just a sick mind? (and bdsm fantasies embedded in western culture?). i am not overwhelmed with horror and disgust, for i can recognize when it is a book and when it is real, but, rather than following where said images were leading, mainly i think about the psychology of the author. i wonder who is this man, why is he writing this, what is the response he wishes to provoke… and i keep putting some artistic justification back and back again: by the end of this page it will all make sense, by the end of this book, by the end of all these books…
so, i must admit my understanding of robbe-grillet’s experimental ‘new novel’ to be sadly incomplete. i understand in this i am not alone. i understand his critics also tend to drift away on his later works. i think i might better understand after reading his essays, which are great, or after his memoirs, which are good- no and no. an author only knows what she is writing as she is writing: perhaps a reader only knows what she is reading as she is reading. i have always thought of de sade sick and sad and not very philosophically mature or coherent, rather nihilistic, and not a source i will search for artistic work. i have always been less interested in freud than jung, as far as art creation, for freud seems to be all on repression, and jung seems more on expression. or so i read somewhere...
i try not to let (my evaluation of) the quality of robbe-grillet’s later work, to diminish my appreciation of his early work: perhaps light of the sun will illuminate areas previously unseen, but if you look right into the sun too long you go blind, and your images are now not even darkness but rather simple blindness...
this is not an april fools', and no, i would not say his works are such. just thinking of his work- in translation from french, compared to translations from japanese of murakami ryu. i finished his massive work 'from the fatherland with love'- and am trying to understand how the manner of writing is, in r-g, so dedicated to imagistic, hypnotic, images of dream or act. versus ryu in this mode of examining, relating, the consciousness in thoughts and emotions, of his characters, and not so much depiction of the world in dispassionate prose of r-g. opposites... and i like both! maybe because they are so indelible. i do not know if i will ever read that particular ryu again, but i am already impatient to read r-g again...
i will get back to this after some thought about golden triangle... OK, so now i have read 12 major published works of fiction by robbe-grillet, 1 selection of his essays, 1 memoir, this 1 lit crit on him. what did i learn? can i now reasonably critique his work? i have never studied him but just have read him, on him, his essays, other essays on his work...
i learn, again, that i have trouble getting into work that requires having read other works. i do not think i am particularly unread, but i have tried many works just by myself, so have no educated explication of given texts. i have had, perhaps naively, the idea that the artwork has to appeal on an immediate level, in writing the 'poetics', or all the 'extras', allusions, plots, subplots, politics, thematic resonance etc, do not matter. thus, i cannot claim to have truly read ulysses by joyce, because when i do recognize one reference it is page 239 or something, and i realize how much i have probably missed by that point. i decide to maybe read it with a guide, person or book. i have done none of these…
for robbe-grillet, i so enjoy his earlier work- erasers, voyeur, jealousy, in the labyrinth- that the momentum carries me through later work. i do not know if i ‘get’ all of them. i do enjoy them. i read crit work, somewhere i do not recall. i read that erasers was built on oedipus, but that is missed by more than just me, and it does not affect the remembrance. and now read that this might be not reference to the myth but to any search for meaning (detective/reader).... i am very impressed, enjoyed greatly, technique with which he tells erasers. style is content. i read jealousy but my review there tells you more than you need to know about my reading of jealousy and in the labyrinth. how the story is told is what the story is told. i remember seeing marienbad, enjoying it but preferring the cine-novel. i have not seen his other films, except clips on youtube…
robbe-grillet’s later work- topology, le maison de rendezvous, project for a revolution, golden triangle, belle captive, djinn, repetition- i do not enjoy near as much, once i learn what i do not know, which in these cases seem to be mostly freud, de sade, surrealism (which i know a bit). sometimes images, collages, of the work is interesting- topology, djinn- but, whether misogynist or unrecognized satire, the repeated images of sadism, of torture, of various blonde girls, are hard to read. am i supposed to read this as de sade and freud and just a sick mind? (and bdsm fantasies embedded in western culture?). i am not overwhelmed with horror and disgust, for i can recognize when it is a book and when it is real, but, rather than following where said images were leading, mainly i think about the psychology of the author. i wonder who is this man, why is he writing this, what is the response he wishes to provoke… and i keep putting some artistic justification back and back again: by the end of this page it will all make sense, by the end of this book, by the end of all these books…
so, i must admit my understanding of robbe-grillet’s experimental ‘new novel’ to be sadly incomplete. i understand in this i am not alone. i understand his critics also tend to drift away on his later works. i think i might better understand after reading his essays, which are great, or after his memoirs, which are good- no and no. an author only knows what she is writing as she is writing: perhaps a reader only knows what she is reading as she is reading. i have always thought of de sade sick and sad and not very philosophically mature or coherent, rather nihilistic, and not a source i will search for artistic work. i have always been less interested in freud than jung, as far as art creation, for freud seems to be all on repression, and jung seems more on expression. or so i read somewhere...
i try not to let (my evaluation of) the quality of robbe-grillet’s later work, to diminish my appreciation of his early work: perhaps light of the sun will illuminate areas previously unseen, but if you look right into the sun too long you go blind, and your images are now not even darkness but rather simple blindness...
March 23, 2019
Nice, efficient rundown of three of Robbe-Grillet's later novels and how they relate to his cinematic work and cine-novels.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews