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Project for a Revolution in New York
Part prophecy and part erotic fantasy, this classic tale of otherworldly depravity features New York itself—or a foreigner's nightmare of New York—as its true protagonist. Set in the towers and tunnels of the quintessential American city, Alain Robbe-Grillet's novel turns this urban space into a maze where politics bleeds into perversion, revolution into sadism, activist into criminal, vice into art—and back again. Following the logic of a movie half-glimpsed through a haze of drugs and alcohol, Project for a Revolution in New York is a Sadean reverie that bears an alarming resemblance to the New York, and the United States, that have actually come into being.
183 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1970
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682 people want to read
About the author
Alain Robbe-Grillet
101 books426 followersScreenplays and novels, such as
The Erasers
(1953), of French writer Alain Robbe-Grillet, affiliated with the New Wave movement in cinema, subordinate plot to the treatment of space and time; directors, such as Jean Luc Godard and François Truffaut, led this movement, which in the 1960s abandoned traditional narrative techniques in favor of greater use of symbolism and abstraction and dealt with themes of social alienation, psychopathology, and sexual love.
Alain Robbe-Grillet was a French writer and filmmaker. He was along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and Claude Simon one of the figures most associated with the trend of the Nouveau Roman. Robbe-Grillet was elected a member of the Académie française on March 25, 2004, succeeding Maurice Rheims at seat #32.
He was married to Catherine Robbe-Grillet (née Rstakian) .
Alain Robbe-Grillet was born in Brest (Finistère, France) into a family of engineers and scientists. He was trained as an agricultural engineer. In the years 1943-44 Robbe-Grillet participated in service du travail obligatoire 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. Later, his work as an agronomist took him to Martinique, French Guinea,Guadeloupe and Morocco.
His 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 and Maurice Blanchot. 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 Renais, writing the script for Last Year at Marienbad (L'Année Dernière à Marienbad), and subsequently wrote and directed his own films. In 1963, Robbe-Grillet published For a New Novel (Pour un Nouveau Roman), a collection of previous 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 university of Bruxelles from 1980 to 1988. From 1971 to 1995 Robbe-Grillet was a professor at New York University, lecturing on his own novels.
In 2004 Robbe-Grillet was elected to the Académie française, but was never actually 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 as out-dated.
He died in Caen after succumbing to heart problems
Style
His writing style has been described as "realist" or "phenomenological" (in the Heideggerian sense) or "a theory of pure surface." Methodical, geometric, and often repetitive descriptions of objects replace the psychology and interiority of the character. Instead, one slowly pieces together the story and the emotional experience of jealousy in the repetition of descriptions, the attention to odd details, and the breaks in repetitions. Ironically, this method resembles the experience of psychoanalysis 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
Alain Robbe-Grillet was a French writer and filmmaker. He was along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and Claude Simon one of the figures most associated with the trend of the Nouveau Roman. Robbe-Grillet was elected a member of the Académie française on March 25, 2004, succeeding Maurice Rheims at seat #32.
He was married to Catherine Robbe-Grillet (née Rstakian) .
Alain Robbe-Grillet was born in Brest (Finistère, France) into a family of engineers and scientists. He was trained as an agricultural engineer. In the years 1943-44 Robbe-Grillet participated in service du travail obligatoire 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. Later, his work as an agronomist took him to Martinique, French Guinea,Guadeloupe and Morocco.
His 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 and Maurice Blanchot. 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 Renais, writing the script for Last Year at Marienbad (L'Année Dernière à Marienbad), and subsequently wrote and directed his own films. In 1963, Robbe-Grillet published For a New Novel (Pour un Nouveau Roman), a collection of previous 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 university of Bruxelles from 1980 to 1988. From 1971 to 1995 Robbe-Grillet was a professor at New York University, lecturing on his own novels.
In 2004 Robbe-Grillet was elected to the Académie française, but was never actually 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 as out-dated.
He died in Caen after succumbing to heart problems
Style
His writing style has been described as "realist" or "phenomenological" (in the Heideggerian sense) or "a theory of pure surface." Methodical, geometric, and often repetitive descriptions of objects replace the psychology and interiority of the character. Instead, one slowly pieces together the story and the emotional experience of jealousy in the repetition of descriptions, the attention to odd details, and the breaks in repetitions. Ironically, this method resembles the experience of psychoanalysis 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
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October 28, 2024
Reading Project for a Revolution in New York is like roaming through the grotesque and knotty warren – one can’t guess where one will find oneself opening the next door.
What will happen if you begin to take at random fragments of the worst pop culture detective stories and make a huge collage out of them? Well, then you surely end up with the Project for a Revolution in New York – a cynical, misanthropic, misogynic, pornographic, surrealistic, abstract, postapocalyptic dystopia.
Concatenating pulp fiction clichés – sex, violence, crime, murder, espionage, conspiracy, bondage, perversion, kidnapping, sadomasochism and all the rest – into a very tortuous pattern Alain Robbe-Grillet creates a surreal panorama of all the modern urban phobias.
And like any detective story the novel hides a secret:
And what all those macabre and obscene things have to do with a revolution then?
Death is the final liberation from everything.
What will happen if you begin to take at random fragments of the worst pop culture detective stories and make a huge collage out of them? Well, then you surely end up with the Project for a Revolution in New York – a cynical, misanthropic, misogynic, pornographic, surrealistic, abstract, postapocalyptic dystopia.
…cluttering up the tables and chairs, lying on the floor, which has always suggested to me that Laura was reading all these books at once and that in this way she mixed up from room to room, according to her own movements, the itineraries of the detectives carefully calculated by the author, thereby endlessly altering the arrangement of each volume, leaping more-over a hundred times a day from one work to the next, not minding her frequent returns to the same passage nonetheless stripped of any apparent interest, whereas she utterly abandons on the contrary the essential chapter which contains the climax of an investigation, and consequently gives its whole meaning to the rest of the plot; and all the more since many of these mass-produced bindings having failed to withstand the occasionally brutal negligence of this way of reading, they have lost, over the months, a corner of a page, here and there a whole page, or even two or three signatures all at once.
Concatenating pulp fiction clichés – sex, violence, crime, murder, espionage, conspiracy, bondage, perversion, kidnapping, sadomasochism and all the rest – into a very tortuous pattern Alain Robbe-Grillet creates a surreal panorama of all the modern urban phobias.
And like any detective story the novel hides a secret:
…I have now noticed, in skimming the novel, that of the three elements of the secret in the heroine’s keeping, one was known by the reader, the second by the narrator himself, and the third by the book’s author alone.
And what all those macabre and obscene things have to do with a revolution then?
Crime is a part and parcel of a revolution – with the help of those three metaphoric acts: rape, murder and arson, Negroes, impoverished proletariat and working intellectuals will be liberated from the chains of slavery and bourgeoisie will be delivered from their sexual complexes.
Death is the final liberation from everything.
March 23, 2014
A Three-Fold Revolution
At a macro level, "Project" is about the fate of the city, the body and the novel.
All three represent a corpus, society, order and convention (including narrative convention).
Over the course of the novel, all three are subjected to some form of revolution: destruction, break-down, fragmentation, disarticulation, dis-integration or deconstruction.
We observe a cutting up of the natural order, an overthrow of repression, perhaps even (but not necessarily in relation to the role of women) liberation.
Like a film, what is cut up is then re-assembled into a new whole, in this case, the novel. Yet, somehow, the result is alienating. Why is it so?
If it can be done with film, via editing, why can't it be done with the novel? Why are our expectations of the novel different from those with respect to a film? Is it the visualisation of the subject matter that makes film easier to digest?
What about a novel that mimics a film?
Rape, Arson and Murder
The political revolution has already occurred by the time the novel commences. We see its aftermath. The natural order has been overturned, only it has been replaced by disorder, rather than a new order.
Like detective novels, pulp fiction and B-movies, the subject matter of the novel, the immediate consequence of its revolution, is rape, arson and murder (a triad of crimes, this time). Just as the world revolves, it is revolting.
Each crime is a destructive force. Each involves the colour red by way of revolution, fire, bruising and bloodshed.
Robbe-Grillet as author stages this revolution for us to watch. He turns us readers into voyeurs and peeping toms, who look or gaze through the keyhole, or use a phallic key to open the door and seek entry to the forbidden room, where all of the fictive action takes place.
Ironically, the person behind the revolution, the person giving the orders (that supplant the natural order) is Frank, on the one hand, the name of someone who tells it as it is, on the other, perhaps a name indicating a Frenchman, but then perhaps also the author, who might also be a director or a writer/director/producer.
Rehearse/Repeat/Retake/Cut
The novel is drenched in the language of film and theatre. It's labelled a "project" as if it's a treatment or a proposal for a film. On the other hand, the project could merely anticipate what might occur, by design or otherwise.
It's structured as a rehearsal, a repetition (the French word "répéter" means both rehearse and repeat). There is a sequence of scenes, both original shoots and retakes, separated by judicious cutting.
When the revolution does finally come, however, like good actors and good audience members, we will know what to expect and what to be prepared for. The spectacle will be better for the rehearsal.
We implied readers even appear in the novel as interrogators, endeavouring to clarify what has happened, to explain inconsistencies, to recapitulate scenes we didn't quite understand. We are seated and present in the theatre of operations, not just as audience members or witnesses to the crimes, but as contributors to the development and appreciation of the creative work, this filmic/theatrical novel being constructed, apparently, in front of our very eyes. It would be nothing without our gaze.
The City
New York is the locus of the revolution. It has to be, because it is (or was, in 1970, when the novel was written) the global symbol of commerce, the centre of world trade (hence the lure of the World Trade Centre for terrorists).
Because of its status, it is also the centre of advertising, the creation of modern [faux- or fake] aspirations, dreams, fantasies and mythology.
Madison Avenue tells us, as objects, how we should look, as well as telling us, as subjects, how we should look at the objects it has created for us. It is where the dominant gaze is fabricated (well, at least, alongside Hollywood, which after all is just Manhattan's backlot).
If you want to question or overthrow the dominant gaze, then the revolution has to start in New York.
The Body
The bodies in the novel are invariably those of women. They are subjected to graphic violence, rape and torture. The language mimics that of crime fiction and pornography. Fiction mimics the underbelly of society.
Womanhood is portrayed as the virginal white skin which is made bloody red, just as Mallarmé sees a blank sheet of white paper as something pure and virginal that will be sexualised and invaded by the author, enabling it to be read.
Still, sexual violence is present. Does that make the novel or the author misogynist? Is the fiction entitled to stand alone, apart from its author?
The Novel
The revolutionary violence in "Project" is not just its subject matter, but a description of the very process of writing itself. The project is not just the fictional project within the text, it also defines the process by which the text is created.
Robbe-Grillet's project was to overthrow narrative convention, the natural order of fiction. He did so by appropriating the conventions of popular art forms and circumscribing or circumventing them.
Discrete passages look like they could have appeared in crime fiction, but cut up and reassembled, they take on another form. The whole is different from the parts.
While we can admire Robbe-Grillet's ambition, I can't say that it makes for an enjoyable read. The writing is word perfect, the sentences and paragraphs short and sharp and economical, like detective fiction.
However, there are no chapters or other signposts that mark transitions. The editting is so subtle, it's seamless, and frequently it's hard to know when one scene has ended and another has commenced.
As a result, it's quite possible to finish the novel and not have a clue what was going on. Nevertheless, as a whole, it's captivating and draws you back to the first page, so that you're tempted to read it again with greater understanding and appreciation.
Is this making excuses? I don't think so, but the novel is clearly not for every one.
In a way, it's like a formally innovative film. We watch it the first time, trying to get comfortable with the narrative device. On our second viewing, we relax and enjoy the detail and the significance that we missed the first time. The first viewing is just a rehearsal for a repeat visit.
Not everybody will want to do this, but those who can be lead into temptation and who make the effort should be rewarded.
At a macro level, "Project" is about the fate of the city, the body and the novel.
All three represent a corpus, society, order and convention (including narrative convention).
Over the course of the novel, all three are subjected to some form of revolution: destruction, break-down, fragmentation, disarticulation, dis-integration or deconstruction.
We observe a cutting up of the natural order, an overthrow of repression, perhaps even (but not necessarily in relation to the role of women) liberation.
Like a film, what is cut up is then re-assembled into a new whole, in this case, the novel. Yet, somehow, the result is alienating. Why is it so?
If it can be done with film, via editing, why can't it be done with the novel? Why are our expectations of the novel different from those with respect to a film? Is it the visualisation of the subject matter that makes film easier to digest?
What about a novel that mimics a film?
Rape, Arson and Murder
The political revolution has already occurred by the time the novel commences. We see its aftermath. The natural order has been overturned, only it has been replaced by disorder, rather than a new order.
Like detective novels, pulp fiction and B-movies, the subject matter of the novel, the immediate consequence of its revolution, is rape, arson and murder (a triad of crimes, this time). Just as the world revolves, it is revolting.
Each crime is a destructive force. Each involves the colour red by way of revolution, fire, bruising and bloodshed.
Robbe-Grillet as author stages this revolution for us to watch. He turns us readers into voyeurs and peeping toms, who look or gaze through the keyhole, or use a phallic key to open the door and seek entry to the forbidden room, where all of the fictive action takes place.
Ironically, the person behind the revolution, the person giving the orders (that supplant the natural order) is Frank, on the one hand, the name of someone who tells it as it is, on the other, perhaps a name indicating a Frenchman, but then perhaps also the author, who might also be a director or a writer/director/producer.
Rehearse/Repeat/Retake/Cut
The novel is drenched in the language of film and theatre. It's labelled a "project" as if it's a treatment or a proposal for a film. On the other hand, the project could merely anticipate what might occur, by design or otherwise.
It's structured as a rehearsal, a repetition (the French word "répéter" means both rehearse and repeat). There is a sequence of scenes, both original shoots and retakes, separated by judicious cutting.
When the revolution does finally come, however, like good actors and good audience members, we will know what to expect and what to be prepared for. The spectacle will be better for the rehearsal.
We implied readers even appear in the novel as interrogators, endeavouring to clarify what has happened, to explain inconsistencies, to recapitulate scenes we didn't quite understand. We are seated and present in the theatre of operations, not just as audience members or witnesses to the crimes, but as contributors to the development and appreciation of the creative work, this filmic/theatrical novel being constructed, apparently, in front of our very eyes. It would be nothing without our gaze.
The City
New York is the locus of the revolution. It has to be, because it is (or was, in 1970, when the novel was written) the global symbol of commerce, the centre of world trade (hence the lure of the World Trade Centre for terrorists).
Because of its status, it is also the centre of advertising, the creation of modern [faux- or fake] aspirations, dreams, fantasies and mythology.
Madison Avenue tells us, as objects, how we should look, as well as telling us, as subjects, how we should look at the objects it has created for us. It is where the dominant gaze is fabricated (well, at least, alongside Hollywood, which after all is just Manhattan's backlot).
If you want to question or overthrow the dominant gaze, then the revolution has to start in New York.
The Body
The bodies in the novel are invariably those of women. They are subjected to graphic violence, rape and torture. The language mimics that of crime fiction and pornography. Fiction mimics the underbelly of society.
Womanhood is portrayed as the virginal white skin which is made bloody red, just as Mallarmé sees a blank sheet of white paper as something pure and virginal that will be sexualised and invaded by the author, enabling it to be read.
Still, sexual violence is present. Does that make the novel or the author misogynist? Is the fiction entitled to stand alone, apart from its author?
The Novel
The revolutionary violence in "Project" is not just its subject matter, but a description of the very process of writing itself. The project is not just the fictional project within the text, it also defines the process by which the text is created.
Robbe-Grillet's project was to overthrow narrative convention, the natural order of fiction. He did so by appropriating the conventions of popular art forms and circumscribing or circumventing them.
Discrete passages look like they could have appeared in crime fiction, but cut up and reassembled, they take on another form. The whole is different from the parts.
While we can admire Robbe-Grillet's ambition, I can't say that it makes for an enjoyable read. The writing is word perfect, the sentences and paragraphs short and sharp and economical, like detective fiction.
However, there are no chapters or other signposts that mark transitions. The editting is so subtle, it's seamless, and frequently it's hard to know when one scene has ended and another has commenced.
As a result, it's quite possible to finish the novel and not have a clue what was going on. Nevertheless, as a whole, it's captivating and draws you back to the first page, so that you're tempted to read it again with greater understanding and appreciation.
Is this making excuses? I don't think so, but the novel is clearly not for every one.
In a way, it's like a formally innovative film. We watch it the first time, trying to get comfortable with the narrative device. On our second viewing, we relax and enjoy the detail and the significance that we missed the first time. The first viewing is just a rehearsal for a repeat visit.
Not everybody will want to do this, but those who can be lead into temptation and who make the effort should be rewarded.
May 9, 2025
Avantgardeliteratur als Sackgassenschreiben mit ein paar Tabuszenen garniert.
Inhalt: 1/5 Sterne (enttabuisierte Inkohärenz)
Form: 2/5 Sterne (abstrakt)
Erzählstimme: 1/5 Sterne (völlig wirr)
Komposition: 2/5 Sterne (keine)
Leseerlebnis: 1/5 Sterne (ätzend-langweilig-lang)
(1970) lässt sich als Mittelteil einer Städtetrilogie lesen, begonnen mit Die blaue Villa in Hongkong (1966) und beendet mit Topologie einer Geisterstadt (1977). In dieser, inoffiziellen, Trilogie radikalisiert Robbe-Grillet seine Poetik, indem von einem atmosphärischen, cineastischen Erzählen am Ende nur noch Schnitttechniken und Überblendungen und Verwirrungen übrigbleiben, die kaum noch von den an den Haaren herbeigezogenen Schockszenen zusammengehalten werden:
»Sie haben gleichzeitig zwei Geschichten begonnen und sie grundlos nacheinander abgebrochen. Einerseits die Schwarze Messe, bei der Sie die zwölf Erstkommu-nikantinnen geopfert haben, und den Gebrauch, der an jenem Tage von den Kreuzen, den Hostien, den Kerzen und den großen Kerzenleuchtern mit den Ei-senspitzen zum Aufspießen der Mädchen gemacht worden ist. Andererseits ist die Geschichte, wie Sarah, das schöne Halbblut, von Doktor Morgan mit Sperma der weißen Rasse befruchtet wurde, das Joan dem alten Goldstücker abgezapft hat. Übrigens zeigt sich in diesem Punkt ein Widerspruch in Ihrer Erzählung: Sie sagen einmal, die Patientin sei nackt gewesen, und ein anderes Mal, sie habe ein rotes Kleid getragen.«
Von einem Plot bleibt in Projekt für eine Revolution in New York nicht viel übrig, vielleicht anleihen an Marquis de Sade und Anthony Burgess Uhrwerk Orange, wo es um Folter, Brutalität und Jugendexzesse auf den Straßen geht. Hier steht ein Agent vor einem Haus, das mal in Brand steht, mal nicht, mal den Ort einer Folterung, eines Gefängnisses, eines Schutzraumes markiert, mal nicht, mal eine geschlossene, mal eine geöffnete Haustür besitzt, durch die mal der eine, mal der andere hindurchmarschiert. Stimmte in Die blaue Villa in Hongkong noch Setting, Atmosphäre, Verdichtung der Bilder, Geheimnis, Verlorenheit, Desillusion und Entwurzelung mit der Schreib- und Erzählweise überein, stiebt in Projekt für eine Revolution in New York alles auseinander:
»In welcher Hinsicht sollte [die Beschreibung] übertrieben sein?«
»In lexikologischer Hinsicht.«
»Sie behaupten, es handle sich um Unrichtigkeiten?«
»Nein, ganz und gar nicht.«
»Sachliche Fehler?«
»Darum geht es nicht.«
»Also Lügen?«
»Noch weniger!«
»Dann muß ich gestehen, daß ich nicht weiß, was Sie meinen. Ich mache meinen Bericht, und basta. Der Text ist korrekt und nichts wird dem Zufall überlas-sen, man muis ihn so nehmen, wie er ist.«
Hier passt gar nichts zusammen. Was bei Claude Simon, bspw. in Jardin des Plantes und andere wie Leitkörper , stets atmosphärisch, inhaltlich, mnemotechnisch gebunden bleibt, klingt beim sadomasochistischen Setting Alain Robbe-Grillets einfach aus. Langweilig, uninnovativ, ein Sackgassenschreiben, das keine Figuren, keine Szenen, keinerlei literarische Intensität erzeugt.
---------------------------------
---------------------------------
Details – ab hier Spoilergefahr (zur Erinnerung für mich):
---------------------------------
---------------------------------
Inhalt:
●Hauptfigur(en): Der wechselnde Ich-Erzähler, Dr. Morgan, Laura in vielen Varianten, JR – Joan Robertson, Ben Said, Frank, Edouard Goldstücker
●Zusammenfassung/Inhaltsangabe: Wichtige Szenen, aus denen sich der Gesamttext zusammenbaut. Ein Haus, dessen Tür versperrt. Ein Schlosser schaut hindurch. Eine Folterszene spielt sich ab. Immer wieder Szenen, in denen eine Frau gefesselt, gequält wird, mit Messer, Kreissägen verletzt, Spritzen mit Seren, Tiere, die sie beißen, Vergewaltigungen von Minderjährigen, blutrünstige Opfer an einer Schar Schulmädchen … in diesem Haus lebt auch ein Bruder mit seiner Schwester Laura … zudem gibt es noch eine Bande, an deren Spitze Laura fungiert und in U-Bahnen Passagiere belästigt … es gibt auch noch ein Hinterhof, zerfallen, mit einigen Überbleibseln der Zivilisation, auf denen Gewaltakte, Morde begangen werden … es gibt auch eine Psychoanalytiker-Praxis in einem Tunnelgewölbe, und Polizisten, die mit Maschinenpistolen durch die Straße marschieren, und es gibt einen Geheimagenten, mal der wahre, mal der falsche Ben Said, der einen Wachstuchmantel trägt und einen Hut … es gibt auch eine Terroristenvereinigung, die Geld von Millionären erpresst, u.a. von einem Edouard Goldstücker, auf diesen wird JR, Joan Robertson angesetzt, die als Kindermädchen und Prostituierte fungiert, für eine Laura, die mehr oder weniger mit Goldstücker verwandt ist, vielleicht das Produkt einer künstlichen Befruchtung … und ein brennendes Haus, aus dem ein Ich-Erzähler flieht … Beobachten einer Szene, in denen Frank, Ben Said und der Erzähler Drogen in Büschen zusammensuchen … JR lässt Bügeleisen fallen, vielleicht deshalb der Brand … die Szene, die der Schlosser sieht, könnte auch das Cover eines Schmuddelheftes sein … Laure mglw. im Besitz von geheimen Informationen, die Dr. Morgen mittels eines Wahrheitsserums aus ihr herauspressen möchte, und Folterungen … Zitate aus dem Schmuddelheft … JR, Joan, Schwarze aus Puertorico … der echte Ben Said trägt gelben Kamelhaarmantel … der Vampir der U-Bahn, der reiche Töchter tötet und brutal foltert … Parellelszene in U-Bahn mit Laura und Laura im verlassenen Mehrfamilienhaus .. wiederkehrendes Motiv: Werbeplakat mit einer Frau, mit verbundenen Augen und halbgeöffneten Mund ... Selbstreflexion, Verteidigung, Rechtfertigung über die Deskriptivität des Inhalts … dann plötzlich noch eine Sarah, auch Farbige, aber native Amerikanerin, schwarzes Haar, blaue Augen, wird von Schwarzer Witwe, die haarig und auch manchmal eine Vogelspinne ist, gebissen. Stirbt.
●Kurzfassung: New York, U-Bahn, Terroristen, Spione, Mafia. Viele sadistische Szenen, nirgends Konsens, kein Spiel, keine Verspieltheit. Brennendes Haus, Erschießungskommandos, Doppelgänger, und Wiederaufnahme von „Clockwork Orange“.
●Diskurs: Brutalität, Pornographie, Tabus in der Kunst; Kapitalismus, Terrorismus, Anarchismus, hohe, niedrige Kunst etc
… keine einheitliche Stimmung, kein einheitliches Atmosphärenkonstrukt wie in „Die blaue Villa von Hongkong“, zerfahren, einzig das Bild dieser New Yorker Harlemer Häuser, schmal, aber auch mit Treppen, die zur Haustür führen. Insgesamt unergiebig, langweilig, inkohärent. Abstoßend und völlig überflüssig die Gewaltexzesse, die sadistischen, gegen Frauen gewendete Praxen, die hier nicht in einem erweiterten sozialen Kontext geschehen wie in dem Bordel in Hongkong, sondern einfach nur situationistisch, individualistisch grausam zelebriert werden.
--> 1 Stern
Form:
●Wortschatz: in Ordnung, bemüht um Ausgewogenheit
●Satzstrukturen: interessant, aber eintönig, da semantisch unzusammenhängend
●Innovation: keine, höchstens in der Schnitttechnik, im Wiederaufnehmen, in der Parallelführung, funktioniert aber nicht, da hölzern, abstrakt --> 2 Sterne
Erzählstimme:
●Reflektiert: rechtfertigt sich, aber inkonsistent
●Situiert: nein
●Perspektiviert: nein, völlig beliebiges Potpourri
--> 1 Sterne
Komposition:
●Lose Versatzstücke: ausschließlich, keine Einheitlichkeit, kein Bild.
--> 1 Stern
Leseerlebnis:
●Gelangweilt: ja
●Geärgert: ein bisschen
●Amüsiert: nein
… fürchterliches Leseerlebnis, dröge, sadistisch, völlig unatmosphärisch, inkohärent, beliebig, bis auf die Spitze getriebene Irrationalität. Was bleibt von diesem Buch: im Grunde nichts, ein bisschen Labyrinth, Versteckspiel, Schmuddelliteratur, ohne Dynamik, völlige Starre, kaum Überblendungen, interessante Überlagerungen, reinster Voyeurismus, der plump ins Pornographisch-Snuffige abdriftet, mit Gewaltexzessen, Gewaltphantasien, völlig unzureichenden Dummheiten: wie Bisse von Spinnen, am lebendigen Leibe von Ratten Gefressen Werden … American Psycho für Arme, dazu ärgerlich mit Minderjährigen, mit diesem dummen Schulmädchenspiel … nee, kein Spaß, ekelhaft.
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Inhalt: 1/5 Sterne (enttabuisierte Inkohärenz)
Form: 2/5 Sterne (abstrakt)
Erzählstimme: 1/5 Sterne (völlig wirr)
Komposition: 2/5 Sterne (keine)
Leseerlebnis: 1/5 Sterne (ätzend-langweilig-lang)
(1970) lässt sich als Mittelteil einer Städtetrilogie lesen, begonnen mit Die blaue Villa in Hongkong (1966) und beendet mit Topologie einer Geisterstadt (1977). In dieser, inoffiziellen, Trilogie radikalisiert Robbe-Grillet seine Poetik, indem von einem atmosphärischen, cineastischen Erzählen am Ende nur noch Schnitttechniken und Überblendungen und Verwirrungen übrigbleiben, die kaum noch von den an den Haaren herbeigezogenen Schockszenen zusammengehalten werden:
»Sie haben gleichzeitig zwei Geschichten begonnen und sie grundlos nacheinander abgebrochen. Einerseits die Schwarze Messe, bei der Sie die zwölf Erstkommu-nikantinnen geopfert haben, und den Gebrauch, der an jenem Tage von den Kreuzen, den Hostien, den Kerzen und den großen Kerzenleuchtern mit den Ei-senspitzen zum Aufspießen der Mädchen gemacht worden ist. Andererseits ist die Geschichte, wie Sarah, das schöne Halbblut, von Doktor Morgan mit Sperma der weißen Rasse befruchtet wurde, das Joan dem alten Goldstücker abgezapft hat. Übrigens zeigt sich in diesem Punkt ein Widerspruch in Ihrer Erzählung: Sie sagen einmal, die Patientin sei nackt gewesen, und ein anderes Mal, sie habe ein rotes Kleid getragen.«
Von einem Plot bleibt in Projekt für eine Revolution in New York nicht viel übrig, vielleicht anleihen an Marquis de Sade und Anthony Burgess Uhrwerk Orange, wo es um Folter, Brutalität und Jugendexzesse auf den Straßen geht. Hier steht ein Agent vor einem Haus, das mal in Brand steht, mal nicht, mal den Ort einer Folterung, eines Gefängnisses, eines Schutzraumes markiert, mal nicht, mal eine geschlossene, mal eine geöffnete Haustür besitzt, durch die mal der eine, mal der andere hindurchmarschiert. Stimmte in Die blaue Villa in Hongkong noch Setting, Atmosphäre, Verdichtung der Bilder, Geheimnis, Verlorenheit, Desillusion und Entwurzelung mit der Schreib- und Erzählweise überein, stiebt in Projekt für eine Revolution in New York alles auseinander:
»In welcher Hinsicht sollte [die Beschreibung] übertrieben sein?«
»In lexikologischer Hinsicht.«
»Sie behaupten, es handle sich um Unrichtigkeiten?«
»Nein, ganz und gar nicht.«
»Sachliche Fehler?«
»Darum geht es nicht.«
»Also Lügen?«
»Noch weniger!«
»Dann muß ich gestehen, daß ich nicht weiß, was Sie meinen. Ich mache meinen Bericht, und basta. Der Text ist korrekt und nichts wird dem Zufall überlas-sen, man muis ihn so nehmen, wie er ist.«
Hier passt gar nichts zusammen. Was bei Claude Simon, bspw. in Jardin des Plantes und andere wie Leitkörper , stets atmosphärisch, inhaltlich, mnemotechnisch gebunden bleibt, klingt beim sadomasochistischen Setting Alain Robbe-Grillets einfach aus. Langweilig, uninnovativ, ein Sackgassenschreiben, das keine Figuren, keine Szenen, keinerlei literarische Intensität erzeugt.
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Details – ab hier Spoilergefahr (zur Erinnerung für mich):
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Inhalt:
●Hauptfigur(en): Der wechselnde Ich-Erzähler, Dr. Morgan, Laura in vielen Varianten, JR – Joan Robertson, Ben Said, Frank, Edouard Goldstücker
●Zusammenfassung/Inhaltsangabe: Wichtige Szenen, aus denen sich der Gesamttext zusammenbaut. Ein Haus, dessen Tür versperrt. Ein Schlosser schaut hindurch. Eine Folterszene spielt sich ab. Immer wieder Szenen, in denen eine Frau gefesselt, gequält wird, mit Messer, Kreissägen verletzt, Spritzen mit Seren, Tiere, die sie beißen, Vergewaltigungen von Minderjährigen, blutrünstige Opfer an einer Schar Schulmädchen … in diesem Haus lebt auch ein Bruder mit seiner Schwester Laura … zudem gibt es noch eine Bande, an deren Spitze Laura fungiert und in U-Bahnen Passagiere belästigt … es gibt auch noch ein Hinterhof, zerfallen, mit einigen Überbleibseln der Zivilisation, auf denen Gewaltakte, Morde begangen werden … es gibt auch eine Psychoanalytiker-Praxis in einem Tunnelgewölbe, und Polizisten, die mit Maschinenpistolen durch die Straße marschieren, und es gibt einen Geheimagenten, mal der wahre, mal der falsche Ben Said, der einen Wachstuchmantel trägt und einen Hut … es gibt auch eine Terroristenvereinigung, die Geld von Millionären erpresst, u.a. von einem Edouard Goldstücker, auf diesen wird JR, Joan Robertson angesetzt, die als Kindermädchen und Prostituierte fungiert, für eine Laura, die mehr oder weniger mit Goldstücker verwandt ist, vielleicht das Produkt einer künstlichen Befruchtung … und ein brennendes Haus, aus dem ein Ich-Erzähler flieht … Beobachten einer Szene, in denen Frank, Ben Said und der Erzähler Drogen in Büschen zusammensuchen … JR lässt Bügeleisen fallen, vielleicht deshalb der Brand … die Szene, die der Schlosser sieht, könnte auch das Cover eines Schmuddelheftes sein … Laure mglw. im Besitz von geheimen Informationen, die Dr. Morgen mittels eines Wahrheitsserums aus ihr herauspressen möchte, und Folterungen … Zitate aus dem Schmuddelheft … JR, Joan, Schwarze aus Puertorico … der echte Ben Said trägt gelben Kamelhaarmantel … der Vampir der U-Bahn, der reiche Töchter tötet und brutal foltert … Parellelszene in U-Bahn mit Laura und Laura im verlassenen Mehrfamilienhaus .. wiederkehrendes Motiv: Werbeplakat mit einer Frau, mit verbundenen Augen und halbgeöffneten Mund ... Selbstreflexion, Verteidigung, Rechtfertigung über die Deskriptivität des Inhalts … dann plötzlich noch eine Sarah, auch Farbige, aber native Amerikanerin, schwarzes Haar, blaue Augen, wird von Schwarzer Witwe, die haarig und auch manchmal eine Vogelspinne ist, gebissen. Stirbt.
●Kurzfassung: New York, U-Bahn, Terroristen, Spione, Mafia. Viele sadistische Szenen, nirgends Konsens, kein Spiel, keine Verspieltheit. Brennendes Haus, Erschießungskommandos, Doppelgänger, und Wiederaufnahme von „Clockwork Orange“.
●Diskurs: Brutalität, Pornographie, Tabus in der Kunst; Kapitalismus, Terrorismus, Anarchismus, hohe, niedrige Kunst etc
… keine einheitliche Stimmung, kein einheitliches Atmosphärenkonstrukt wie in „Die blaue Villa von Hongkong“, zerfahren, einzig das Bild dieser New Yorker Harlemer Häuser, schmal, aber auch mit Treppen, die zur Haustür führen. Insgesamt unergiebig, langweilig, inkohärent. Abstoßend und völlig überflüssig die Gewaltexzesse, die sadistischen, gegen Frauen gewendete Praxen, die hier nicht in einem erweiterten sozialen Kontext geschehen wie in dem Bordel in Hongkong, sondern einfach nur situationistisch, individualistisch grausam zelebriert werden.
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Form:
●Wortschatz: in Ordnung, bemüht um Ausgewogenheit
●Satzstrukturen: interessant, aber eintönig, da semantisch unzusammenhängend
●Innovation: keine, höchstens in der Schnitttechnik, im Wiederaufnehmen, in der Parallelführung, funktioniert aber nicht, da hölzern, abstrakt --> 2 Sterne
Erzählstimme:
●Reflektiert: rechtfertigt sich, aber inkonsistent
●Situiert: nein
●Perspektiviert: nein, völlig beliebiges Potpourri
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Komposition:
●Lose Versatzstücke: ausschließlich, keine Einheitlichkeit, kein Bild.
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Leseerlebnis:
●Gelangweilt: ja
●Geärgert: ein bisschen
●Amüsiert: nein
… fürchterliches Leseerlebnis, dröge, sadistisch, völlig unatmosphärisch, inkohärent, beliebig, bis auf die Spitze getriebene Irrationalität. Was bleibt von diesem Buch: im Grunde nichts, ein bisschen Labyrinth, Versteckspiel, Schmuddelliteratur, ohne Dynamik, völlige Starre, kaum Überblendungen, interessante Überlagerungen, reinster Voyeurismus, der plump ins Pornographisch-Snuffige abdriftet, mit Gewaltexzessen, Gewaltphantasien, völlig unzureichenden Dummheiten: wie Bisse von Spinnen, am lebendigen Leibe von Ratten Gefressen Werden … American Psycho für Arme, dazu ärgerlich mit Minderjährigen, mit diesem dummen Schulmädchenspiel … nee, kein Spaß, ekelhaft.
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January 3, 2015
Robbe-Grillet at his most intense. First because he's most rapid and dextrous in seamlessly switching narrative rails, frames, PoVs, etc, everything to completely destabilize the narrative. This comes after Maison de Rendezvous, which has a similar level of narrative play, but this adds new structural levels: sound is tape, narration may be an interrogation or a film breaking apart in editing. Later works, at least the intertexual works of the rest of the 70s to follow seem to have scaled back slightly in their disorienting aspects in favor of a kind of dreamlike cohesion (which I can't complain about exactly). But this seems likely to be the high water mark of his formal experiments.
But it's also the most intense because R-G, usually somewhat circumspect, even ironically so, about the suggested brutality and violence underlying his narratives, here makes them most explicit. Viewed in a continuum of transgressive literature, that might seem an asset, and there are plenty of conceptual justifications -- lurid pulp sources being reconfigured, the destruction of the body as destruction of the text -- but to me these don't entirely hold up the fraying rationale of telling the story at all, a story whose problematic aspects are repeatedly pointed to as being there for pleasure. Of voyeurs, of sadists, of a troubled pre-teen, and, all too obviously especially in my broader familiarity with Robbe-Grillet at this point, the author himself. At best, he maintains a kind of provacative tension across this point, but it's a balancing act he's managed much better elsewhere.
That said, perhaps the intensity makes this all the truer to R-G's vision. The most essential, unsettling questions and all. That too is part of the tension and fascination of reading him. Just probably don't start here.
But it's also the most intense because R-G, usually somewhat circumspect, even ironically so, about the suggested brutality and violence underlying his narratives, here makes them most explicit. Viewed in a continuum of transgressive literature, that might seem an asset, and there are plenty of conceptual justifications -- lurid pulp sources being reconfigured, the destruction of the body as destruction of the text -- but to me these don't entirely hold up the fraying rationale of telling the story at all, a story whose problematic aspects are repeatedly pointed to as being there for pleasure. Of voyeurs, of sadists, of a troubled pre-teen, and, all too obviously especially in my broader familiarity with Robbe-Grillet at this point, the author himself. At best, he maintains a kind of provacative tension across this point, but it's a balancing act he's managed much better elsewhere.
That said, perhaps the intensity makes this all the truer to R-G's vision. The most essential, unsettling questions and all. That too is part of the tension and fascination of reading him. Just probably don't start here.
July 25, 2024
For me, this didn't feel as avant-garde as his early novels; yet with no plot; two dimensional characters that flicker here and blur there; writing about tunnels, corridors and subways - basically all that takes place below street level, as well as the multiple identities and disguises in regards the two violated women at the centre of its underground conspiracy, along with the narrator (possible maniac) and a locksmith voyeur who acts as a sort of stand-in for the reader, it's hardly conventional either. A sinister mosaic of imagery I will not forget any time soon.
January 20, 2016
راستش واقعا این اثر کابوس وار مستحق یک ستاره هم نبود... خوندن این کتاب درست مثل بدترین شکنجه هایی بود که میشه تصور کرد ،یا شکنجه هایی که اونقدر وحشتناکن که نمیشه حتی تصورشان کرد..!نمی دانم کدام دسته از افراد علاقه مند رمان نو هستند.... و نمی دانم بخش هایی از این سبک .... در ترجمه نابود شده یا نه؛ فقط یک چیز رو می دانم ... احتمال اینکه به طرف رمان نو برم ... خیلی کمه.... میشه چنین اثری رو هدیه داد به ادم هایی که ازشون.... کمی بیزارید و اینکه اصلا چرا می خواهید به همچین ادمی هدیه بدید ؛داستانی یه مجزا!!!کتاب پر بود از صحنه های پراکنده شکنجه زنان که مطمئنم بخش زیادی هم دستخوش ممیزی شده بود ... حالا نه اینکه این صحنه ها درست تشریح شده باشن .. صحنه هایی پراکنده با جزییاتی نامربوط و درهم ؛باورم نمیشه کسی حتی خوابنگاری خود را چنین نامربوط و مضحک بنویسه...."در این صورت،پاسخ من الان هم همان چیزی است(یادر هر صورت،از همان ردیف)که در ان موقعیت داده ام،منظورم تعیین ماهیت یک گسستگی است،در جریان یک ارتباط برقرار شده:قطع کردنی ناگهانی،که با انگیزه ای مادی،کاملا اشنا یا برعکس بیگانه نسبت به موضوع روایت ضرورت پیدا کرده است"بخشی از کتاب.. هر چه بگویم کم است.. خلاصه.. الن رب گری یه... خداوند تو را به راه داستان نویسی درست هدایت کند باشد که خوانندگانی پیدا کنی!!!
terrible;awful; that's really kind of a worse nightmare you can even imagine.....so for your own sake don't read it....
terrible;awful; that's really kind of a worse nightmare you can even imagine.....so for your own sake don't read it....
February 25, 2024
آلن رب گریه از پیشگامان رمان نو در نیمه دوم قرن بیستم است.......اثر طرحی برای انقلاب در نیویورک مشخصا یک رمان پست مدرن و مینیمال است که عملا از روی این رمان می توان اکثر شاخصه های رمان پست مدرن را در آن یافت....به نظرم اگر قرار بود این کتاب تابلو نقاشی شود یک اکسپرسیونیسم به معنای واقعی کلمه از آن در میامد
داستان بدون رعایت خط زمانی( از خصیصه های رمان پست مدرن و رمان نو) به نقد نظام سرمایه داری می پردازد و عنوان کتاب که به نیویورک اشاره می کند همان نماد ویژه نظام سرمایه داری است
در این رمان که تقریبا در یک فضای آخرالزمانی روایت می شود به نقد اقتصاد و انسان تربیت شده تحت لوای سرمایه داری می پردازد
همه چبز بر مبنای تولید و سود تعریف می شود در جایی از کتاب می آید که """ اگر برای پرهیز از شکنجه ، آدم رضایت دهد که به او تجاوز جنسی بکنند آن وقت از طرف سندیکا به علت فعالیت حرفه ای غیرمجاز به محاکمه کشانده می شود ، جریمه آنقدر سنگین است که انسان هر چه پول در تمام عمرش به دست اورده باید بابت آن بپردازد""" ر
در این نظام حتی مذهب و کلیسا هم می بایست کسب ثروت کند . در بخشی از کتاب می گوید """ ....موسسه ای است که به کلیسا تعلق دارد و کارش پیدا کردن خدمتکارهایی برای یک ماه ، زن هایی برای همنشینی یا برده هایی گوناگون، منشی های یک روزه و..... است"""... اوج تمسخر نظام سرمایه داری توسط نویسنده در جایی اعلام می شود که در ویترین مغازه ، تندیس برج آزادی در کنار ماکت کشتارگاه های شیکاگو قرار میگیرد""""
در این نظام مردم همواره نقابی بر صورت دارند .. این افراد دارای هویت دوگانه اند تا بتوانند بهتر و راحت تر زندگی کنند در حقیقت این سبک زندگی به آنها تحمیل شده است در بخشی از کتاب نویسنده میگوید """" نقاب ها بر حسب سفارش و اندازه هایی که مشتری ها می دهند ساخته می شود ......تابلویی در مغازه هست که میگوید اگر از پوست صورتتان راضی نیستید عوضش کنید"""" ر
نویسنده به صورتی کاملا ملموس از تغییر سبک زندگی مردم در اواخر قرن بیستم شکایت میکند . سلیقه مردم به ابتذال کشیده شده و علت آن هم نظام اقتصادیست که انسان را کالا میبیند و منتهی درجه سعادت را تولید و کسب سود می پندارد. او می گوید که ""کتابفروشی ها، عکس های مستهجن میفروشند """ چرا که آنچه مهم است فروش و کسب ثروت است و فروش این نوع تصاویر از کتاب بیشتر است ....
داستان بدون رعایت خط زمانی( از خصیصه های رمان پست مدرن و رمان نو) به نقد نظام سرمایه داری می پردازد و عنوان کتاب که به نیویورک اشاره می کند همان نماد ویژه نظام سرمایه داری است
در این رمان که تقریبا در یک فضای آخرالزمانی روایت می شود به نقد اقتصاد و انسان تربیت شده تحت لوای سرمایه داری می پردازد
همه چبز بر مبنای تولید و سود تعریف می شود در جایی از کتاب می آید که """ اگر برای پرهیز از شکنجه ، آدم رضایت دهد که به او تجاوز جنسی بکنند آن وقت از طرف سندیکا به علت فعالیت حرفه ای غیرمجاز به محاکمه کشانده می شود ، جریمه آنقدر سنگین است که انسان هر چه پول در تمام عمرش به دست اورده باید بابت آن بپردازد""" ر
در این نظام حتی مذهب و کلیسا هم می بایست کسب ثروت کند . در بخشی از کتاب می گوید """ ....موسسه ای است که به کلیسا تعلق دارد و کارش پیدا کردن خدمتکارهایی برای یک ماه ، زن هایی برای همنشینی یا برده هایی گوناگون، منشی های یک روزه و..... است"""... اوج تمسخر نظام سرمایه داری توسط نویسنده در جایی اعلام می شود که در ویترین مغازه ، تندیس برج آزادی در کنار ماکت کشتارگاه های شیکاگو قرار میگیرد""""
در این نظام مردم همواره نقابی بر صورت دارند .. این افراد دارای هویت دوگانه اند تا بتوانند بهتر و راحت تر زندگی کنند در حقیقت این سبک زندگی به آنها تحمیل شده است در بخشی از کتاب نویسنده میگوید """" نقاب ها بر حسب سفارش و اندازه هایی که مشتری ها می دهند ساخته می شود ......تابلویی در مغازه هست که میگوید اگر از پوست صورتتان راضی نیستید عوضش کنید"""" ر
نویسنده به صورتی کاملا ملموس از تغییر سبک زندگی مردم در اواخر قرن بیستم شکایت میکند . سلیقه مردم به ابتذال کشیده شده و علت آن هم نظام اقتصادیست که انسان را کالا میبیند و منتهی درجه سعادت را تولید و کسب سود می پندارد. او می گوید که ""کتابفروشی ها، عکس های مستهجن میفروشند """ چرا که آنچه مهم است فروش و کسب ثروت است و فروش این نوع تصاویر از کتاب بیشتر است ....
October 7, 2009
Read this novel, if you must read this novel (and you must read this novel. . . or rather you should read this novel, if you like language and what makes it), in a white heat. Don't do as I did and let it languish a month or more in your mind with nowhere to rest and nothing to do but ruminate and replicate. The book is difficult enough without getting tangled up in rereading pages-or-twos to find out just what in fuck is going on and where in Hell you last left off. By the way, white heat or no, you will never know "just what in fuck is going on" in this novel unless you have the power to resurrect Robbe-Grillet and have him explain it to you by means of the slithering of his tongueless, lungless voice and even then I'd cock a wary eye at this postmortum confession. Or perhaps I speak only for myself. . .
June 18, 2020
Ah yes, Alain Robbe-Grillet's [checks back cover] "classic tale of otherworldly depravity..." For the most part, R-G's kinky stream of consciousness yarn is a real pleasure, although the descriptions of torture near the end are quite intense and not for the feint-of-heart. It has everything you would want in a pulpy noir and/or sleazy stag picture, only stitched together with intellectual gymnastics, which some readers will enjoy--others not. His New York seems to be exactly like one thought up by a European, including some great imagery, but overall missing the big picture. It is like that Friday the 13th sequel, Jason Takes Manhattan, in which the killer really only takes a loading dock in Manhattan. PfaRiNY is still a great read tho, the sort of thing that shows what transgressive European intellectuals were imagining what a revolution might be, just a couple years after the unrest of 1968. It also made me wonder if more challenging narrative filmmakers like David Lynch were influenced by this writer's structure, seeing as how the identities of characters meld into each other--like in Lost Highway, perhaps. This may just be a universal approach to fictionalizing dream logic.
December 27, 2018
It would stand to reason that the increasing pervasiveness of the habitually triggered makes for somewhat timid times. I write this at the end of 2018, smack-dab in the middle of an era characterized by contentious argument and sanctimonious hand-wringing regarding the politics of representation. To my mind it would be dumb and undistinguished to wax apoplectic about such phenomena. Since I was a kid I have felt no fealty to the crowd, and can hardly be expected to care terribly much how and what it thinks. Well, up to a point. I am sensitive to the requirements of critical thinking. People are generally upset or offended for reasons which are intelligible and seldom completely illegitimate. When a work of art or of culture more generally produces an effect I am prepared to attempt to look at why that effect was produced and consider the matter with adequate emotional sobriety. Goddamnit, I have a graduate degree in the liberal arts, do I not? All that given its due consideration: I remain a man with a pronounced passion for transgressive art, and equally for the transgressive dimension of all true art, paradoxically at odds as it always must be with the civilizing apparatus of which it is also invariably a provisional extension. Of course, then, naturally, I will always retain a place in my heart for the French. In these skittish and sensitive times, the French continue to make their piecemeal stand on behalf of obscene and/or dangerous art, to creativity in some degree married to combat. Look no further than the delightful fact of beloved actress Isabelle Huppert's recent public readings of some of the greatest hits of the Marquis de Sade. Or look at the fact that the French continue to give out a literary prize called the Prix Sade, one recent winner of which was Alain Guiraudie's NOW THE NIGHT BEGINS, a novel I read earlier this year and which is distinguished by the brazenness of its sundry (sometimes hilarious) provocations. In the Marquis de Sade as in the Guiraudie much of what is transgressive is related to aberrant sexual behaviour and to sexual violence. We of course live in the time of #MeToo, a movement under the umbrella of which a new level of public attention has poised itself to reflect the ubiquity of gendered oppression and the predations of rape culture. While I largely support this general shift, I do not opt to discount or rebuke-as-an-automatic-matter-of-course "problematic" art or culture, still myself wholly primed to engage these things in the wild. I am above all interested in what is evil deep within us and deep within myself. Exploration of the darker libidinal realms will always be a part of my study, and I see my whole life as study. Which brings me to Alain Robbe-Grillet's PROJECT FOR A REVOLUTION IN NEW YORK, a novel I love very, very much, which is deeply problematic, and by which I would absolutely defend anybody's right to be utterly appalled. Robbe-Grillet was a fantastically kinky dude. I have read a few of his novels and watched a great number of the films he wrote and directed. His work is almost always on some level fundamentally sadomasochistic, novels and films in which schema of dominance and submission operate on a conditional, vibrating plane of desire. He specializes both as a filmmaker and novelist in creating interlocking tableaux, almost painterly, across which desiring-operations ritualistically expend themselves (but never to satiation). As in both psychoanalysis and Buddhism (and Gilles Deleuze's utterly remarkable MASOCHISM: COLDNESS AND CRUELTY) desire is perpetually undulating, constantly resurgent, never consummated, only modulated. Ritual, just as in religious practice, serves to invest desire with ideal conditions of form, with shape, rendering sacred (even when demonstrably profane) practices grounded in the cosmic and libidinal. The sacred-profane operates in Robbe-Grillet not dissimilarly to how it operates in Georges Bataille, and both writers seem, in their exultation of debasement, to see rot and decay as the ground of material matters. Objects and bodies in Robbe-Grillet routinely become fetishes, the fetish the necessary illusion. Having only previously read Robbe-Grillet novels of the 50s I cannot help but be powerfully struck by how much further he has gone in PROJECT FOR A REVOLUTION IN NEW YORK than I have seen him go previously as a novelist, though I do know that his cinema of the 70s was far more advanced and transgressive than were his earlier films, EDEN AND AFTER (1970) and SUCCESSIVE SLIDINGS OF PLEASURE (1974) remaining by far my favourite of his cinematic works. I am very pleased to have finally read a novel from the same period, comprehensively radical and incendiary as it indeed is. PROJECT FOR A REVOLUTION is both hazy and extremely vigorous. The enunciating voice is in a constant state of metamorphosis, appearing to seamlessly occupy multiple characters (there is nary a chapter break) in a kind of free-floating absorption; there is a character known as "the narrator" but at times he is spoken of as a secondary party by the voice that has occupied the seat of enunciation. Twice the voice of a female interlocutor being interrogated under torture fleetly steals the novel away. Likewise the urban landscape of the novel is characterized by tremendous plasticity. When I use the word hazy, one may be inclined to think of smoke or of a kind of opalescence, but this is actually a practically textural novel of coarse mutating materiality; I am inclined to compare it rather to one of Dali's melting clocks. Its New York is of course a kind of fantasy New York. I think of all the European popular culture since at least Karl May that has used the American West as its playground. Perhaps we should see Robbe-Grillet's New York as an Old West for modernist literature. The novel does indeed tie a number of tableaux and nebulous characters together through something like a ritualistic desiring-operation. Central here is the idea of the libidinal energies sublimated in acts of criminal and or political violence, organs of both law and of lawlessness complementing one another, serving the same fundamental ends. Reading Joseph Conrad's THE SECRET AGENT I was struck by the elegance of the manner in which Conrad seems to trace revolutionary violence back to emotional wounds. Robbe-Grillet, on the other hand, traces is simply to desire. The crux of what the novel is getting at is ultimately summed up by the psychoanalyst (possibly), artificial-inseminator, and torture specialist Doctor Morgan: “Rape, murder, arson are the three metaphoric acts which will free the blacks, the impoverished proletariat, and the intellectual workers from their slavery, and at the same time the bourgeoisie from its sexual complexes.” He then goes on a little later to advocate for "a general catharsis of the unacknowledged desires of contemporary society.” The point is that rape and torture are not intended here to pacify the victim but rather the human social animal in aggregate. Interrogations and tortures are recorded within the novel and distributed through shady channels. We are meant to understand the grotesqueries on display as heavily blocked-out rituals meant to be consumed by spectators, and periodic interjections of "Cut" and "Retake" officially code such rituals as fundamentally cinematographic. Robbe-Grillet's sick entertainment is as much about our own culpability as are many of Alfred Hitchcock's movies about pathological criminals amid a camouflaging sea of men. The characters are often likened to dolls, a mere addition to the profusion of objects, which may of course cause one to think of the tenets of the Nouveau Roman, but may also suggest the depersonalizing mandate of the homicidal psychopath. Again, this is a sadomasochistic sensibility heavy on the sadism, but it is also one that addresses itself to the whole of social enterprise, in so doing offering viciously damning testimony. A brutal societal novel of the libidinal. One of remarkable literary characteristics and some actual honest-to-God refinement (curious as it may seem). It is one of very few books which I feel obligated to compare to NAKED LUNCH, also a brutal societal novel of the libidinal, which just so happens to be the one that when I read it in my early teens sent me off benevolently down this road to ruin upon which I continue, having been singed awfully by the fires of Inferno, to merrily traipse.
March 6, 2018
I have only read his collection of short narratives Snapshots before, this is the first time I read his book length novel and in a chinese translation. I suppose there are better ones by him out there? The formal experiment is interesting, in which narrative and epistemological positions are destabilized, with characters/place/time being shuffled, spliced as in a collage or mixing tapes. If you have seen Last Years in Marienbad, this is experimentation of similar kind taken further in a literary work.
Most efforts to trace what really happened in the "story" will be frustrated but you gathered that it's something like a dystopian New York in which a subterranean network of people conduct terrorist acts against the status quo with a lot of double-crossing among them and "revolutionary" violence is glorified as in a cult. New York's underground system and other locales are transformed into a nightmarish maze of crime scenes. It reads like deconstruction of detective pulp fiction but you can't help feeling it's still pulp fiction.
I can't get across all the sexual violence and misogyny in the book though, Robbe-Grillet's films have that too but it is very explicit here. I can't decide if it's to problematicize or to pose critique of "revolutionary" violence, if this is the case i think it is oblique and ineffectual. We've never learnt of the actual agendas or demands of the "revolution" except to terrorize the rich elites by torturing their women and children. And you have the feeling that while the formal experimentation is supposed to frustrate pleasure/easy consumption, the sex/torture scenes that are nevertheless recurrent and meticulously depicted are pornographic in nature. These pornographic vignettes are kept rather intact throughout the book despite the disorganization of the plot. So the book reads to me like a very intellectual way to deconstruct a pulp fiction with an exaggeration of pornography and violence in it. In a way the formal experimentation fails to deconstruct but reinforce the dominant mode of expression.
Most efforts to trace what really happened in the "story" will be frustrated but you gathered that it's something like a dystopian New York in which a subterranean network of people conduct terrorist acts against the status quo with a lot of double-crossing among them and "revolutionary" violence is glorified as in a cult. New York's underground system and other locales are transformed into a nightmarish maze of crime scenes. It reads like deconstruction of detective pulp fiction but you can't help feeling it's still pulp fiction.
I can't get across all the sexual violence and misogyny in the book though, Robbe-Grillet's films have that too but it is very explicit here. I can't decide if it's to problematicize or to pose critique of "revolutionary" violence, if this is the case i think it is oblique and ineffectual. We've never learnt of the actual agendas or demands of the "revolution" except to terrorize the rich elites by torturing their women and children. And you have the feeling that while the formal experimentation is supposed to frustrate pleasure/easy consumption, the sex/torture scenes that are nevertheless recurrent and meticulously depicted are pornographic in nature. These pornographic vignettes are kept rather intact throughout the book despite the disorganization of the plot. So the book reads to me like a very intellectual way to deconstruct a pulp fiction with an exaggeration of pornography and violence in it. In a way the formal experimentation fails to deconstruct but reinforce the dominant mode of expression.
February 3, 2017
If you have read Robbe-Grillet's Jealousy, then just go back and reread it. What he does here is largely the same project--his stripped down de-humanized descriptions that still build up humanizing metaphors, despite his stated claim to try and remove them (especially so for the city of New York, which becomes a glowering menace here), his repetition of the same acts or scenes, the complicated question of who is watching, and what are they watching--only with a whole lot more rape. Robbe-Grillet has always had a misogynistic streak running through his work, but this amplifies the violence and powerlessness of the women. It attempts to destabilize this image of rape, but, through sheer repetition, reifies it, his seeming tearing-down of institutions becomes a recreation of them.
There are interesting ways in which this novel plays, with its integration of of the language of movies (and the way that is terrible in the written form is played with), and a series of trompe l'oiel like effects (that turn out to be, simply, lies, carefully put), and his ability to constantly de-stabilize the scene and disorient the reader, each time it comes up is truly wonderful. But then again, he has already done this, in a similar way, in a better book that doesn't glorify violence (even if it thinks its deconstructing it).
There are interesting ways in which this novel plays, with its integration of of the language of movies (and the way that is terrible in the written form is played with), and a series of trompe l'oiel like effects (that turn out to be, simply, lies, carefully put), and his ability to constantly de-stabilize the scene and disorient the reader, each time it comes up is truly wonderful. But then again, he has already done this, in a similar way, in a better book that doesn't glorify violence (even if it thinks its deconstructing it).
June 10, 2012
Don't expect plot, fully-formed characters or any of the 'conventional' things you get in most novels. This is an experimental piece that investigates how we make sense by violating many of the frameworks we use to understand the world and be understood. Thus a description of a room becomes re-framed as a memory of a dream, as evidence and a clue to something that might or might not have happened, so so on. Is there any attempt to create a revolution in New York? If so, it's a revolution that's directed at destabilising language and narrative.
In many respects it's almost 'academic' in its approach, and doesn't have the zest you get from other works that perform similar explorations of language, such as the Illuminatus Trilogy, a series of three novels by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson and published in 1975. It also deals repeatedly with quite shocking scenes of torture, perhaps mirroring the torture being done to language.
It does have a formal structure, though it's not very obvious. And in comparison with other 'experimental' works published both before and since, it's maybe not the most accessible novel. I have a weak spot for it, though. Don't know why. It's just one of those inexplicable things.
In many respects it's almost 'academic' in its approach, and doesn't have the zest you get from other works that perform similar explorations of language, such as the Illuminatus Trilogy, a series of three novels by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson and published in 1975. It also deals repeatedly with quite shocking scenes of torture, perhaps mirroring the torture being done to language.
It does have a formal structure, though it's not very obvious. And in comparison with other 'experimental' works published both before and since, it's maybe not the most accessible novel. I have a weak spot for it, though. Don't know why. It's just one of those inexplicable things.
February 5, 2019
Great if you like Burroughs, Pynchon, CBGB's scene, etc., and have a fucking clue. Not so great if you don't, or are Republican.
(Nixon's still dead. But so is Bela Lugosi!)
A word to the wise . . .
(Nixon's still dead. But so is Bela Lugosi!)
A word to the wise . . .
November 24, 2018
di solito non riscrivo la trama dei romanzi che ho finito: mi pare ridondante e sinceramente inutile.
qui comunque sarebbe stato impossibile: la trama non c'è, al massimo c'è un atmosfera da noir (volutamente) di serie z.
quello che abbiamo è una serie di situazioni ripetute o di personaggi simili (o gli stessi?), ogni volta da un punto di vista diverso, oppure dallo stesso ma in maniera diversa.
come in un burroughs fin troppo lucido non c'è conseguenza temporale e non viene mantenuto continuamente lo stesso punto di vista, distruggendo completamente il concetto stesso di romanzo: e come una serie di specchi deformanti che riflettano tutti lo stesso indefinibile soggetto.
l'uso gratuito della violenza (a tratti molto pesante: stiano lontani i troppo sensibili) si ripete continuamente, e sembra che la violenza sia alla fine l'unico vero scopo di molti personaggi; vista la continua presenza di torture su donne (o sempre sulla stessa?) mi domando se ci sia una certa misoginia di fondo o se invece robbe-grillet volesse portare in piena luce la misoginia di certo immaginario noir (forse non è un caso se una determinata scena si ripeta anche nella copertina di un giallo -immagino da rivista pulp- letto da una delle protagoniste) o ancora di più nella società che ci circonda (forse non è un caso se un'altra scena di violenza si ripeta in un cartellone pubblicitario).
arrivato alla fine non saprei davvero dire se mi è piaciuto: ma come per certi dischi di musica sperimentale che mi capita di ascoltare (certa avanguardia, certo industrial, certo noise: riguardo a quest'ultimo forse non è un caso che un disco di bruce russell dei dead c -uno dei gruppi più radicali della scena noise- si intitoli come questo romanzo; a proposito, già che si parla di musica prima di "polli d'allevamento" giorgio gaber aveva provato a scrivere un "progetto per una rivoluzione a milano 2", progetto ispirato a queste pagine ma mai completato) è più interessante il procedimento e le intuizioni che affiorano che non il piacere della lettura.
qui comunque sarebbe stato impossibile: la trama non c'è, al massimo c'è un atmosfera da noir (volutamente) di serie z.
quello che abbiamo è una serie di situazioni ripetute o di personaggi simili (o gli stessi?), ogni volta da un punto di vista diverso, oppure dallo stesso ma in maniera diversa.
come in un burroughs fin troppo lucido non c'è conseguenza temporale e non viene mantenuto continuamente lo stesso punto di vista, distruggendo completamente il concetto stesso di romanzo: e come una serie di specchi deformanti che riflettano tutti lo stesso indefinibile soggetto.
l'uso gratuito della violenza (a tratti molto pesante: stiano lontani i troppo sensibili) si ripete continuamente, e sembra che la violenza sia alla fine l'unico vero scopo di molti personaggi; vista la continua presenza di torture su donne (o sempre sulla stessa?) mi domando se ci sia una certa misoginia di fondo o se invece robbe-grillet volesse portare in piena luce la misoginia di certo immaginario noir (forse non è un caso se una determinata scena si ripeta anche nella copertina di un giallo -immagino da rivista pulp- letto da una delle protagoniste) o ancora di più nella società che ci circonda (forse non è un caso se un'altra scena di violenza si ripeta in un cartellone pubblicitario).
arrivato alla fine non saprei davvero dire se mi è piaciuto: ma come per certi dischi di musica sperimentale che mi capita di ascoltare (certa avanguardia, certo industrial, certo noise: riguardo a quest'ultimo forse non è un caso che un disco di bruce russell dei dead c -uno dei gruppi più radicali della scena noise- si intitoli come questo romanzo; a proposito, già che si parla di musica prima di "polli d'allevamento" giorgio gaber aveva provato a scrivere un "progetto per una rivoluzione a milano 2", progetto ispirato a queste pagine ma mai completato) è più interessante il procedimento e le intuizioni che affiorano che non il piacere della lettura.
December 11, 2021
Ugh. From Nouveau roman purveyor to near-smut pusher, Robbe Grillet strayed into formulaic, seedy crime-noir writing, and quite awful writing at that, with this novel. Seemingly the intellectual and conceptually intriguing Nouveau roman aesthetic has given way to misogyny, quasi-BDSM, rape-fantasy, fetishes, and male-gaze focused objectification of women. I am not one to shy away from the nastier sides of literature so it isn't the content I find deplorable, merely Robbe Grillet's ham-fisted style of presentation of said content. Unable to escape or let go of the police procedural thematics either, this unseemly, circuitous, and uninventive narrative never fails to disappoint and repulse in equal measure. We still get the multiples - perspective, time, character, reality, factuality, fictionality - but they take a waybackseat to the needless stream of prurient details, violence, and ugliness. Avoid, unless one is a completist. Undeserving of analysis, if one were to ask me, regardless of Robbe Grillet's place in the literary scene.
July 23, 2020
The strangest Robbe-Grillet work I've read, though not dissimilar from his other books. He introduces elements of the story, ordering them into a fairly linear plot, then disassembles everything and builds it up again into something only vaguely resembling its previous iteration. Characters play two, three, four parts. I think. It's hard to say. By novel's end, everything is so convoluted that the reader can only assume the author knows what he's doing. Probably the cheapest and most common trick of experimental art, but there's enough filth and intrigue here to keep it interesting (to me, at least).
September 1, 2018
A playful prism
Much like The Erasers, this novel changes the setting to New York and presents images you will likely never forget: such as the wax mask shop or vivid descriptions of inventive torture. THE ORGANISATION in this novel are the actors in a brilliant theatre of cruelty.
Much like The Erasers, this novel changes the setting to New York and presents images you will likely never forget: such as the wax mask shop or vivid descriptions of inventive torture. THE ORGANISATION in this novel are the actors in a brilliant theatre of cruelty.
August 28, 2021
I'm afraid that this was one of those books that I appreciate but didn't really get anything out of reading ...
The constantly shifting narrative shift was well done but the effort involved in reading it never felt rewarded.
The constantly shifting narrative shift was well done but the effort involved in reading it never felt rewarded.
April 5, 2024
If not for author Alain Robbe-Grillet’s presumed heterosexuality, the sado-erotic frenzies in Project for a Revolution in New York City would be as pervy as William S. Burroughs reaching his masturbatory peeks.
June 20, 2017
A previous owner of my copy wrote "solipsism" in felt-tip marker on the top left corner of the title page. Interpret that how you will.
December 28, 2017
This is terrific material.
December 23, 2021
Damn, this book a movie.
July 6, 2022
I don’t really know exactly what I read but I didn’t dislike it.
August 6, 2023
Psuedo-intellectual misogynistic torture porn.
November 6, 2016
not my favorite Robbe-Grillet, but definitely a worthy addition to his ouvre.
January 4, 2024
more:
by-
Jealousy & In the Labyrinth
The Erasers
Last Year at Marienbad
Voyeur
La Maison de rendez-vous
Project for a Revolution in New York
La Belle Captive
Topology of a Phantom City
Recollections of the Golden Triangle
Djinn
Repetition
A Regicide
A Sentimental Novel
francaise-
La Jalousie
Dans le labyrinthe
Les Gommes
L'année dernière à Marienbad
Instantanés
on-
For a New Novel: Essays on Fiction
Generative Literature and Generative Art: New Essays
Alain Robbe-Grillet: The Body of the Text
The Erotic Dream Machine: Interviews with Alain Robbe-Grillet on His Films
Inventing The Real World: The Art of Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet
March 20, 2010
revolution re-imagined as a big budget snuff film.
June 16, 2011
If you like novels with narratives that are trying to loose themselves,(and the reader), this book is probably going to appeal to you.
September 9, 2013
It's very like Marquis of Sade directin a Raymond Roussel's play about May '68
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