Baga

by Robert Pinget

novel, tr John Stevenson

Genres: France

Paperback

First published January 1, 1958

About the author

Robert Pinget was a Swiss-born French novelist and playwright associated with the nouveau roman movement.

After completing his law studies and working as a lawyer for a year, he moved to Paris in 1946 to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

In 1951, he published his first novel Entre Fantoine et Agapa. After publishing two other novels, but then having his fourth rejected by Gallimard, Pinget was recommended by Alain Robbe-Grillet and Samuel Beckett to Jérôme Lindon, head of Éditions de Minuit, where he subsequently published Graal flibuste in 1956. Éditions de Minuit became his main publisher.

Scholars and critics have often associated his work with that of his friend Samuel Beckett, who he met in 1955.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Nate D · Rating 2 out of 5]

The diaries of a mad king, perhaps, as he reimagines himself over supposed centuries. It could be a book about the arbitrariness of power (inherited, as here, or otherwise), though the king cedes much of the practicalities of operating the state to the titular advisor and regent. Except that this reading is more or less post-hoc -- these chapters (a picnic with another head of state, a period lived as a hermit, or lived as a women) are so scattered as to be almost independent stories, the character and events too inconsistent to really hold together into anything cohesive and interpretable. At least to my (puzzled) reading.

[Cody · Rating 2 out of 5]

HOUSEKEEPING 2025:

The book that almost made me give up on Pinget as a clunker. I didn't, a wise decision in hindsight (if only briefly). Obviously, I make up the minority here. Read it and decide. It's short. And French. Like that one guy. Yeah...him.

[Doodles McC · Rating 3 out of 5]

An autobiographical non-sense book, forming delightful reading. 18 year old me thought this collection of stories was just ok.