Jealousy & In the Labyrinth

by Alain Robbe-Grillet, Richard Howard (Translator), Roland Barthes (Introduction)

Here, in one volume, are two remarkable novels by the chief spokesman of the so-called “new novel” which has caused such discussion and aroused such controversy. “Jealousy,” said the New York Times Book Review “is a technical masterpiece, impeccably contrived.” “It is an exhilarating challenge,” said the San Francisco Chronicle.

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

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1959

About the author

Screenplays 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

Reviews

[Kamakana · Rating 5 out of 5]

if you like this review, i now have website: www.michaelkamakana.com

210719: these are the french originals La Jalousie and Dans le labyrinthe a little freudian repetition for me? perhaps...

.??? 80s. notes 271218:

review on both. 201117. 6th time?:
i have had several copies of this perennial favorite. most recently i tried a ‘comfort read’ list and ended up discounting all those books of other people that i had rated less than five, read the suggestion that these be reads i go to for certain pleasure, easy reads, confirming reads. but then i like and am comforted by ‘difficult’ reads, get great certain pleasure, relaxation, exhilaration, that does not come from just any book. so i searched my shelves of ‘nonfictionfavorite’, my ‘fictionfavorite’, started on my... then i decided this is ridiculous. ‘comfort reading’ is for me often ‘literary’ or ‘difficult’ on top of the usual childrens classics that no longer really ‘comfort’. and then there is maybe work that means more only from this or that time or place or... this book is comfort reading for all time... i have given this finally to riley my illustrator friend and told him the story is told in images, like a graphic, but in words... he is skeptical. i want to hear his take on however much he reads...

review on jealousy:
130811. 5th time.
five or six or...later later later addition. is it possible to read this one work too many times? does it render all other novels or anti-novels or experimental novels less than enjoyable in comparison? as much- that is not at all- as for me knowing one beautiful woman or one vista or one world defeats aesthetic appreciation of other women places times. this is not a best seller. r-g himself claims it is a 'long seller', that it has steady sales for years and years. i would like it to be fast and best and long selling, would like other authors to write like this, but maybe it is emotion and subject and perception that most authors find as too surreal, too empty of humans, impassive and emotionless, objective verging on dull, and just not holding attention of writer, let alone reader... so i will read it again, promote it again in my review, even myself try to write something like this...

this is on jealousy:
4th time.
well i do not know if this is actually only the 4th time: i have read this, kept at waimea, every February on vacation i read it again, so the question is more how many times have I been here? many times. i decided to stop counting the books, but as the town library is still closed for renovations... i brought some long texts from home. this place is kind of home as well, so i have read them and a few books from my mom on hawai'ian culture, then read this again...

4 times? sounds like i like it. very much, as effusive previous reviews note my enthusiasm. do not know if first read for class. know i loved it first, second, third, etc. times. i have read a lot of philosophy since first read, i have read a lot of other fiction, i have read a lot of Robbe-Grillet. so this is now a relatively educated read. and a good read. in some ways, i have thought of this as graphics work, or mental movie, telling the story in images. i do not know if my friends who like graphics would like it, though, as nothing much seems to happen. it is very much how the story is told, rather than what the story is, as if these are independent and not interdependent. i like the hollow of the narrator's perception, i like the way his mind deliberately goes from image to image, perhaps spurred by what he does not want to see, what jealousy creates in his every perception, how his view goes towards ‘certainty’ such as counting the banana trees, watching the worker looking in the water- but in the latter case, wondering what he sees, how time is unmoored, how it is now too muddy, now too swift to see anything. then there is his obsessive watching his wife writing or reading a letter, there is the seating plan set by his wife that seems to isolate him, there is the car arriving, his wife bending into the window, his wife bending near to pour a drink for Franck, there is the book they have read that seems like a typical literary treatment for the infidelity imagined. there are so many distractions he tries to understand just so he does not think, does not inhabit, his jealousy. there are the wooden slats in the windows, the ‘jalousies’, that characterize his blinded uncertainty. and there is of course, the centipede on the wall that Franck crushes, the stain this husband tries so hard to efface... as far as the sound goes i have to insist the accompanying intro is mistaken: sound is very important, everything from the crackle of her brushing her hair similar to hissing of the lamp, to the sound of a truck on the highway he cannot see, to the noise some bird or other creatures such as the insistent cicadas... the noise increases in meaninglessness even as it increases in meaning for the narrator... i love this book, i can only repeat, almost mechanically, that for me the interdependence is important in pleasure of reading, of how the story is told is what the story is told...

this is on in the labyrinth:
4th time.
so i read this after many years, prepared to be disappointed… and i like it even more. i have read many lit classics, i have read modernists, i have read postmodernists, since first reading this book. i have read more as i have read more. i am incredibly affected by this style, this technique, i am further convinced that sometimes style is content. it is how this story is told that is what the story is told: a mental movie told in precise, overlapping, jump cut, cubist, multi-perspective, repeated, near-repeated, recurring visual motifs. there is a plot, but one others might render as short story or short novella. i am fascinated, i am frustrated- because i wish i could do this, could write this! i up the rating. i try to understand why i so enjoy this but cannot much read becket’s novels. i think it is here the kind of desperate rational perception failing to see the world, versus the idea the world is not to be rational... i break my rule and add another by the same author as favourite but there is no need for apology...

i try to understand how it is so different from usual literature:
it is the precise, dispassionate, description of images that make up the story. these images are held together as if a montage, rewarding close inspection, in clarity unstained by the usual lit word characterizations of human emotions, metaphors, that nudge the reader to preferred reading, to competent reading, to the author’s obvious intent. there is freedom in reading, building, understanding, this story. or, rather, there is freedom that is not freedom. the story becomes not the plot, the characters, the theme, but the human life as rendered by images. all dialog is cryptic, evasive, suggestive, silent movie title cards... and order of the plot, of act, of dream, follows duration of consciousness and not clock and calendar... and situation, geography, society, is all inferred by reader and remains unimportant- though this is no allegory, no borrowed fable, nothing but these images of progress through the labyrinth...

labyrinths are often thought of as mazes, deferring or thwarting passage or escape, but this is not always the case. labyrinths are also meditative patterns walked in some old european churches that are meant to enlighten in each step... walk the pattern with close attention. it is worth it...

this is on in the labyrinth:
3rd time.
so, i am sitting by the pool on a beautiful day, without my watch- and decide to just follow however long it takes me to read this book, again. why now? because it happens to interest me, and more so than books out of the town library. as reading it, i realized one reason why i find it easier to read than beckett: the images, as it is mostly description, are rendered simple, clear, however often repeated. even as it is apparent this man, this perspective, is feverish and/or dying, the language never wavers or becomes complex. it does not ask me to inhabit but only to observe. much easier for me. think maybe i will try r-g’s later works again....

this is on jealousy:
2nd time.
i could reread this forever, i am so impressed- not at all disappointed since first reading it so many years ago. i have read yes but more importantly lived, and so this document- i cannot call it a novel, which sounds too simple, nor text, which sounds too arid. this is a document from the unnamed eye who describes everything we see, a viewpoint easily shifting through time, repetition, close inspection, abstract stage directions, description, detail, obsession- the mind’s eye, the embodied eye, of a virulently jealous husband on his tropical plantation. it does not matter if his suspicions are true, it is more important that what he cannot count, measure, describe, may be the thoughts of betrayal that infect every sight...

i think there is some error in barthes’ introductory essay- mainly eliding the importance of the soundtrack as his emotions intensifies- and i cannot judge whether this is necessary to appreciate these novels, because i remember them, i have now some idea who heidegger is, who is barthes. but this is judged robbe-grillet’s masterworks for a reason....

i will probably read these again after many more years. again...

1st time: at u, not for class, i first read this. so years (decades...) past. i am not studying french lit, of which i have only read Jules Verne, Victor Hugo, maybe Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, not yet Honoré de Balzac, Stendahl, Georges Simenon, etc. but i am somewhat disappointed in what i do read (english and american and canadian ‘classics’), so, off program, wandering, i come to the film section of the u library, and find the ‘cine-roman’ of Last Year at Marienbad which i happened to see in class and, not understanding, i really enjoy so i pick up the book...next is Jealousy & In the Labyrinth...

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
The novels of Robbe-Grillet

[Nico · Rating 5 out of 5]

Consider a passage in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in which Marlowe has just approached the coast of Africa after his voyage from Europe. Conrad writes:
all along the formless coast bordered by dangerous surf, as if Nature herself had tried to ward off intruders; in and out of rivers, streams of death in life, whose banks were rotting into mud, whose waters, thickened into slime, invaded the contorted mangroves, that seemed to writhe at us in the extremity of contorted despair. (HD, 62)

The language Conrad chooses here is a lexicon of extreme carnality; it radiates with life and the excreta of life. Nature is “formless” and “thickened.” It “invades” and “contorts,” “streams” and “rots.” In a description that runs nearly five pages of the equally tropical nature surrounding the bungalow, Robbe-Grillet writes:
Without bothering with the order in which the actually visible banana trees and the cut banana trees occur, the sixth row gives the following numbers: twenty-two, twenty-one, nineteen—which represent respectively the rectangle, the true trapezoid, the trapezoid with a curved edge, and the same after subtracting the boles for harvest. (J, 52)

Robbe-Grillet’s lexicon, in comparison to Conrad’s, is equally extreme, only this is the impassioned, exact language of the analyst, of the banker, of the accountant. It contains nature into specific parcels of land, it defines the parameters of the bungalow (and thus of the narrative) and encloses the plane of text within its tight confines. Of course, Conrad’s description of Marlowe is of his approach to an uncivilized land and this should not be discounted; Robbe-Grillet’s description of the plantation, in a time of static, worn existence is the mirror opposite. It is the lexicon of the neurotic colonialist at the end of expansion, on the eve of his inevitable departure. Under the gaze of the narrator it has already become memory, become fixed. Conrad’s lexicon is inchoate and wild, while Robbe-Grillet’s is formed and settled. Like the studium of the photograph, his language holds nature within itself, creating artificial boundaries in the mud and the forest.

[Nate D · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've already reviewed Jealousy elsewhere, so this rating / review is entirely for its follow-up, also contained in this volume. In the Labyrinth takes a lot of the repetition and variation structures that make up Jealousy, but reapplies them to a new context: a maybe-delerious soldier wandering the vacant streets of a soon-to-be-occupied city, attempting to deliver a mysterious package. But whereas Jealousy's ambiguities arose from the doubt and uncertainty of a single mind in action, here the entire structure, viewpoint and narrative frame is called into question. Could, for instance, this all be a construction of the unconcious soldier our protagonist briefly examines in the the next bed? The constantly shifting details of character, place, and action, repeating yet reconfiguring, echoing unexpectedly, suggest that the entire story-world exists in some still-indefinite state, the possible explanation for which may make his one of R-G's more ambitious (though less directly focused or compelling than the two that proceeded it, and less purely entertaining than what he would do in the 70s). Note also the pre-Lynchian red curtains, which I can't help but attach a similar significance to.

[El · Rating 5 out of 5]

I chose to read this one as it has two titles in one. I hadn't previously read Robbe-Grillet but had a feeling I would love him. There is now possibly a permanent dip in the couch from where I plopped myself down to read this and didn't get up until I finished.

The first in the book is Jealousy, a novel told from the perspective of an unnamed narrator who never refers to himself in the first person. He spends the majority of his time spying on his wife who only is referred to here as "A...", which is about as unsettling as the second Mrs. de Winter not having a name despite the fact it's her story in Rebecca. The narrator here is convinced his wife is having an affair with their neighbor, Franck, and watches them from the house. Much of time it's hard to discern between reality and the narrator's obsessiveness which is such a delicious twist I could hardly stand it.

In the Labyrinth is the second novel of the book and good, though not quite as yummy to me as Jealousy. This story is about a wounded soldier wandering wartime streets in effort to deliver an important package. The streets are the labyrinth of the title and Robbe-Grillet manages to capture the maze-like feeling in his descriptions. Almost Kafaesque. Also delicious.

[Scott Elliott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. Period. The perfect companion to Roland Barthes', A Lover's Discourse: Fragments. For those prone to savoring words, language, and narrative art, this is a must read ... twice. It is so subtle, so intricate, so perfectly (and paradoxically) balanced in its self-awareness and its transparency -- and on the matters of point-of-view and focalization, exquisite. Wow.

The novels' intrigue lies not in anything that either says so much as in what each does. The writer's execution of his purpose is razor-sharp in its precision. It offers no spectacle or color or depth, but instead a flawless rendering of the imaginary (an inadequate term, but a better one eludes me -- striving for an economy of words, I'm seeking one that captures two or three things at once, all of which exceed the limits of a review like this). Each narrative a deft performance of "zero-degree writing" (see Barthes). Never has the banal been so marvelous.

My recommendation: read one or the other of the novellas (viz., Jealousy or In the Labyrinth) first, on its own, before reading any of the introductory essays. Then, having read at least one of the essays, return to the second novella with a nuanced appreciation.

[Ryan Chapman · Rating 3 out of 5]

The three introductory essays were pretty helpful in providing context for Jealousy, which I chose after its mention in Zadie Smith's NYRB essay. I'd never read any of the nouveau romans, and Barthes' ideas in particular were illuminating.

And the book? It is a technical achievement, certainly: Robbe-Grillet balances the repetitions and details in such a fine way as to subtly draw the reader into the narrator's obsession, slowly destroying linear time for the sake of a hyper-aware sense of space. The film influence is obvious, particularly the Godardian sense of camera as voyeur.

However, I feel it is merely a technical achievement, as there is no point of entry for the reader on the level of pathos--the prose resists such emotional attachment. We're left with a completely dry text, like watching theatre behind a plate-glass window. Whether this is the author's intent or not I cannot say (and don't particularly care): there are plenty of similar authors from the same era whose experimentation admitted an identification. In French, I would say Beckett, and in America, John Barth.

[Andrew]

Two brief novels by the master of the French nouveau roman, told with mathematical precision, eerie variation in perception, and a series of creepy leitmotifs. Like so many of my favorite writers (Sebald, Perec, Woolf, Borges), Robbe-Grillet wants to look at all the myriad ways in which humans perceive the world around them, and then he goes on to write unsettling things that undermine that. I adored The Voyeur for this.

Now, Jealousy is in many ways similar, set in this Graham Greene-ish tropical milieu, all sunlight and languor. Yet this one, it didn't quite seem the whole of its parts... In the Labyrinth, on the other hand, blew me away. Here's this soldier, traipsing the streets of this city under siege, his motives mysterious, trying to deliver an equally mysterious parcel. The sense of dread and paranoia was absolutely palpable. Did any of you ever see that movie, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, about a clandestine abortion in Ceaucescu's Romania? Nearly got nauseous from the dread in that one. In the Labyrinth did me similar.

[Pauline Butcher Bird · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finally got to read Jealousy(which had lain on my shelf forever). It is without doubt the most extraordinary book I’ve ever read – rather like a cubist painting with one day repeated over and over from slightly different angles. What it all added up to I couldn’t say so, in the end, I was left underwhelmed. Also I skipped and skipped through the endless descriptions of rooms, walls, doors, corners so maybe I missed something symbolic perhaps, for example about the centipede that gets squashed every few pages. Still, it is good to see that someone can write outside the box, use lateral thinking to create a genuinely original piece of literature.

[aya · Rating 5 out of 5]

.obsession.obsession.obsession.

Jealousy:

Robbe-Grillet has created an impeccably accurate and precise portrait of jealousy. The obsessive repetition and attention to insubstantial details. Absorbs us completely into its black hole and reminds us of the dark and mad places it so easily transports us--a place where every sound and move is fraught with significance. The boredom (to the reader) in the obsession with detail also a facet--->self-absorption and selfishness of jealousy. Almost genius in its crafting.

In the Labyrinth:

Repetition, garbled chronology, and minute attention to detail are standards of Robbe-Grillet's fiction, and are here utilized to create the sometimes nauseating feverish haze and obsession of an ailing soldier. The hallucinatory heights that illness can bring one, insensate and determined, heightened awareness of paticulars (tunneled vision).

[AC · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read 'Jealousy', not 'in The Labyrinth'. The book is strangely moving. I had not expected to like (or even understand) Robbe-Grillet - but, in fact, I liked this quite a bit -- though long..., endless discussions of horizontal wall moldings, though I see the point..., is somewhat pointless. Much easier, at any rate, than much of the modernist literature I have tried (often without success) to read of late.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jealousy is not for everyone. Basically it's just the same three or four scenes repeated over and over again and written somewhat differently. But the obsession that gets in there is great.

[Stephanie A. Higa · Rating 2 out of 5]

All I have to say (actually I have a lot more to say than just this) is that there's a reason Alain Robbe-Grillet's vision of the "New Novel" didn't catch on. Characters, plot, and language in these two novellas earn a very solid 1/5 stars. I only consider this 2/5 overall because of the somewhat interesting risks taken, particularly in Jealousy.

Jealousy has an absent narrator. The deletion of the self-centered I/me/my/we/our that dominates traditional first-person narrative creates a hole in the story. Ultimately, this hole seeks to draw the reader in, enabling a greater identification with the man we never see whose wife may or may not be cheating on him with their neighbor who may or may not visit much too often. Counter-intuitive, yes. It almost works. Robbe-Grillet repeats scenes over and over again in slightly different words, which could have been very powerful if he had any sort of voice.

Which brings me back to my overall impression of his work. Objects figure largely in both Jealousy and Into the Labyrinth, but without the influence of human definitions, traditions, and assumptions. This is his chief innovation. So, as one of the introductory essays explains, where other writers would describe a few slices of ham as part of someone's dinner, Robbe-Grillet would take these objects outside of the human point of view. "Three slices of ham lying in the center of a plate, three inches from the right edge and two from the left" or some such laborious nonsense. It makes for very dry, uninspired writing with way too many details. I do not care about your banana plantation that is twenty feet, twenty-two feet, twenty-five feet, black and white and boring as hell all over. These stories sound compelling. Whoever wrote the summaries on the back -- great job with that. But Robbe-Grillet has to find the most insipid ways of executing them.

Why do people even bother to write exclusively to showcase a philosophy and pass off the resulting jumble of words as a story? That's an essay. It might be fiction (i.e. did not actually happen as far as anyone knows), but it's still an essay. Stories (at least in my perhaps not-so-educated opinion) should provide some entertainment.

Unshielded philosophy leaves itself vulnerable to attack. So, while it is interesting for a story to create meaning for objects through the sense of sight alone, Robbe-Grillet still uses human language to describe these objects. And whose sense of sight is this anyway? Humans', of course. And why would humans bother stop evaluating objects beyond what they see? Why would they take things out of context? Humans understand the world around them by contextualizing objects. So, if these objects aren't actually supposed to be filtered through the human understanding -- if they exist independently of human experience -- then how are they being communicated to readers (who are most likely human beings)? Basic communication requires an understanding of language, which, last I checked, doesn't rely on sight. What's the point? Hell if I know. Neither the two stories nor the three introductory essays could answer that question for me.

Oh, wait. Maybe the reader is supposed to take up the role of contextualizing these objects. Okay. Sorry, Robbe-Grillet, but I have absolutely no desire to be one of your characters (can I even call them that??).

I'm a literary snob, but I don't have enough pretentiousness in me to even pretend to like this guy. Just because something is inaccessible does not mean it is ingenious or even remotely intelligent. Sometimes it's just clunky and unstylish to the point of torture. I can understand why Robbe-Grillet despised traditional fiction. I've seen this before, many times, with bad works of "art" that people only like because they mystify the general public:

* "Yeah, we can't make music that actually sounds good, so let's just make emo synthetic noises that people will think are really deep and cool" - Radiohead
* "Yeah, I can't write worth a damn, but maybe I'll convince people I'm a down-to-earth genius if I write a story about abortion without using the words abortion, babies, hospitals, etc." - Ernest Hemingway ("Hills Like White Elephants")
* "Yeah, I don't have the chops to write anything engaging, so I'll fool people into believing that my total lack of style is the the second coming of Jesus--uh, I mean the Novel" - Alain Robbe-Grillet

Now, I am all for experimentation. But please master the basics first. And if your experiments fail, admit it. Don't keep at it and pretend you're worth anyone's time.

This book did make me think a little bit. So two stars for that. However, if I couldn't appreciate structural risks I would have stopped at page ten. Maybe earlier. Also, the two stars are only for Jealousy. In the Labyrinth is complete one-star drivel.

[vint cerf · Rating 3 out of 5]

modernism yeah yeah but it felt like it’s trying too hard to not be like the other girls

-book recommended by my beloved art history teacher

[Cooper Cooper · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the 1950’s Robbe-Grillet led a French literary movement called the “New Novel”—declaring the conventional novel obsolete, he introduced radical techniques heavily influenced by the pictorial arts and by the cinema (and also by Isherwood’s I Am a Camera?). The idea: remove the internal monologues and the author’s commentaries from the narrative and become less like a self-conscious narrator and more like the lens of a camera that focuses objectively now on one thing—object or person—and now on another. Not surprisingly, many of Robbe-Grillet’s passages sound like detailed scene descriptions from a screenplay:

On the polished wood of the table, the dust has marked the places occupied for a while—for a few hours, several days, minutes, weeks—by small objects subsequently removed whose outlines are still distinct for some time, a circle, a square, a rectangle, other less simple shapes, some partly overlapping, already blurred or half obliterated as though by a rag.
When the outline is distinct enough to permit the shape to be identified with certainty, it is easy to find the original object again, not far away. For example, the circular shape has obviously been left by a glass ashtray which is lying beside it. Similarly, a little farther away, the square occupying the table’s left rear corner corresponds to the base of the brass lamp that now stands in the right corner: a square pedestal about one inch high capped by a disk of the same height supporting a fluted column at its center.
The lampshade casts a circle of light on the ceiling, but this circle is not complete: it is intersected by the wall behind the table. This wall, instead of being papered like the other three, is concealed from floor to ceiling and for the greater part of its width by thick red curtains made of a heavy velvety material.

The story of In the Labyrinth is straightforward: the French have just lost a battle with the Germans, and the French soldiers—some deserters, some ordered to retreat—are falling back. One of these soldiers, the protagonist helps a wounded comrade to a hospital but the comrade dies, leaving word for his friend to convey his belongings (in a biscuit box) to his family. The protagonist phones the family, and agrees to go to their city to deliver the box, but he misses the connection, hangs around, doesn’t know what to do with himself or the box, gets sick (it is winter, cold and snowy) and ends up in military hospital, which he leaves while still sick (to, he hopes, deliver the box). Then he gets shot by Germans troops entering the city, and though nursed by a French woman, dies. Inheriting the box, the woman hopes somehow to get it to the dead soldier’s family.
Just about enough action for a typical short story—but Robbe-Grillet milked it into a novel. How?
Since he thinks that language does not adequately describe the real world, Robbe-Grillet builds scenes around objects. More: he presents objects in the manner of a cubist painting, which tries to overcome time and space by showing the objects simultaneously from many perspectives. But in a novel you can’t show everything on one page: it’s as though he painted all of the novel’s scenes in one picture, and then cut the picture up scene by scene and arranged the scenes randomly in a stack (reminiscent of William S. Burrough’s “cut-up” method of writing). Voilà—a novel. With an additional spin: many of the scenes are repetitions of earlier ones, but seen from slightly different angles. Confusing at first, but it all comes clear in the end. Sort of.
Does the technique work? You wouldn’t think so but oddly, it did hold my attention. And I still vividly remember Robbe-Grillet’s novel Jealousy, which I read a number of years ago. Evidently he’s doing something right, but he’s probably of interest mainly to other writers.

[Omar Z · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book contains two novels by Robbe-Grillet, as noted in the title, so this review is a review on two novels--I'll indicate the end of the first review and the beginning of the second so as to not confuse you if you care to know about what this reading experience was at all like; I'm a little fatigued after mismanaging my time today, and losing an inch of sleep last night, but I've got my notes (those of which I've spent the entirety of both novels writing), so that's enough pen and paper and remaining thought for me to confidently say 'let's begin.'

As much as I'd like to do this, I won't be giving both novels seperate ratings (much like I did each story in William H. Gass' 'In the Heart of the Heart of the Country'); instead, I'll extrapolate whatever has to be said and conclude with the numerical rating I assign to it.

In Jealousy, Robbe-Grillet's prose is tedious, exact, and it's known that various of these objective descriptions contradict each other; the way it's written, the descriptions evade imagination, making it a near-impossible feat to actually picture the words in your head; returning to the tediousness of the writing, it's jarring at first, but the slow-flow precision of his prose generates the illusion of normalcy the further you read--needless to say, the pacing of this novel is much better than that of the pacing of In the Labyrinth; the prose itself feels like wading in an ever-changing sea of half-elegant mundanity, with the scene itself seemingly shifting with time; the setting is sticky, humid, bringing forth recollections of mosquito-bound summer nights one could only experience in the heart of Texas, and just like Texas, there's even a subtle sense of racism present in the text (example: the narrator's narrations pertaining to the servents, referring to them as 'boys,' etcetera); here're a few lines I've copied from the novel to give you a sample of what the writing's like (but keep in mind that the style is prevalent when reading full pages of the work itself [Alain's prose made me think of what Jon Fosse's signature 'slow-prose' is like, albeit in a much more technical manner, as it constantly refers to the setting, objects, slowly but surely reaching a point]):

"Sometimes the sound is a little lower [. . .] all these cries are alike; not that their common characteristic is easy to decide, but rather their common lack of characteristics: they do not seem to be cries of fright, or pain, or intimidation, or even love. They sound like mechanical cries, uttered without perceptible motive, expressing nothing, indicating only the existence, the position, and the respective movements of each animal, whose trajectory through the night they punctuate."

The novel is nearly plotless, to the point that you wouldn't know the 'plot' if it weren't for reading the blurbs on the back, which state that the book is essentially a jealous husband suspecting their wife infidelity with their neighbor (Franck,) but here're a couple thoughts I had on the supposed premise: I don't believe the narrator is A . . .'s husband because he himself is never mentioned as a character in the text (the narrator never mentions himself [no instance of I, me, us, we]) so their relation is non-existent, contrary to what's said about the book, or what Robbe-Grillet has supposedly said; and my idea is that the narrator is a stalker, a delusional man with what seem to be cameras stationed about A . . .'s veranda, but I won't go as far as assuming the narrator believes A . . . to be their wife, as there's little to no indication that the narrator feels them to be together; so take this book as you will, it's whatever, I'm only over-analyzing it because a novel like this demands an extensive, intense interaction with the text.

Let me explain Alain's style: his narrators narrate with the tendencies of an amnesiac reliving the events of a single day, every day, forgetting previous moments, tampering with time just because--this is literary deja-vu--and Alain makes use of extensive 'padding' in his text--phrases like: 'in fact,' 'matter fact,' 'however,' 'actually,' 'the latter,' etcetera, etcetera--it's annoying, it's the reason I didn't commit to finishing Vineland (which I'll do soon, I'm only about 30 pages away from completion), it comes off as a crutch, lack of a better word; this crutch makes more sense in context with Jealousy, as it's the most deadpan of the two, but its use in In the Labyrinth is unnecessary; there's very little dialogue in both novels, accentuating the sceneries, elevating setting to the same position as characters; the writing rekindles thoughts of Paul Schrader's notion of 'the narrative of the eye' (and even 'distancing devices') as mentioned in 'Transcendental Style in Film,' in which the viewer of a 'slow-cinema' film will scan the screen, the setting, and notice minute details, simultaneously creating a 'narrative' whilst watching the film.

Alain rarely uses scene breaks, utilizing unnamed and unnumbered chapters to further his ideas instead; so many paragraphs feel as though they're bleeding into themselves, relaying information from previous chapters in single sentences without proper indications, creating stream-of-consciousness-esque passages (perhaps in the case of Jealousy) reflecting the narrator's fragmented mental state, like a kaleidoscope of text, vomitting accumulations of information, spinning, and, unbrokenly, vomitting again; it's confusing, convoluted, yet it's also very interesting to see being done--also, Alain has a propensity to summarize himself throughout both novels, and it's a lot more successful in In the Labyrinth than in Jealousy.

Here's another sample of the writing:

"Around the kerosene lamps the ellipses continue to turn, lengthening, shortening, moving off to the right or left, rising, falling, or swaying first to one side then the other, mingling in an increasingly tangled skein in which no autonomous curve remains identifiable."

That's all I've got for Jealousy, I'll try to keep it short.

Unlike Jealousy, In the Labyrinth seems to have an iota of plot, although faint, it was enough for Robbe-Grillet to turn it into an entire novel; now that I've got the technical aspects of his writing out of the way, I'll try to be cleaner with the cut for this one: the novel's fifty-sixty pages too long, if it were shorter, like Jealousy, the use of repetition would be done with greater effect.


[79/100]

Despite my criticisms, I enjoyed reading these novels--Jealousy was a fever dream of exactitude, In the Labyrinth was a confusion, and everybody looked the same; I'm looking forward to checking out Djinn and Robbe-Grillet's various other works; now, onto The Marbled Swarm by Dennis Cooper.

[Claire Townsend · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review is just for In The Labyrinth, and it's brilliant. The story can be loosely described as a solider delivering a box at the end of the war. However, the narrative is all broken up into small segments. The story weaves through these small segments like a ribbon through beads on a necklace, going back through some, knotting around others, so that the reader is never really sure of the truth of what actually happened.
Each segment also changes slightly as it's revisited, and we're never sure whether it's due to the soldier's fever, or simply a technique Robbe-Grillet is using as a comment on the mutability of memory- a technique he used in the film L'Annee Derniere a Marienbad.
Each of these segments are also in different areas of the town (and one major one is in the picture on the wall) and so kind of feel like small building blocks of the geography that then keep getting rearranged as you read. This fluidity is also true of the characters- some repeat themselves, some you're not sure of whether they are all the same person.
The story itself feels very filmic, and you see jump-cuts, fades and overlapping pieces of film as you read, in a good way. Amazing.
Jealousy... I'm not so sure about it right now, but needs a reread.

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this day and age, when content is everything, what is left to be said about this author? He heaped scorn on all the trappings of novelistic content, and raised form to a new level. From our (continuing) postmodern era the earlier period seems entirely alien, elitist folly even. But even in these more closed times, the merit of Robbe-Grillet's nouveau roman styling is clear.

Jealousy: Locating the narrator. Is there more to be said? Subtle, but subtle to a point where it becomes dry. Perhaps a little too dry, at least for my own taste. Three stars.

Into the Labyrinth: A formal progression over Jealousy, which seemed closer to "pure" form than this one. Into the Labyrinth nonetheless pushes Robbe-Grillet's form of objects, if you could call it that, into something curiously resembling a painting, or perhaps is exactly that. Five stars.

The rating given splits the difference for the two novel format.

[snobbess sphaeritalius · Rating 5 out of 5]

At first I thought I would find Jealousy too didactic a practice of an ideology, based on some of the critical writing on Robbe-Grillet that rested solely on his style. But the writing is brilliant. The heavy reliance on the visual, endless circling of descriptions played over and over out of sequence, with new details added, creates what Barthes' calls "a certain optical resistance..." in which the object "...never conceals a secret, vulnerable heart beneath it's shell." Blocking out of the reader beautifully parallels, over the course of the narrative, the frustration and desperation of an outside viewer's futility in seeking a detail that will unlock the nature of A's relationship with Franck.

[Michael McGrinder · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's as if you went to the theatre; the lights come up and there is a brilliantly-designed set, nice lighting. Time passes. End of Act One. Act Two: The lighting is different. Stage-hands move the set a little bit. Time passes. End of Act Two. Act Three: The lighting is again subtly different. Time passes. The stage-hands move the set a little more. End of play. Were the stage-hands the characters? Was the set, the lighting? If you could sit through such a play and think it brilliant, you might like this kind of fiction. If not, probably not. I sat through something similar once because a friend was in it. I wouldn't do it again. I read both pieces in this book. I should have stopped after the first. What was done was done brilliantly. I just don't understand why it was done at all.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book I read is not exactly this version but a french one as I encountered it in a college french novel course. Without the course, I probably would have not challenged to read it. But then one step further from the dry, aloof, seamingly purposeless narrations, we would find an intense, exotic, and even melancholic story of jalousy beamed through blinders to be deployed. The charm of this "nouvau roman(new novel-genre)" is that we can get a real story only when we become a truly active and subjective reader to construct it.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jealousy is especially strange and fascinating. If you like Borges, I think you might also appreciate Robbe-Grillet. That said, it's not for everyone...if you prefer a linear, tradional-style novel, you should probably skip it. Recommended for lovers of the odd and the experimental.

[Cameron]

Jealousy is a novel written in the first person, but which never contains the word "I". It took me 150 pages to figure this out. The writing style is dense but not alienating. I'm a little bit in love with him right now.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

if you haven't, do so

[joel · Rating 5 out of 5]

my edition of jealousy fell apart as i read it.
in the labyrinth involves a soldier and snowfall.

[Blaaaao · Rating 5 out of 5]

no time to review but highly recommend it. amazing.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic attempt by Robbe-Grillet to write a novel almost chiefly consisting of description and the seeming relativity of a jealous narrator.

[in8 · Rating 5 out of 5]

i loved this book, talked about it at length here:
http://5cense.com/11/Nairobi_Kitui.htm

[Calla · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the very few novels ever written that can come close to what it means to be mimetic.

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

I guess I don't fully "get" Robbe-Grillet's work here, although the included introductory essay by Barthes helped provide some context and insight. I can appreciate the author's stylistic experimentation, a desire to bring something "novel" to the novel, but the noveau roman as presented here strikes me only as an intellectual exercise and not as an emotionally stimulating or narratively satisfying one.

Robbe-Grillet's style is heavy on description and what Barthes calls "an 'optical' perception of the world" with a disproportionate focus on objects, spatial relations, the physical geography of a scene. This minutiae is overwhelming, and the over-abundance of description often results in a jumble that confuses more than it clarifies--the descriptions of the bungalow in "Jealousy" for example, provide room layouts, dimensions, furnishings, even the precise geometric placement of the banana trees that border the plantation. It's a lot.

What's more interesting is the way the author uses repetition and variation and how they show the mental states of characters--the jealous husband repeatedly playing over the same scenes, rendering them more ominous every time, or jumbled perception of time in the fevered mind of In the Labyrinth's wounded protagonist soldier, wandering helplessly through anonymous and repetitive city streets.

Of the two novels, I'd say In the Labyrinth is better; it's puzzle box structure comes together in the end in a way that makes for a decent ending, if not exactly revelatory. Jealousy's charms are largely lost on me though. Too subtle, too cold and clinical, and ultimately too boring. Full marks to Robbe-Grillet for pioneering a new style, but just not my cup of tea.

[Wohn Jick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jealousy: 9/10 Really enjoyed this one. Robbe-Grillet's style fits the narrative perfectly and even though I would on paper despise a book as relatively uneventful and repetitive as this, I was thoroughly engaged. One of the few books I've read that has stuck with me for a while after reading

In The Labyrinth: 3.5/10 Just didnt grip me like Jealousy. Maybe on a reread I could come to appreciate this more, but I didnt find it nearly as engaging as Jealousy and found it very monotonous and difficult to power through.

Overall, this has definitely inspired me to check out other Robbe-Grillet/Nouveau Roman works.