The Inquisitory

by Robert Pinget, Donald Watson (Translator)

The Inquisitory consists entirely of the interrogation of an old, deaf servant regarding unspecified crimes that may or may not have taken place at his master's French chateau. The servant's replies - which are by turns comic, straightforward, angry, nostalgic, and disingenuous - hint at a variety of seedy events, including murder, orgies, tax fraud, and drug deals. Of course, the servant wasn't involved with any of these activities - if the reader chooses to believe him. In trying to convince the inquisitor of his innocence, the servant creates a web of half-truths, vague references, and glaring inconsistencies amid "forgotten" details, indicating that he may know more than he's letting on.

Genres: Fiction, France, French Literature, Literature, Novels, Literary Fiction, Classics

399 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1962

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

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Inquisitory by Robert Pinget is a very idiosyncratic novel which isn’t easy to interpret.
Masters and servants: what does a servant know about his masters, about the surrounding world and society?

Yes or no yes or no for all I know about it you know, I mean I was only in service to them a man of all work you might say and what I can say about it, anyway I don’t know anything people don’t confide in a servant, my work all right my work then but how could I have foreseen, every day the same the daily round no I mean to say you’d better ask my gentlemen not me there must be some mistake, when I think that after ten years of loyal service he never said a word to me worse than a dog, you pack up and go you wash your hands of it let other people get on with it after all I mean to say, man of all work yes but who never knew a thing it’s enough to turn you sour isn’t, me gentlemen didn’t care so long as I did my work, at the start I was sure it couldn’t go on like that let’s at least try to have a little chat from time to time but in the end you get used to it you get used to it and that’s how I’ve been for the last ten years so don’t come asking me, a dog you understand and yet they chat to him there was one they used to take with them on their trips, my gentlemen took him with them on their trips
It’s not about the dog it’s about him, when did he leave

The interrogation is long and scrupulous but it isn’t clear if there was a crime or not. And if there was one then of what nature.
The servant’s answers are thorough and often meticulous but it isn’t clear how correct are they… They may turn out to be just a part of his imagination, wild guesses, misconceptions, wishful thinking, hearsay, gossips or results of his imperfect memory…
Every one of us lives in the world painted with one’s imagination and memory and restricted with one’s cognition of the outside reality.

[Rod · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is something like a masterpiece, but I'm not sure who I could recommend it to. Well, the usual Dalkey aficionados, naturally, but I don't know who else. Composed entirely of a series of questions and answers between an unnamed inquisitor (or inquisitors) and the aged, deaf servant of a country chateau, The Inquisitory is...well...it's something else, alright.

Okay, so something's happened, but we don't know what. Something nefarious, assumedly. This servant of the chateau is being interrogated about what he knows (if he actually does know anything) about supposed misdoings centering around the chateau and the surrounding provincial area. Something about the secretary of the chateau leaving. So what is the servant asked about? Anything. Everything. If a name is mentioned casually by the servant, know with certainty that the inquisitor is going to ask who they are, where they live, what they do, who they know; usually right away, but sometimes ten or twenty pages later when you've already completely forgotten about them. And if a house, or a road, or a room, or a hallway, or a staircase, or any structure made by man is mentioned, a thorough description will be forthcoming. Amid this seemingly random torrent of information, a chiaroscuro of corruption, perversion, and iniquity of every sort is slowly revealed. Murder, pedophilia, necrophilia, tax scams, and maybe some kind of satanic death cult or maybe I just read too much into things?...you name it. So, if the cops are looking for something, there's plenty to be found. Maybe. Or maybe not. See what I'm getting at?

Pinget courts reader frustration boldly and with audacious glee, and ultimately makes it his bitch. He practically dares you to stop reading, Come on...I dare you, more Robert Conrad than Joseph Conrad, assaultin' batteries. I almost abandoned it somewhere before the halfway mark at the uninterrupted, ten-page description of a drawing room and every piece of furniture and appointments therein. Why does the inquisitor need to know this? Why do I need to know this? Why does anybody need to know this? Fuck if I know. The servant will even get frustrated and start asking "Where is this all going?" or "What's the point of all this?", seemingly just to let you know that yes indeed Pinget is fully aware of what he's doing to you. But I couldn't stop reading. Pinget writes in a breathless, propulsive style, that kineticism aided by the lack of conventional punctuation—no periods, no question marks, and commas used almost haphazardly. It's unconventional, but certainly not unreadable, and it adds to that forward momentum. If you're unsure where to stop, it makes it that much harder to actually do so. So anyway, somewhere around that halfway mark I started to have fun with it. I felt like I was in on the joke. The endless questions, answers and constructions of real or imagined people, places and events forces you to ponder the nature of truth, knowledge, and storytelling. While reading it I felt like my brain chemistry was being rewired, and that's something I think great art should do, right? So...yeah. Masterpiece.

[Nate D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another twenty rooms and then there'll still be more and you'll tell me to describe them, and more and more kitchens servants tell-tale tittle-tattle secrets of the bedchamber families mile upon mile of streets and stairs and lumber rooms and junk-shops of antique-dealers grocers butchers skimping and scraping everywhere in our heads how dreary it all is always starting over again why, all these dead people around us all these dead people we third degree to make them talk when will you have finished I haven't asked anything, am I always going to have to start again the evenings in the bistro in the street what how why
Pull yourself together, describe them

-Describe what
-The contents of the book
-words stories I don't know, what part are you after
-Is this an encyclopedic work
-I never called it encylopedic that would have been some other review or I think probably a list perhaps that Nathan NR he's always on about your encyclopedics why not give him an ask on that one
-Tell me what you know of Nathan NR
-Not much besides the books he reads honestly types in odd formatting likes digging things up unburying and perhaps resurrecting dead or now maybe undead literatures if you will good bloke runs a group I'm not even sure how old he may be though his picture or avatar or what have you for ages I took it for him I think now it might be a young Vollman I don't even know if he's a real Gaddis, NR or not and if
-Would you consider this an encyclopedic work?
-Nah more like rather gazetteeric or that and a telephone directory I would say an encyclopedia one would think would encompass a somewhat broader knowledge area than just the people and places and some goings on in one small district of france that no one has heard of that I gather does not exist at all oh or maybe an auction catalogue perhaps, I could see this being arranged like the other if only it would incorporate pictures really much easier that way floorplans and whatnot than just trying to render each thing down to minute and irrelevant detail agonizing at times I say in just words alone really now
-Why shouldn't a novel render itself in words alone
-Even the narrator agrees it's on the page
-Then why do you continue to read
-It has its intrigues I like the voice a tad familiar at times even if breathless fellow he seems to never let up vomiting out his words and descriptions doesn't he even pause for a moment, and intrigues like I say you get fifteen pages of furniture and street crossings but then next page its a poisoning or some dirty pictures worse than animals he says and then clams up I don't wonder they sound awful or rather I do wonder it's that that keeps you reading really the not knowing where its all going and what little bits of the unexpected will come popping up I liked the bit in the woods too the superstitions and all or rather I guess I do know where it's going or has to be all the insinuations and hints actually seem to be pointing at different things all divergent not convergent not even the interrogator knows what he's after or at least he can't make up his mind maybe he's just bored but like I say it's probably going mostly nowhere much there'll never be an end to it
-Why do you say that
-Pinget he's a nouvelle roman bloke as they say surely falling in with that crowd he's after something else than telling a reasonable story like respectable people might you know with a plot and a beginning middle end not that there aren't plots mind you but they're just not
-At what point did you realize that there would never be an end to it
-Probably pretty early on the suspicions started I have some familiarity with those nouvelle romans also the post-modernists you know the type but even then the intrigues another one is waiting to see just how the book will make itself keep going really on the edge of my seat at times to see how there could possibly be another two hundred pages of this I'm only sort of exaggerating it has a compulsive quality
-Was there a specific point
-Of what
-A specific point at which it seemed to be going nowhere
-Fairly early really I told you and not too many books inspired such a blend of annoyance and adoration it seemed likely to be of the somewhat elusive variety of postmodern storytelling
-Which you dislike
-Not at all it can be entirely effective if it drags the reader against their best intents
-Were you dragged in then
-Yes and no I was but I wasn't each time I'd become completely caught up, the incident or description would end, perhaps never to return again each time I was driven utterly to distraction something exciting would spring up, and as far as the knowing it would have no end goes or suspecting I still suspect but I haven't actually finished yet that Nate or Nathanimal wrote a review where he gave up after 10 pages of drawing room details so I knew we couldn't be building up to a major change of pacing or content or what have you
-Nate is this the same one
-No not NR but Nathanimal like I say and not that other Nate D either
-Who is this Nathanimal
-You could know as much as I if you'd check the profile reads the surrealisms sometimes has strokes of insight on strange books surprised he didn't make it further on this one but I don't say I can't see the frustration either there's only so many books anyone can read in a lifetime does it really need to be a list of estates and aristocrats with a few hairdressers and senile aunts chucked into the mix for good measure
-Who is this Nate D
-another character on the Goodreads thought he was a bit of an androgyne with the eye-shadow and all but it turned out the portrait or avatar if you will was a different bloke as well from the early 80s new wave character later made a television show played a terrible boss you've seen it
-Who is the interrogator
-What do you mean who is the interrogator
-Who do you imagine is asking the questions
-The police someone after something a blackmailer a jealous friend could be anyone really now couldn't it that's the point of the device an open book endless possibility or most of all it seeing as this is some manner of nouvelle roman so they say it becomes rather inescapable to not see the questions as originating with the author which of course they must as he's the bloke doing the writing now isn't he, but that is to say moreso even if it's a nouvelle roman as I told you there's always the chance that the whole is some kind of model of the writing process itself the author interrogating himself in order to generate and flesh out every possibly useful detail of the world the interrogator as writer as generative literary tool to pull the raw materials of writing direct from authorial brain to create an entire world or setting in which he might eventually put a story or a novel yes
-And if he's a generative writing tool what would you say I am
-The same a transparent device for composing a review I should say

...

-And now
-And now what
-Your reactions
-You've heard them haven't you I can't imagine what you're after
-You were reading before and now you've done your reactions haven't changed then
-Yes and no I was about ready to put it down I was skimming a bit through a lengthy wedding scene that doesn't seem to have been terribly important I was resolved to hit the halfway at last it seemed a good bet for having seen the most of the book giving it a good shot and like I say the actual reading of it was pleasant enough it was just the time who has it and so many other books piling themselves off the shelves all the time
-Which ones
-Nothing related in particular Drexler Malin Burns Brooke-Rose Vesaas Brossard Duras and on and on there'll never be an end to it particularly with all the new ones they're writing all the time
-Your reactions
-Why yes I'd thought we'd just get some more of the montage as Knig says lots of disconnected bits of interest floating alone in a narrative void say spaced out by lists of things I wonder if they inspired the lists of furniture and architectural detail in House of Leaves even it's a possibility given all the other post-modern canon that found its way in there
-Who is this Knig
-Another reader ended up trailing off read in little disconnected bits to fit the style say not so impressed it's all down there
-Your reactions
-So I thought all this as I said but then imagine after the wedding the narrator trips up a bit and it turns out there's a whole personal story quite moving rather frightening in there that he'd been burying heavens I'd never have guessed, and what's more his story would seem to brush up against some much bigger things murder conspiracy occultism madness secret passageways the other reviews hinted as much but I'd really not have guessed that it can be all made to be connected into one quite developed story or its all debatable but at least one character would say so so all at once here I am quite caught up all in not so many pages never fully explained or finalized of course some big gaps left to wonder but it keeps you reading and throughout after that old Pinget a crafty one he's back to modulating your boredom again bait and switch perhaps reader attention and how to frustrate and cultivate it is the actual story here but in any event from there on he's got all of this intrigue to keep brushing back in or to withhold as needed carries right through to the end rather moving at that point too I'll be missing that narrator even if he's a xenophobe the things he refuses to talk about show his hearts mostly in the right place
-What was the book about then
-As I said a how-to on modulating reader attention
-What was the book about
-It's a telephone directory and gazetteer of a bit of rural france
-What was the book really about
-Memory what you hang onto what you lose what means the most when you look back at the end
-What else was the book about
-Stories and storytelling the interrogators are determined to drag out a whole interconnected plot and they'll get it in the end it just might be a real frankenstein of fabrication and insinuation could they be the readers themselves then those determined readers hmmm yes I like this the interrogator as the reader who really wants a lurid story and he or she will get it in the end even at the expense of plausibility or maybe of the truth at all we readers have such demands we'll plow under all sorts of other concerns in pursuit of our plots wouldn't you say
-Was the book about anything else
-Sure it was about the things that make up a life and what it actually feels like to live it it's a little different from just the memory bit the narrator says something about setting nets to trap the wind everyone one does it naturally its all for naught we scurry after these things hunt down that bizarre old edition of that french novel in translation that's not really been about in decades or that apartment or the girl or the fellow for that matter and years pass and what difference does any of it make yes setting nets for wind it's all anyone can do
-Is that it

-Is that it

-Is that it now answer carefully
-It'll never be it of course it all just goes on and on rooms and rooms and all those fading faces clamoring for a shred of dignity or attention an encyclopedic really yes I've come around a true encyclopedic but one that carves up its subject as much as illuminates the faces that clamor for attention are in some way degraded by it to look too close is to lose sight one incident can dominate a lifetime once set upon the printed page or a lifetime is reduced to a handful of details why keep on with the searchlights when they'll burn up all they touch in the end it's from this alone that narrator hides his memories or as he says the interrogators will get the story they wanted all along in the end that's the only endpoint of it all if any the reader-interogator will demand will recreate will force will will will

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A deeply impressive, though difficult, work. At times he is deliberately trying to make the reading as hard going as possible. To bore you to death. To drown you in fact. At others it just flows and crackles with power and emotion. It is both anti-story and pure story. And that is not easy to do.

I can certainly see why Beckett thought so highly of it.

Cautiously, but enthusiastically, recommended.

[Ronald Morton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes or no answer
Yes or no yes or no for all I know about it you know, I mean I was only in service to them a man of all work you might say and what I can say about it, anyway I don’t know anything people don’t confide in a servant, my work all right my work then but how could I have foreseen, every day the same the daily round no I mean to say you’d better ask my gentlemen not me there must be some mistake, when I think that after ten years of loyal service he never said a word to me worse than a dog, you pack up and go you wash your hands of it let other people get on with it after all I mean to say, man of all work yes but who never knew a thing it's enough to turn you sour isn’t it, my gentlemen didn't care so long as I did my work, at the start I was sure it couldn’t go on like that let's at least try to have a little chat from time to time but in the end you get used to it you get used to it and that's how I’ve been for the last ten years so don’t come asking me, a dog you understand and yet they chat to him there was one they used to take with them on their trips, my gentlemen took him with them on their trips

Those are the opening two paragraphs from The Inquisitory. Some things to note / of note (yes, I like lists):

1. So, the really obvious one: yeah, there is no punctuation. Excepting commas. Commas are okay apparently – likely this book would not work as well without them. But no periods, no exclamation marks, no question marks. It’s a bit amusing that a book which is entirely an inquisition has no question marks, but there it is.

2. The not quite as obvious from the above – the entire book is structured in this way. Odd numbered (no actual numbering, but you get the idea) paragraphs belong to the inquisitor, even numbered paragraphs belong to the servant. There is no divergence from this structure – so, even when the servant is particularly long winded, you just end up with a “paragraph” that spans pages.

3. There are no breaks – the book continues in this way for 400 pages.

4. Also not quite as obvious, but can be inferred from the above – the entire book being set up in this way means that there is no narrative. I mean, the servant’s dialogue is its own form of narrative, but there is no description of the conversation, of the speakers, of their expressions or tone or intonation. Just spoken words.

That last one is hugely important, as the success of the book entirely hinges upon this: it works, the whole goddamn thing works, and because of that, this book is a small triumph. The servant is this crystalline, perfectly defined literary creation, but he is defined entirely in the mind of the reader. His emotions are apparent – and varied – and he resonates and affects the reader as the book progresses.

The book also focuses extensively on the nature of truth and memory (next to “books about writers” I would say this is Dalkey’s other favorite topic of literature); the servant is both observant and forgetful, at times intentionally (and explicitly) withholding information and obscuring facts – and at other times it is up to the reader to infer where the truth ends and the memory/lack of memory/churlish withholding begins. The inquisitor itself (himself/herself/who knows) speaks only in clipped questions/demands, but even the inquisitor evolves as a sharp intelligence, drawing facts and statements together into a complex web that traps and trips the servant; following up on statements made pages earlier, and ferreting out small inconsistencies and withholding as the inquisition progresses.

Not everyone is going to love this book. Most readers actually will not. What you get in the opening pages is what you get for the rest of the book – those that thrill at Oulipo-level-restraints (though I don’t believe Pinget was a member) and the ability to expand a literary experiment across 400 pages – to stretch it to breaking only to stick the landing in triumph – those readers will likely love this book. Most others will find only tedium. That’s okay, they can simply look elsewhere.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I'm getting more used to the post-modern novel. As recently as a few years ago, I couldn't have handles a novel like Robert Pinget's The Inquisitory (1962). In the interim, reading Samuel Beckett, Georges Perec, and Laszlo Krasznahorkai has somehow turned my literary prejudices inside-out.

Here we have a 400-page set of questions being asked by a faceless investigator to an old servant whose name we don't even know, nor do we know anything about the inquisitor or the secretary who's typing up the transcription. The servant happens to be deaf, so we must presume the questions -- which are all short -- are written on slips of paper. The questions range from demands for the layout of various rooms at the mansion where he was working (for two dodgy males in their mid-fifties), to rooms in bars and private dwellings in several of the surrounding towns. The old servant gives incredibly long answers, showing a minute knowledge of people, their relationships, room layouts, paintings, and antiques that go far beyond what any individual could be expected to remember.

As the questioning goes on, the servant becomes increasingly rebellious and starts talking back to the inquisitor:

Another twenty rooms and then there'll still be more and you'll tell me to describe them, and more and more kitchens servants tell-tale tittle-tattle secrets of the bedchamber families mile upon mile of streets and stairs and lumber-rooms and junk-shops of antique-dealers grocers butchers of skimping and scraping everywhere in our heads how dreary it all is always starting all over again why, all those dead people we third degree to make them talk when will you have finished I haven't asked anything, am I always going to start again the evenings in the bistro in the street what how why

You may have noticed there are no periods and lots of run-on sentences. Every once in a while, the old man goes into what could be called a fugue of description, of which the following is just a short excerpt:

On the other side of the organ there's a little wooden chair a straight one all painted with flowers and cows and birds that's Swiss too, one of them's got a broken leg I stuck together again but the radiator's too close it comes unstuck, then between the second and third windows there's a big picture on the wall of peasants playing kinds of games like blind man's bluff

... and so on and so on until even the inquisitor tells him to cut it short and moves on to the next question.

If you think there's any tendency to the questions, you're wrong. They spiral around several hundred people living in scores of streets in over a dozen towns, and back again. Dinner parties, fetes, and other events over a period of over ten years are discussed in great detail, as well as who was there, how they interacted with one another, and what the furniture looked like, who were the servants, and so on ad infinitum. There's no tendentious direction to the questions. They just swirl and swirl and even come back to the beginning.

Like Georges Perec's Life: A User's Manual, the accumulation of description assumes a value on its own. The selection of details implies a back story which is never quite spelled out for us: We have to make all the connections ourselves. Yet somehow, it all works on a strange level which I am not quite sure how to properly describe.

And yet the answers are mesmerizing.

[Paul Dembina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyed that. I suggest fans of Life: A User's Manual might want to check this one out

[Andrew]

It’s hard to know what to make of this. On the one hand, I’m bored to death with this endless series of shaggy-dog stories, none of them particularly easy to interpret or assemble. On the other hand, each snippet, in its own right, is rather amusing, as is this charming old geezer of a narrator. You, yourself, play the role of investigator, although what you’re investigating isn’t quite clear. And towards the end, you can feel the actual investigator closing in, ready to spring his trap. Maybe I don’t know how I feel about The Inquisitory, but I do know that I’m impressed by Pinget, and ready to read more.

[Neil Griffin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This might be the toughest book I've ever read. I came to a point where I almost set it down. But, magically, I got I was able to find the current of this book and follow it through to the end. It turned out to be quite readable by the end, but I have never been so close to stopping a book. I've seen other folks compare this to Perec's "Life: A User's Manual" and I definitely see the similarities. I think there is more of a payoff to "Life" and it's also more fun to read--a book which you never really want to end. This one, in contrast, was one I was quite pleased to finish. That said, I'm not sorry that I spent a few weeks on it. A very singular reading experience with a protagonist (if that's the right word) whom I'll never forget.

[Guy Brookshire · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is difficult to adequately praise this strange and unsettling book. I will try by saying that I have never read a book that so thoroughly engaged the full spectrum of my imagination. It is tedious, thrilling, mysterious, and desperately sad. It addresses such a vast range of experiences that I am tempted to say it is a kind of encyclopedia, but that would actually diminish its achievements. It is horrific and epic, while dwelling unapologetically on the minute and the mundane. I will read it again.

[Anton Ekh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pretty challenging read, at least initially, due to the lack of puncutation and the sheer onslaught of the Inquisitor's questioning. The inquisitory, consisting of endless descriptions of the interiors and exteriors of chateaus, as well as constant prying into the private lives of the people who live in the surrounding cities and villages (also described in excruciating detail), starts off quite innocent, but it eventually culminates in the Questioned divulging some pretty sinister stuff. However, to call this novel nothing but ''disturbing'' would be fallacious, at least partly. ''The Inquisitory'' is at times quite humorous; the humour often stems from how absurd some of the questions are, and equally as often from the Inquisitor's seemingly excessive persistence and obstinacy.

You'd imagine that 391 pp. of this would prove to be quite boring; it is, until about 1/3 through. Once you get used to the form and the style of ''The Inquisitory'', it's quite hard to put down; that's a feat!

[Adam]

Maybe it can be done. But not I. To my immense and lamentable astonishment, I cannot finish this. The first DNF (at p. 150) since time out of mind, and certainly the first ever Dalkey to dismay. No doubt there is a resplendent critical essay somewhere to chastise my shortsightedness.

[mkfs · Rating 5 out of 5]

The conceit here is that an investigator, or team of investigators, is questioning the former servant of some rich folk. The servant is old and half-deaf, and he isn't too keen on the questioning, so when they ask him to describe a room he goes on and on about the wallpaper, where each chair came from, how full that ashtray usually is, more and more detail until they finally tell him to stop ("Cut it short.").

To all would-be authors of first-person or stream-of-conscious narrative, I say simply: This is how it's done. No need for an elaborate framing device, a diary or a confessional or a parasite living in the character's brain. Just let them talk.

Pinget demonstrates an understanding of memory that exceeds Proust. The servant remembers things as they would be remembered: by association and by moving on to another subject so a forgotten memory will surface at its leisure. He comes close to lecturing his interregator(s) on this, even telling them that they haven't asked the right questions to get him to remember what they want to find out from him.

The novel-of-nobility authors could learn a trick or two as well. Where Thomas Mann will describe a party by detailing the geneology of every notable who walks through the door, thereby boring the pants off any non-geneologists in the audience, Pinget doles out the information as it suits the situation. "Oh the guy she went off with at the party, she had slept with his friend originally, but always had her eye on him, see he is from the Whatever Dynasty of Chateau Somewhere, his parents spent most of the money they got from their lands but he invested the remainder in soybeans, a real talent like his grandfather, the Duc de Somewhere...".

So sure, it's boring at times, and one never learns what the investigators are after, nor even whether they have found it. The interview does not necessarily begin at the start of the book, nor finish at the end; it may continue for days or weeks as the interrogators carefully trip up the servant, or get him to let slip a detail that shows he knows more than he's letting on. It is all incredibly well done, the sort of attention to detail and consistency of character that the majority of 20th century "literary" authors seem to aspire to, but never reach.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

No punctuation, no discernible plot, endless descriptions of furniture and hundreds of characters, most of whom appear for 1 or 2 lines never to be brought up again. It's a difficult read; not a page-turner at all.
There are some rare moments of reflection by the person being interrogated on the nature/importance of memories and truth. Which means that all those descriptions may not even be true.

[Pete Camp · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely one of the most challenging reads I’ve had in a while , the book contains very little punctuation save for a smattering of commas. Took a little while to train the brain and to pick up the cadence . Got bogged down in the endless descriptions of rooms and was difficult to keep track of some of the characters. There is some humor in here however and some intriguing philosophizing. Worth the effort but not for the faint of heart

[knig]

Interesting premise, but total struggle at the moment. To be revisited.

[Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Robert Pinget, on his birthday July 19
Dreamscapes and phantasms of Absurdism and Surrealist weirdness, coupled with a rigorous scholastic subversion of the three unities of traditional French theatre; time, place, and character, Robert Pinget brought a relentless methodology to his creative partnerships, as if Descartes had a driving passion for the arts.
With a compositional vision and structure derived from his musicianship which permeates his style of language, and sentences which mimic natural breathing in oral poetry taken directly from his model Walt Whitman, his writing displays a poetic lyricism as unique as a signature.
Among a small group of authors who were also superb musicians, always interesting to me as my side gig is music, his transpositon of music into language reverberates across time and flowers in musician-novelists as diverse as Anthony Burgess in Napoleon Symphony and Robert Coover in Pricksongs and Descants.
Famously a collaborator with Samuel Beckett as fellow playwrights, Robert Pinget was also a painter who had studied with a student of Braque as well as a musician of the Baroque chamber orchestra, and all three of these influences can be observed in his literary works.
It is possible that he achieved Nietzsche's Total Art in his synthesis of disciplines and reinvention of form.
Among his classics of world literature we have The Inquisitory, regularly compared to Perec's Life: a user's manual due to the playfullness and variety of his word games, Passacaglia, a transposition of music into language, and possibly a mystery, Baga, the lives of a mad king across the centuries reminiscent of Jarry's Ubu Roi, Between Fantoine and Agapa, a surrealist notebook of future works and a travel guide to an alternate dimension like that of Akutagawa's marvelous Kappa, Monsieur Levert, referential to both Beckett's Waiting for Godot and , as the play Dead Letter, to Beckett's companion play with which it shared a stage, Krapp's Last Tape.
We have also the absurdist hilarity of Mahu, the mad ravings of a useless nobody who slowly dissociates in soliloquies of imagined superiority to just about everyone. Consumed by dementia, his rotting brain misfires in bundles of hallucinatory and childlike racism, paranoia, rages, twisted desires; anyone who has worked with patients in an Alzheimer's ward will recognize the symptoms.
My response to objectionable content is to consider its context and intent; in this case to describe the mental decline of a character whose function is to provoke and disturb as a tool of social criticism. Reading it gave me impulsive fits of wanting to rewrite the novel as the senile maunderings of a Trump-like American President who was a former clown of grotesque terror and whose art of politics in the white house is the same as in his fabled circus performances; to offend, terrorize, and totally gross out his audience. For then we would have a novel in which transgression is liberating, affirming, and useful.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some people write conventional stories with tried and tested structures, and some people try something different. And all too often the trying something different falls horribly flat because the writer forgot the basics of storytelling somewhere along the way.

This story is deeply experimental, and definitely in the something different category. It is made entirely from a series of questions and answers between an unnamed inquisitor and a servant in a country chateau who is the very epitomy of an unreliable narrator. This format, if not different enough, also messes with punctuation and the like, to create quite an unusual reading experience.

It is definitely a very clever novel, and one that can inexplicably keep the reader going. Inexplicably because there are some really rather long digressions into things that just don't seem to be important. When the protagonist asks "what's the point of all this?" he is not the only one who wants to know the answer to that question.

The book works by sucking the reader into a kind of whodunnit. Except whodunnit is not a good enough description. Did anything actually even happen? But the reader's engagement is the strong point of the book. It is an unusual work, and its strength is perhaps its weakness too. You are going to need to want to read a different kind of story before engaging with this. But if you are happy to do that, it has a lot to offer.

[Harrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was zoning out pretty hard at times. Seemingly endless descriptions of furniture.. this one often feels like a walking simulator game where a mystery emerges from walking through rooms and handling objects. The Inquisitory really comes together in the middle and though it was a bit dull at times I can’t help but be impressed by the overall effect of the book. Very interesting read! (But I’m happy it’s done.)

[Jeff Russo · Rating 2 out of 5]

DARN IT... this is one of those books, I didn't like it, but at some other time, in the past or future, I would have. Like friggin LSD... set and setting. I must just be at a point in time where I need a little more structure etc.

Sorry, Mr Pinget. I feel a bit dirty but that's my rating based on my impression, at the time of reading.

[Scull17 · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 1/2 stars

[Damian Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have no excuse for liking this book as much as I do.

[Gary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now THAT was one crazy-ass book! But I couldn't put it down, and I don't think I'll ever forget it...

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one's a re-read. A book from the 1960s, it's more police transcript than 'novel', as it consists of nothing but the (perhaps truthful) answers of an elderly servant to the questions of an interrogator, or group of interrogator. Neither of the two (?) principals are named, though everyone else in the surrounding town is.

The key thing, though? It's not important.

I enjoy this book a lot, even though it's pretty hard going a lot of the time. I understand that breaking literary conventions is kind of important, but it hammers home how important the framework of text - proper punctuation, occasional paragraph breaks - is for reader comfort. The deluge of words is unstoppable, each giving the reader a nugget of information about the old man, the town, his employers, the house... so much so that the narrative the reader tries to construct withers and dies. What happened at the house? Was pornography involved? Drugs? Imports? IT DOESN'T MATTER, JUST TELL ME ABOUT THE WALLPAPER AGAIN.

If it was high concept, it'd be MAN UNSATISFACTORILY INTERVIEWED.

If you enjoy the sort of playing with form and evocation of a disappeared France that Georges Perec's work does, then you'll enjoy Pinget. I'm keen to seek out something more of his, on the proviso that there's spaces for brain-rest built in.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book. Someone is questioning a servant in France. You get brief questions and the servant's answers. Slowly a cast of characters and plot develops. There have been murders, and tax schemes, but it is never clear why the servant is being interrogated.

[Victoria]

i'm having a difficult time with this one; the phrasing doesn't defeat me but the pure length is getting to me.