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The Apocrypha
novel, tr Barbara Wright
- GenresFrench Literature
143 pages, Hardcover
First published October 13, 1980
64 people want to read
About the author
Robert Pinget
67 books41 followersRobert 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)
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)
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 13, 2013
After Ulysses, and especially in the late 60s, there was a concerted attack on the moribund structure of the novel. What's crazy to me is that these wild experiments were popular and are now, for the most part, gone. A book like
The Dinner
is heralded in the freaking NYTimes as something new, fresh, edgy, yet it reads as a glorified manuscript for a movie that has yet to be made by some wannabe auteur.
It seems that no big publishers are willing to give experimental books a chance. Just as importantly, a lot of the well known writers do very little that can be considered experimental. And back to the 60s: everyone was messing with the novel. Trying out new forms, structures, narrative devices, even the way a book is read, such as in Hopscotch, The Unfortunates, and certain OULIPO books. The list of well known authors experimenting is massive and continued well into the 70s. So what happened? And why did the experimental novel disappear?
Well, part of the answer is this book and it's ilk.
The book is well-written, but it's a chore. What a lot of the writers of the 60s realized is that without a plot propelling a reader along you either need the pure beauty of the prose or, more often, some sort of puzzle to keep you going. So Robbe-Grillet, for example, often has great prose that builds a sense of the uncanny, coupled with a completely unreliable narrator, but then ties it together in the end like a detective novel, and the the reader realizes that what they thought they were reading wasn't what they were reading at all. The "pay-off" is worth the whole endeavor.
But back to this book (sorry, I don't actually have much to say about the book; I have more to say about experimental fiction).
So the author, Robert Pinget, supposedly has re-written variations of this book over and over and over. And in this version he reiterates certain themes like a stuttering schizophrenic bouncing between cocaine and barbiturates. I know damn well that there are plenty of puzzles endemic to the book. There's a murder. Or wait... is there two? There's a "master" who's a rich dick, and his servant. Or wait, there's another "master" who is the first master's nephew but who's also a rich dick and in the same way. There's a text. A text that is being written and pieced together as we read; or wait... what we are reading is probably the text that is written about. There are Latin passages that are probably keys to reading the whole text; probably a scrambled version of Virgil or some such...
But it's boring. Yeah, Pinget, you can write. But the writing isn't strong enough to carry a whole book on its beauty alone. The first ten pages? Sure. But not 160 pages. No way. The puzzles aren't exciting enough to complete. This isn't Myst or The NYTimes crossword puzzle (and doesn't even come close to the standard app sucking our time while waiting for the subway). The "mystery" at the center of the book is too vague and too uninteresting. And just mentioning a murder doesn't fucking cut it, and isn't enough to keep me interested in who did what. And what the hell is up with your characterizations, Pinget? At least pretend to write in different voices. It's fun. Reading the same character voice yet being told, by you, that it's a different character is not fun, but confusing and not in an intellectual way, but in a way that makes me think, "fuck it, this is boring, let me check out that app that reminds me of Myst and a crossword puzzle."
Anyway. Pinget is one of the reasons why experimental fiction died. At one point it was exciting. Joyce is funny. His characters fuck and take shits and have great thoughts and reference seemingly everything in Western history. Barthelme is hilarious and genuinely shocking, as is Pynchon. Barnes writes great puzzles, and the end of Robbe-Grillet books usually justifies the entire damn book.
But this just wasn't good enough. It wasn't bad enough that I won't give the author another shot, but it does make it clear why experimental fiction isn't exciting. It's not exciting because it became routine; with its own boring rules and its own boring expectations.
One place experimentation exists: poetry!
It seems that no big publishers are willing to give experimental books a chance. Just as importantly, a lot of the well known writers do very little that can be considered experimental. And back to the 60s: everyone was messing with the novel. Trying out new forms, structures, narrative devices, even the way a book is read, such as in Hopscotch, The Unfortunates, and certain OULIPO books. The list of well known authors experimenting is massive and continued well into the 70s. So what happened? And why did the experimental novel disappear?
Well, part of the answer is this book and it's ilk.
The book is well-written, but it's a chore. What a lot of the writers of the 60s realized is that without a plot propelling a reader along you either need the pure beauty of the prose or, more often, some sort of puzzle to keep you going. So Robbe-Grillet, for example, often has great prose that builds a sense of the uncanny, coupled with a completely unreliable narrator, but then ties it together in the end like a detective novel, and the the reader realizes that what they thought they were reading wasn't what they were reading at all. The "pay-off" is worth the whole endeavor.
But back to this book (sorry, I don't actually have much to say about the book; I have more to say about experimental fiction).
So the author, Robert Pinget, supposedly has re-written variations of this book over and over and over. And in this version he reiterates certain themes like a stuttering schizophrenic bouncing between cocaine and barbiturates. I know damn well that there are plenty of puzzles endemic to the book. There's a murder. Or wait... is there two? There's a "master" who's a rich dick, and his servant. Or wait, there's another "master" who is the first master's nephew but who's also a rich dick and in the same way. There's a text. A text that is being written and pieced together as we read; or wait... what we are reading is probably the text that is written about. There are Latin passages that are probably keys to reading the whole text; probably a scrambled version of Virgil or some such...
But it's boring. Yeah, Pinget, you can write. But the writing isn't strong enough to carry a whole book on its beauty alone. The first ten pages? Sure. But not 160 pages. No way. The puzzles aren't exciting enough to complete. This isn't Myst or The NYTimes crossword puzzle (and doesn't even come close to the standard app sucking our time while waiting for the subway). The "mystery" at the center of the book is too vague and too uninteresting. And just mentioning a murder doesn't fucking cut it, and isn't enough to keep me interested in who did what. And what the hell is up with your characterizations, Pinget? At least pretend to write in different voices. It's fun. Reading the same character voice yet being told, by you, that it's a different character is not fun, but confusing and not in an intellectual way, but in a way that makes me think, "fuck it, this is boring, let me check out that app that reminds me of Myst and a crossword puzzle."
Anyway. Pinget is one of the reasons why experimental fiction died. At one point it was exciting. Joyce is funny. His characters fuck and take shits and have great thoughts and reference seemingly everything in Western history. Barthelme is hilarious and genuinely shocking, as is Pynchon. Barnes writes great puzzles, and the end of Robbe-Grillet books usually justifies the entire damn book.
But this just wasn't good enough. It wasn't bad enough that I won't give the author another shot, but it does make it clear why experimental fiction isn't exciting. It's not exciting because it became routine; with its own boring rules and its own boring expectations.
One place experimentation exists: poetry!
August 2, 2018
The only GR review of this little masterpiece struck as so sadly philistine, impulsive and underinformed that I feel compelled to clarify three points re Pinget's experimental fiction that Troy has missed. (1) When you read a novel such as The Apocrypha, you are experimenting as well as the author is experimenting and should bear in mind that many experiments fail or don't add up, but are brave adventures notwithstanding. (2) Reading Pinget--or for that matter Jack Kerouac, Virginia Woolf or Natalie Sarraute--requires accepting the author on her/ his own terms, cut her/ him some slack, Jack (3) Pinget throws a jig saw puzzle at you with a few pieces missing, which, I'll grant you is faintly hostile, a wicked game, offering the reader essentially nothing but incoherence. But consider this: Just how coherent is your daily life? How often do things progress smoothly, logically, from a to b? Maybe Pinget is a more realistic writer than first appears. /And though the book is fragmented, a mess, it's a beautiful mess, rife with atmosphere and the unsolvable mystery of life.
April 11, 2025
Awesome cover, incredibly boring. If you’ve read one Pinget, odds are you’ve read them all.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews