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丿乇 鬲賵 丿乇 鬲賵
In the Labyrinth is the story of a soldier who, after a lost battle, tramps endlessly through a strange city on a mission entrusted him by a dying comrade. Wounded, suffering from exhaustion, prey to an ever-worsening fever, and aware that the enemy is about to enter the city, the soldier must find his way among the maze-like streets to deliver a package whose contents he does not know. The growing obsession of the soldier to complete his mission becomes the reader's own through the handling of the narrative technique: the labyrinthine city is not merely described, it becomes the structure of the novel itself, with scenes intruding on each other as if on a screen where the impression can no longer be distinguished from the memory of the past and the vision of the future.
Alain Robbe-Grillet is also a filmmaker of international renown, whose screenplay for Last Year at Marienbad had a lasting effect on the art of film. Among his other books are The Erasers, The Voyeur, Topology of a Phantom City, and For a New Novel: Essays on Fiction, in which he outlines his theories of fiction as art.
Alain Robbe-Grillet is also a filmmaker of international renown, whose screenplay for Last Year at Marienbad had a lasting effect on the art of film. Among his other books are The Erasers, The Voyeur, Topology of a Phantom City, and For a New Novel: Essays on Fiction, in which he outlines his theories of fiction as art.
191 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1959
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About the author
Alain Robbe-Grillet
100听books413听followersScreenplays and novels, such as
The Erasers
(1953), of French writer Alain Robbe-Grillet, affiliated with the New Wave movement in cinema, subordinate plot to the treatment of space and time; directors, such as Jean Luc Godard and Fran莽ois 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 Acad茅mie fran莽aise on March 25, 2004, succeeding Maurice Rheims at seat #32.
He was married to .
Alain Robbe-Grillet was born in Brest (Finist猫re, 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'Ann茅e Derni猫re 脿 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 comit茅 pour la d茅fense et l麓expansion de la langue fran莽aise). In addition Robbe-Grillet also led the Centre for Sociology of Literature (Centre de sociologie de la litt茅rature) 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 Acad茅mie fran莽aise, but was never actually formally received by the Acad茅mie because of disputes regarding the Acad茅mie'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 Acad茅mie's famous green tails (habit vert) and sabre, which he considered as out-dated.
He died in Caen after succumbing to heart problems
Style
His writing style has been described as "realist" or "phenomenological" (in the Heideggerian sense) or "a theory of pure surface." Methodical, geometric, and often repetitive descriptions of objects replace the psychology and interiority of the character. Instead, one slowly pieces together the story and the emotional experience of jealousy in the repetition of descriptions, the attention to odd details, and the breaks in repetitions. Ironically, this method resembles the experience of psychoanalysis in which the deeper unconscious meanings are contained in the flow and disruptions of free associations. Timelines and plots are fractured and the resulting novel resembles the literary
Alain Robbe-Grillet was a French writer and filmmaker. He was along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and Claude Simon one of the figures most associated with the trend of the Nouveau Roman. Robbe-Grillet was elected a member of the Acad茅mie fran莽aise on March 25, 2004, succeeding Maurice Rheims at seat #32.
He was married to .
Alain Robbe-Grillet was born in Brest (Finist猫re, 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'Ann茅e Derni猫re 脿 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 comit茅 pour la d茅fense et l麓expansion de la langue fran莽aise). In addition Robbe-Grillet also led the Centre for Sociology of Literature (Centre de sociologie de la litt茅rature) 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 Acad茅mie fran莽aise, but was never actually formally received by the Acad茅mie because of disputes regarding the Acad茅mie'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 Acad茅mie's famous green tails (habit vert) and sabre, which he considered as out-dated.
He died in Caen after succumbing to heart problems
Style
His writing style has been described as "realist" or "phenomenological" (in the Heideggerian sense) or "a theory of pure surface." Methodical, geometric, and often repetitive descriptions of objects replace the psychology and interiority of the character. Instead, one slowly pieces together the story and the emotional experience of jealousy in the repetition of descriptions, the attention to odd details, and the breaks in repetitions. Ironically, this method resembles the experience of psychoanalysis in which the deeper unconscious meanings are contained in the flow and disruptions of free associations. Timelines and plots are fractured and the resulting novel resembles the literary
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May 1, 2024
No time鈥� In the Labyrinth there is no time鈥� Or all times are one time鈥�
Things鈥� Images鈥� Existence consists of contemplating things and images鈥� A soldier and a boy鈥� Everything is so static鈥� They are lost in the labyrinth of streets鈥� Are they real? Are they imagined?
Everything is uncertain鈥� Dreamlike鈥� Characters appear and disappear鈥� Events bifurcate and multiply鈥� Everything goes in cycles鈥� Labyrinths of time and space鈥� Mazes of reverie鈥�
In delirium everything happens simultaneously and there鈥檚 no time.
I am alone here now, under cover. Outside it is raining, outside you walk through the rain with your head down, shielding your eyes with one hand while you stare ahead nevertheless, a few yards ahead, at a few yards of wet asphalt; outside it is cold, the wind blows between the bare black branches; the wind blows through the leaves, rocking whole boughs, rocking them, rocking, their shadows swaying across the white roughcast walls. Outside the sun is shining, there is no tree, no bush to cast a shadow, and you walk under the sun shielding your eyes with one hand while you stare ahead, only a few yards in front of you, at a few yards of dusty asphalt where the wind makes patterns of parallel lines, forks, and spirals.
Things鈥� Images鈥� Existence consists of contemplating things and images鈥� A soldier and a boy鈥� Everything is so static鈥� They are lost in the labyrinth of streets鈥� Are they real? Are they imagined?
The soldier continues to stare down the street.
When he finally turns to look at the boy, the latter has completely disappeared.
Everything is uncertain鈥� Dreamlike鈥� Characters appear and disappear鈥� Events bifurcate and multiply鈥� Everything goes in cycles鈥� Labyrinths of time and space鈥� Mazes of reverie鈥�
The soldier thinks he has definitely lost the track when he sees the boy waiting for him a few feet away, under a street light, huddled in his black cape already white with snow.
鈥淗ere it is,鈥� he says, pointing to a door just like the others.
In delirium everything happens simultaneously and there鈥檚 no time.
February 26, 2017
丕蹖賳 讴鬲丕亘 賴蹖趩 乇亘胤蹖 亘賴 賮蹖賱賲 丕蹖乇丕賳蹖 "賲丕賴蹖 賵 诏乇亘賴" 賳丿丕乇丿 賵賱蹖 爻亘讴 賴乇丿賵蹖卮丕賳 亘丕 丕蹖賳讴賴 蹖讴蹖 賮蹖賱賲 賵 丿蹖诏乇蹖 讴鬲丕亘蹖 賳賵卮鬲賴 卮丿賴 丿乇 爻丕賱 1959 賲蹖賱丕丿蹖爻鬲 , 蹖讴爻丕賳 賲蹖亘丕卮丿 (賲賮賴賵賲 鬲讴乇丕乇 夭賲丕賳蹖 丿乇 賴乇丿賵蹖卮丕賳 亘賴 趩卮賲 賲蹖禺賵乇丿) , 讴鬲丕亘 "丿乇 賴夭丕乇 鬲賵" 賯氐丿 賳丿丕乇丿 丿丕爻鬲丕賳 賲卮禺氐蹖 乇丕 鬲毓乇蹖賮 讴賳丿 , 亘賱讴賴 丿丕乇丿 蹖讴 卮禺氐蹖鬲 乇丕 丿乇 夭賲丕賳 賴丕蹖 賲禺鬲賱賮 倬爻 賵 倬蹖卮 賲蹖讴賳丿 賵 卮蹖賵賴 蹖 賳賵蹖賳蹖 丕夭 乇賲丕賳 賳賵蹖爻蹖 乇丕 亘賴 賲丕 賲毓乇賮蹖 讴賳丿 讴賴 賳賲賵賳賴 丕卮 乇丕 賳禺賵丕賳丿賴 亘賵丿賲 賵 亘乇丕蹖賲 丕夭 丕蹖賳 賳馗乇 禺丕氐 賵 噩丿蹖丿 亘賵丿 , 丕賲丕 丕夭 賳馗乇 爻亘讴 賲賵乇丿 毓賱丕賯賴 蹖 卮禺氐蹖賲 禺亘 爻亘讴 丿丕爻鬲丕賳蹖 乇丕 亘蹖卮鬲乇 丿賵爻鬲 丿丕乇賲 賵 亘賴 胤亘毓 噩匕亘 丿丕爻鬲丕賳卮 賳卮丿賲 (讴賱丕 亘賴 賳馗乇賲 丿丕爻鬲丕賳蹖 丿乇 讴丕乇 賳亘賵丿 !) , 賴乇趩賳丿 讴鬲丕亘 乇丕 亘丕 毓卮賯 賱匕鬲 亘乇丿賳 丕夭 鬲賵氐蹖賮丕鬲 丿賯蹖賯 賵 倬蹖趩蹖丿賴 蹖 賳賵蹖爻賳丿賴 賵 爻亘讴 噩丿蹖丿卮 丕丿丕賲賴 賲蹖丿丕丿賲 賵 亘丕 禺賵丿賲 鬲讴乇丕乇 賲蹖讴乇丿賲 讴賴 賳賵蹖爻賳丿賴 賳丕亘睾賴 亘賵丿賴 賵 趩賴 丨賵氐賱賴 丕蹖 丿丕卮鬲賴 讴賴 賲丨蹖胤 賵 夭賲丕賳 賵 賲讴丕賳 賴丕 乇丕 丕蹖賳賯丿乇 禺賵亘 賵 毓丕賱蹖 賵 賯丕亘賱 鬲氐賵乇 賵 鬲禺蹖賱 賲賵 亘賴 賲賵 賳賵卮鬲賴 賵 賲胤賲卅賳賲 讴賴 毓丕卮賯丕賳 乇賲丕賳 賴丕蹖蹖 讴賴 賮囟丕 爻丕夭蹖 乇丕 丿乇 賳賵卮鬲賴 賴丕 乇丕 丿賵爻鬲 丿丕乇賳丿 , 氐丿 丿乇 氐丿 亘毓丿 禺賵丕賳丿賳卮 丨蹖乇鬲 夭丿賴 賵 禺乇爻賳丿 賲蹖卮賵賳丿 ... 爻亘讴 賳賵蹖賳 乇賲丕賳 賵丕賯毓丕 亘乇丕蹖賲 鬲丨爻蹖賳 亘乇丕賳诏蹖夭 亘賵丿 丿乇爻鬲 賴賲丕賳賯丿乇 讴賴 亘丕乇 丕賵賱 賮蹖賱賲 賲丕賴蹖 賵 诏乇亘賴 乇丕 丿蹖丿賴 亘賵丿賲 賵 賴賲賴 賲蹖诏賮鬲賳丿 丿丕爻鬲丕賳卮 亘丿 亘賵丿 賵 禺賵亘 倬乇丿丕禺鬲賴 賳卮丿賴 亘賵丿 , 丕賲丕 賲賳 卮蹖賮鬲賴 蹖 爻亘讴 賳賵蹖賳卮 卮丿賴 亘賵丿賲 賵 丿乇 丕蹖賳 讴鬲丕亘 賴賲 卮丿賴 丕賲 ... 丕诏乇 亘賴 丿賳亘丕賱 爻亘讴蹖 噩丿蹖丿 賴爻鬲蹖丿 賵 賲孬賱 丕蹖賳 賳賲賵賳賴 乇丕 賳禺賵丕賳丿賴 丕蹖丿 , 亘賴 賳馗乇 賲賳 丕乇夭卮 賵賯鬲 诏匕丕卮鬲賳 乇丕 丿丕乇丿...
December 16, 2024
'Adventures' of the Anonymous Soldier in the Labyrinth
It was quite challenging to read this experimental novel because the author tortures you with the numerous seemingly unnecessary detailed and precise descriptions of the streets, buildings, rooms and things in the rooms. It seems he focuses on the setting much more than on his nameless and rather unemotional characters who speak and act as if they live in a dream...
On the other hand, this text hypnotises you, makes you constantly wonder about the people trapped in this war-torn city. No matter where the protagonist goes, he cannot leave the street, building, cafe, apartment he has just been to. Constant travelling in this surreal labyrinth reflects this feeling of fear, dislocation and uncertainty experienced by the inhabitants of the country whose army has been defeated and whose territory is being occupied.
It was quite challenging to read this experimental novel because the author tortures you with the numerous seemingly unnecessary detailed and precise descriptions of the streets, buildings, rooms and things in the rooms. It seems he focuses on the setting much more than on his nameless and rather unemotional characters who speak and act as if they live in a dream...
On the other hand, this text hypnotises you, makes you constantly wonder about the people trapped in this war-torn city. No matter where the protagonist goes, he cannot leave the street, building, cafe, apartment he has just been to. Constant travelling in this surreal labyrinth reflects this feeling of fear, dislocation and uncertainty experienced by the inhabitants of the country whose army has been defeated and whose territory is being occupied.
February 10, 2015
"Then there is the electric bulb swaying at the end of the long wire and the man's shadow swaying across the closed door like a slow metronome."
The man walks out of the house, shutting and locking the door behind him. He steps down the three stairs to the sidewalk, first his right foot, then his left foot and then his right foot again. The serpentine of concrete takes him to the wide, gray expanse of the driveway. He is carrying a travel coffee mug, blue with London emblazoned in script on the side, in his left hand, and a truck key in his right hand. He is wearing green chinos with a black ribbed polo shirt. He checks a wristwatch with a blue face. He stops at the end of the drive waiting for a black SUV to pass before advancing, four quick steps, to the door of the company pickup. The man pulls a key from his pocket and inserts it into the lock. He pulls the door open and with a little hop slides his 6鈥�4鈥� frame into the pickup seat. He buckles his seatbelt. He puts the key into the ignition and twists the key igniting the engine. He puts his right foot on the brake. He then reaches up and moves the gear lever to the D position. He rests both hands on the steering wheel at the regulation 2 and 10 o鈥檆lock positions. The pickup, with a nudge of his foot on the accelerator, moves forward. He drives to the end of the block.
He moves his head to the left to check for traffic and then to the right and then again to the left. He takes his foot off the brake and enters traffic. He pulls the truck steering wheel to the right and then back to the left. He pulls into the left hand turning lane and stops behind a white Chevrolet car. He uses his left hand to turn on the turning signal. He waits, gives a cursory look over at the young dark haired woman in the sedan next to him. She is wearing smoky sunglasses even though the lighting is still very dim. She looks over at him and her lips part in a partial smile. He smiles back at her. He turns his attention back to the light. The arrow is green. He moves his right foot from the brake to the accelerator. His hands turn the steering wheel to the left and the truck moves into the lane heading East. He drives about 400 yards. The light at Central stays green and he moves through the intersection. He watches a small gray Toyota who is creeping up to turn right. The car stops. He turns his attention back to the road.
He drives till he comes to P Avenue. He removes his left hand from the wheel and moves the turn signal up with his fingers indicating a right hand turn. He places his hand back on the steering wheel and shifts the wheel slightly to the right moving the truck into the turning lane. He takes his foot off the accelerator and pushes down on the brake enough to slow his forward momentum. He turns the steering wheel to the right and then straightens the wheel so the truck is going due South. He takes his foot off the brake and puts it back on the accelerator. He turns his head to the right and looks at the pine trees that have been recently planted around a home next to the road. He turns his attention back to the road. He drives until he comes to the stop sign at Comanche St. He takes his foot off the accelerator and applies pressure to the brake until the truck comes to a complete stop. He turns his head to look at the fire truck stopped to his left. He waits for the fire truck to pass through the intersection. His head follows the red shape as it moves past his line of sight. He takes his foot off the brake and applies it to the accelerator. He moves through the intersection.
He drives another mile. He notices the 35 MPH sign and looks down at his speedometer. He looks back up at the road. When he reaches the entrance to High Plains Journal he moves his foot from the accelerator to the brake. The trees on the front lawn are dark huddled masses. He turns the steering wheel to the left and goes up the driveway. The lower parking lot is empty. He sees the white SUV of the publisher parked up in the upper parking lot. He moves the steering wheel to the left and glides into his designated parking spot. He applies the brake and moves the gear lever to P. He turns the key, which stops the engine and then slides the key from the ignition. He unbuckles his seat belt. He puts his left hand on the lever that opens the door and moves it 45 degrees toward himself. The door opens. He steps down first with his left foot, then slides off the seat planting his right foot on the ground. He reaches back to retrieve the coffee cup. He depresses the lock on the truck door and shuts the door. He walks ten paces to the door. Leaves are blown around his feet. The boom of coupling railroad cars startles him. He looks South in the direction of the sound, pauses for a moment. He turns his attention back to the door. He reaches into his pocket and pulls a set of brass and silver keys from his pocket. He flips them around on his fingers until he finds the one for the door. He slides the key into the lock and twists it to the left until he hears the click of the locking mechanism releasing. He puts the keys back in his pocket and reaches out with that same right hand to pull the door open. He steps through walks two paces to the inner door. He grabs the handle with his right hand and pulls it hard enough to part the magnets holding the door closed. He steps through. The fluorescent lights over the orange and yellow cloth covered cubicles are already on. The lights show everything in stark relief chasing shadows to only the deepest crevices.
He sees the office manager, a position that once was referred to as secretary, sitting in front of her computer. She turns to glance at him removing her brown framed reading glasses from her face with her right hand. She reveals blue eyes. She has short feathered blond hair. She is wearing a blue button down shirt and darker blue corduroy pants. The blue of her outfit is bisected by a brown belt with a silver buckle. A swath of skin reveals just a hint of cleavage and the large dark brown mole on her neck peaks around the edge of the collar.
鈥淚 have a missing order from the Iowa State Fair.鈥� She says. He notices, not for the first time, that her teeth have the rust stain of kids that drank well water growing up.
鈥淚鈥檒l call the guys and have them pull their tickets.鈥�
She turns back to her computer, putting her glasses back on her face. He turns to his office door. He pulls the keys from his pocket and sifts through the keys until he finds the antique brass colored one. He slides it into the lock and turns the key. He steps into his office closing the door behind him. He reaches over with his right hand and turns on the four 10鈥� long tubes of fluorescent lights in his office. He walks around his desk and pulls a black chair from where it has been nestled against the desk. He puts his keys on the desk next to the printer and his coffee next to his keys. The glowing green LCDs of his adding machine sets to the right of the printer. Both machines are gray, but mismatching gray.
He sits in the chair and leans back in the webbing of the back support. He glances at the picture on his desk of his wife and he at a friend鈥檚 wedding. He is wearing a tux that had been required to be best man. The frame is made of slate. He looks younger in the picture and has a moustache. He touches the smooth skin over his lip. There is an faded, tan phone with green and red buttons sitting to his left, the phone cord twisted in a Gordian Knot. He presses the on switch to the laptop with his right index finger. While the computer is booting up he looks over at the other picture on his desk of his two kids sitting on a bridge; they are older now. An inbox tray littered with white sheets of paper sets behind the computer. A silver tin of paperclips rests in the shadow of two scowling dragons holding a miniature sword used as a letter opener. A brass tin business card holder sets to the left of the dragons with JDK embossed on the back cover. It holds business cards with the name Jeffrey D. Keeten. Ink pens are scattered on his desk a blue one, a purple one, a white one with a green top and papers with columns of numbers marred by squiggles of handwriting.
The walls of the office are white. He has a picture of Golden Gate Bridge over the window facing into the building. If he shifts to his right and leans over a little bit he can see the helmet of blond hair of the office manager. He can see her jaw line and the edge of her glasses. The rest of her is hidden by the flaring edge of a filing cabinet. Over the door hangs a black and white picture of a young Jack Kennedy. To the right of the interior window is a picture of The Thinker that he bought at the Musee Rodin in Paris. Directly in front of him is a picture of the original dust cover of The Great Gatsby. To the left of that is a cartoon picture of Gaudi鈥檚 La Sagrada Familia that he purchased on a trip to Barcelona. To the left of the Gaudi is a watercolor of the St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans. Below them rests two gray speckled office chairs for visitors to sit in.
On the wall to the right of the window overlooking the lawn and Wyatt Earp Blvd is a diploma from the University of Arizona for a Bachelor of Arts. Over the window is a photo of a panoramic view of the Grand Canyon. The blinds over the window are brown wicker, folding Roman style when raised or lowered. The window ledge is dusty, the crispy body of a dead fly hangs in the ragged remains of a spider web. To the left of the window is a three foot slender picture of the Eiffel Tower. On the wall behind him is a Van Gogh of the wheat fields. Below that is a portrait that an artist friend sketched of his face. To right of the sketch, half obscured by a pile of books on a long gray file cabinet, is a signed photo of the baseball player George Brett. Two more black filing cabinets butt up against the long gray filing cabinet.
He uses his fingers to tap the keys to enter his security code into the computer. He reaches out with his left hand and grasps the handle of the sword letter opener and plunges it into his throat. The pain is intense more than he could have imagined. He pulls the letter opener from his neck with shaking hands and lays it next to his phone. Blood gushes out on his keyboard and splashes the phone and the silver tin of paperclips. He falls forward. His cheek is on the keyboard and he can feel the heat of the computer circuitry on his skin and the whirl of the fan makes a soft echo in his ear as he...dies.
I had to kill myself. I couldn鈥檛 take it anymore.
This is a mind numbing way to write. Very difficult actually to strain out all speculative thoughts by the protagonist, only writing what he can see, and eliminating emotional responses. Recording everything one does and the way we do it was interesting because I hadn't really thought about how many motions are necessary just to get me the six miles from my house to my office.
An arm remains half raised, a mouth gapes, a head is tipped back; but tension has replaced movement, the features are contorted, the limbs stiffened, the smile has become a grimace, the impulse has lost its intention and its meaning, There no longer remains, in their place, anything but excess, and strangenness, and death."
The descriptions in this novel of mundane things add to the obscurity of the story. It seems to be a simple plot of a soldier in a city on a mission to deliver a package to a street that he has forgotten the name of, still one would think the inhabitants could set him on a proper course. From a creepy little boy that shadows him, leads him, abandons him to a series of women and soldiers who offer him directions and advice that lead him nowhere. While on his quest he is shot by soldiers on a motorcycle. The soldier finds himself back at the beginning lying on a bed staring at surroundings he has already seen, disoriented by not remembering the exact color of the drapes because he doesn鈥檛 normally have faults in his memory. There is certainly a Kafkaesque feel to the novel reinforced by a sense that their are too many obstacles to fulfill this simple obligation.
I actually liked Jealousy better, so I would suggest reading that story if you want a taste of the style of Alain Robbe-Grillet.
The man walks out of the house, shutting and locking the door behind him. He steps down the three stairs to the sidewalk, first his right foot, then his left foot and then his right foot again. The serpentine of concrete takes him to the wide, gray expanse of the driveway. He is carrying a travel coffee mug, blue with London emblazoned in script on the side, in his left hand, and a truck key in his right hand. He is wearing green chinos with a black ribbed polo shirt. He checks a wristwatch with a blue face. He stops at the end of the drive waiting for a black SUV to pass before advancing, four quick steps, to the door of the company pickup. The man pulls a key from his pocket and inserts it into the lock. He pulls the door open and with a little hop slides his 6鈥�4鈥� frame into the pickup seat. He buckles his seatbelt. He puts the key into the ignition and twists the key igniting the engine. He puts his right foot on the brake. He then reaches up and moves the gear lever to the D position. He rests both hands on the steering wheel at the regulation 2 and 10 o鈥檆lock positions. The pickup, with a nudge of his foot on the accelerator, moves forward. He drives to the end of the block.
He moves his head to the left to check for traffic and then to the right and then again to the left. He takes his foot off the brake and enters traffic. He pulls the truck steering wheel to the right and then back to the left. He pulls into the left hand turning lane and stops behind a white Chevrolet car. He uses his left hand to turn on the turning signal. He waits, gives a cursory look over at the young dark haired woman in the sedan next to him. She is wearing smoky sunglasses even though the lighting is still very dim. She looks over at him and her lips part in a partial smile. He smiles back at her. He turns his attention back to the light. The arrow is green. He moves his right foot from the brake to the accelerator. His hands turn the steering wheel to the left and the truck moves into the lane heading East. He drives about 400 yards. The light at Central stays green and he moves through the intersection. He watches a small gray Toyota who is creeping up to turn right. The car stops. He turns his attention back to the road.
He drives till he comes to P Avenue. He removes his left hand from the wheel and moves the turn signal up with his fingers indicating a right hand turn. He places his hand back on the steering wheel and shifts the wheel slightly to the right moving the truck into the turning lane. He takes his foot off the accelerator and pushes down on the brake enough to slow his forward momentum. He turns the steering wheel to the right and then straightens the wheel so the truck is going due South. He takes his foot off the brake and puts it back on the accelerator. He turns his head to the right and looks at the pine trees that have been recently planted around a home next to the road. He turns his attention back to the road. He drives until he comes to the stop sign at Comanche St. He takes his foot off the accelerator and applies pressure to the brake until the truck comes to a complete stop. He turns his head to look at the fire truck stopped to his left. He waits for the fire truck to pass through the intersection. His head follows the red shape as it moves past his line of sight. He takes his foot off the brake and applies it to the accelerator. He moves through the intersection.
He drives another mile. He notices the 35 MPH sign and looks down at his speedometer. He looks back up at the road. When he reaches the entrance to High Plains Journal he moves his foot from the accelerator to the brake. The trees on the front lawn are dark huddled masses. He turns the steering wheel to the left and goes up the driveway. The lower parking lot is empty. He sees the white SUV of the publisher parked up in the upper parking lot. He moves the steering wheel to the left and glides into his designated parking spot. He applies the brake and moves the gear lever to P. He turns the key, which stops the engine and then slides the key from the ignition. He unbuckles his seat belt. He puts his left hand on the lever that opens the door and moves it 45 degrees toward himself. The door opens. He steps down first with his left foot, then slides off the seat planting his right foot on the ground. He reaches back to retrieve the coffee cup. He depresses the lock on the truck door and shuts the door. He walks ten paces to the door. Leaves are blown around his feet. The boom of coupling railroad cars startles him. He looks South in the direction of the sound, pauses for a moment. He turns his attention back to the door. He reaches into his pocket and pulls a set of brass and silver keys from his pocket. He flips them around on his fingers until he finds the one for the door. He slides the key into the lock and twists it to the left until he hears the click of the locking mechanism releasing. He puts the keys back in his pocket and reaches out with that same right hand to pull the door open. He steps through walks two paces to the inner door. He grabs the handle with his right hand and pulls it hard enough to part the magnets holding the door closed. He steps through. The fluorescent lights over the orange and yellow cloth covered cubicles are already on. The lights show everything in stark relief chasing shadows to only the deepest crevices.
He sees the office manager, a position that once was referred to as secretary, sitting in front of her computer. She turns to glance at him removing her brown framed reading glasses from her face with her right hand. She reveals blue eyes. She has short feathered blond hair. She is wearing a blue button down shirt and darker blue corduroy pants. The blue of her outfit is bisected by a brown belt with a silver buckle. A swath of skin reveals just a hint of cleavage and the large dark brown mole on her neck peaks around the edge of the collar.
鈥淚 have a missing order from the Iowa State Fair.鈥� She says. He notices, not for the first time, that her teeth have the rust stain of kids that drank well water growing up.
鈥淚鈥檒l call the guys and have them pull their tickets.鈥�
She turns back to her computer, putting her glasses back on her face. He turns to his office door. He pulls the keys from his pocket and sifts through the keys until he finds the antique brass colored one. He slides it into the lock and turns the key. He steps into his office closing the door behind him. He reaches over with his right hand and turns on the four 10鈥� long tubes of fluorescent lights in his office. He walks around his desk and pulls a black chair from where it has been nestled against the desk. He puts his keys on the desk next to the printer and his coffee next to his keys. The glowing green LCDs of his adding machine sets to the right of the printer. Both machines are gray, but mismatching gray.
He sits in the chair and leans back in the webbing of the back support. He glances at the picture on his desk of his wife and he at a friend鈥檚 wedding. He is wearing a tux that had been required to be best man. The frame is made of slate. He looks younger in the picture and has a moustache. He touches the smooth skin over his lip. There is an faded, tan phone with green and red buttons sitting to his left, the phone cord twisted in a Gordian Knot. He presses the on switch to the laptop with his right index finger. While the computer is booting up he looks over at the other picture on his desk of his two kids sitting on a bridge; they are older now. An inbox tray littered with white sheets of paper sets behind the computer. A silver tin of paperclips rests in the shadow of two scowling dragons holding a miniature sword used as a letter opener. A brass tin business card holder sets to the left of the dragons with JDK embossed on the back cover. It holds business cards with the name Jeffrey D. Keeten. Ink pens are scattered on his desk a blue one, a purple one, a white one with a green top and papers with columns of numbers marred by squiggles of handwriting.
The walls of the office are white. He has a picture of Golden Gate Bridge over the window facing into the building. If he shifts to his right and leans over a little bit he can see the helmet of blond hair of the office manager. He can see her jaw line and the edge of her glasses. The rest of her is hidden by the flaring edge of a filing cabinet. Over the door hangs a black and white picture of a young Jack Kennedy. To the right of the interior window is a picture of The Thinker that he bought at the Musee Rodin in Paris. Directly in front of him is a picture of the original dust cover of The Great Gatsby. To the left of that is a cartoon picture of Gaudi鈥檚 La Sagrada Familia that he purchased on a trip to Barcelona. To the left of the Gaudi is a watercolor of the St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans. Below them rests two gray speckled office chairs for visitors to sit in.
On the wall to the right of the window overlooking the lawn and Wyatt Earp Blvd is a diploma from the University of Arizona for a Bachelor of Arts. Over the window is a photo of a panoramic view of the Grand Canyon. The blinds over the window are brown wicker, folding Roman style when raised or lowered. The window ledge is dusty, the crispy body of a dead fly hangs in the ragged remains of a spider web. To the left of the window is a three foot slender picture of the Eiffel Tower. On the wall behind him is a Van Gogh of the wheat fields. Below that is a portrait that an artist friend sketched of his face. To right of the sketch, half obscured by a pile of books on a long gray file cabinet, is a signed photo of the baseball player George Brett. Two more black filing cabinets butt up against the long gray filing cabinet.
He uses his fingers to tap the keys to enter his security code into the computer. He reaches out with his left hand and grasps the handle of the sword letter opener and plunges it into his throat. The pain is intense more than he could have imagined. He pulls the letter opener from his neck with shaking hands and lays it next to his phone. Blood gushes out on his keyboard and splashes the phone and the silver tin of paperclips. He falls forward. His cheek is on the keyboard and he can feel the heat of the computer circuitry on his skin and the whirl of the fan makes a soft echo in his ear as he...dies.
I had to kill myself. I couldn鈥檛 take it anymore.
This is a mind numbing way to write. Very difficult actually to strain out all speculative thoughts by the protagonist, only writing what he can see, and eliminating emotional responses. Recording everything one does and the way we do it was interesting because I hadn't really thought about how many motions are necessary just to get me the six miles from my house to my office.
An arm remains half raised, a mouth gapes, a head is tipped back; but tension has replaced movement, the features are contorted, the limbs stiffened, the smile has become a grimace, the impulse has lost its intention and its meaning, There no longer remains, in their place, anything but excess, and strangenness, and death."
The descriptions in this novel of mundane things add to the obscurity of the story. It seems to be a simple plot of a soldier in a city on a mission to deliver a package to a street that he has forgotten the name of, still one would think the inhabitants could set him on a proper course. From a creepy little boy that shadows him, leads him, abandons him to a series of women and soldiers who offer him directions and advice that lead him nowhere. While on his quest he is shot by soldiers on a motorcycle. The soldier finds himself back at the beginning lying on a bed staring at surroundings he has already seen, disoriented by not remembering the exact color of the drapes because he doesn鈥檛 normally have faults in his memory. There is certainly a Kafkaesque feel to the novel reinforced by a sense that their are too many obstacles to fulfill this simple obligation.
I actually liked Jealousy better, so I would suggest reading that story if you want a taste of the style of Alain Robbe-Grillet.
July 6, 2024
if you like this review, i now have website:
230419: read four times in translation so i knew what i was getting here. first time read in french, great for improving my vocabulary, particularly of nouns, as there is much repetition, much context, much exact or similar phrases. verbs all in present-tense, dialogue repetitive, evocative, dream-like, plot, description, physical movement, details of streets, cafe, stairways, hallways, lamps, street lamps, shadows, clothes, falling snow, gathering dust, gestures... all again and again, not much confusion of poetic or historic or literary expression. the early passages i love in translations... i love in original. fast read, sort of, because repetition builds rhythm. and i very much love this work...
maybe i would like to write this review in french that is not very good, spelling terrible, but if you are french or interested in french avant-garde literature, you probably know or think you know what early robbe-grillet reads like. and you love it or you hate it. so this review is for anglos who want to practice/read french and are tired of reading the usual or or... whatever. yes this is like nothing you have read, or i have read, in english. or translations from other languages. or probably other authors in french... i have previously reviewed this work in translation, in the grove book with 鈥榡ealousy鈥�, but again this is my first read in french. i decide to read robbe-grillet鈥檚 other novels and maybe cine-novels in order of writing, though the u library only starts with and ends i think with ... oh well. i may know my next 11 books...
more:
by-
francaise-
on-
230419: read four times in translation so i knew what i was getting here. first time read in french, great for improving my vocabulary, particularly of nouns, as there is much repetition, much context, much exact or similar phrases. verbs all in present-tense, dialogue repetitive, evocative, dream-like, plot, description, physical movement, details of streets, cafe, stairways, hallways, lamps, street lamps, shadows, clothes, falling snow, gathering dust, gestures... all again and again, not much confusion of poetic or historic or literary expression. the early passages i love in translations... i love in original. fast read, sort of, because repetition builds rhythm. and i very much love this work...
maybe i would like to write this review in french that is not very good, spelling terrible, but if you are french or interested in french avant-garde literature, you probably know or think you know what early robbe-grillet reads like. and you love it or you hate it. so this review is for anglos who want to practice/read french and are tired of reading the usual or or... whatever. yes this is like nothing you have read, or i have read, in english. or translations from other languages. or probably other authors in french... i have previously reviewed this work in translation, in the grove book with 鈥榡ealousy鈥�, but again this is my first read in french. i decide to read robbe-grillet鈥檚 other novels and maybe cine-novels in order of writing, though the u library only starts with and ends i think with ... oh well. i may know my next 11 books...
more:
by-
francaise-
on-
September 29, 2013
Excellent translation; close attention and flawless (as the Observer observed) rendering of Robbe-Grillet's aesthetics and aims: Poundian repetition, the leitmotif of a labyrinth depicted in the glance of the camera and the selected metaphors, surreal landscapes in sepia tones (colours used are mostly associated with uniforms) creating a dream sense, the development of the speakerless (no omniscient author intrusion) narrative (here not perfectly realised, but evident as intent) via the paradoxical use of present tenses (the I-narrator appears only at the beginning and end of the book), the disorientation of the reader and the precision of detail (the latter eventually gobbling patience).
February 28, 2012
The best way I can describe In The Labyrinth is by saying that reading it is like trying to read a Klein bottle. Or an Escher drawing. And that's both good and bad in every way you'd expect it to be.
It takes a good long time to figure out precisely what's going on (not that you can ever be exactly sure) and the prose (or the translation) is uninspiring. There's a lot of what seems like unnecessary description of physical objects and locations, to the exclusion of descriptions of, say, the main character. Nobody has names; physical descriptions, such as they are, seem meant to confuse. The plot consists of a soldier with a package to deliver (from whom? he doesn't know. To whom? He doesn't know. Containing what? He doesn't know.), who forgets the name of the street he's supposed to meet the recipient on. Every intersection looks the same to him. He does occasionally meet people, who rarely tell him anything useful, which raises the question: does nobody in this city have a map he could look at?
But all these annoying things pretty much have to be present for the novel to work, which it does (probably better than I'm implying here; it's just not really my thing). Those same irritating descriptions of physical objects pile up to create a tone one could describe as "proto-Lynchian," if one were so inclined. There are heavy red curtains, everything's dusty. Nobody ever seems to have their lights on, so whenever the soldier has a door open for him it's always into complete darkness. Nobody's ever in the streets except this weird little kid who's supposed to guide the soldier but keeps abandoning him. One thing that's interesting, but also frustrating, is that Robbe-Grillet never bothers to get in the heads of his characters. This is apparently because of his rejection of the "psychological novel." Thus, no names, no thoughts, everyone utterly impenetrable. Frustrating for the first half, interesting for the second.
Would I recommend it? Maybe to someone who already likes all things French. But I'm not sure I know any of those people.
It takes a good long time to figure out precisely what's going on (not that you can ever be exactly sure) and the prose (or the translation) is uninspiring. There's a lot of what seems like unnecessary description of physical objects and locations, to the exclusion of descriptions of, say, the main character. Nobody has names; physical descriptions, such as they are, seem meant to confuse. The plot consists of a soldier with a package to deliver (from whom? he doesn't know. To whom? He doesn't know. Containing what? He doesn't know.), who forgets the name of the street he's supposed to meet the recipient on. Every intersection looks the same to him. He does occasionally meet people, who rarely tell him anything useful, which raises the question: does nobody in this city have a map he could look at?
But all these annoying things pretty much have to be present for the novel to work, which it does (probably better than I'm implying here; it's just not really my thing). Those same irritating descriptions of physical objects pile up to create a tone one could describe as "proto-Lynchian," if one were so inclined. There are heavy red curtains, everything's dusty. Nobody ever seems to have their lights on, so whenever the soldier has a door open for him it's always into complete darkness. Nobody's ever in the streets except this weird little kid who's supposed to guide the soldier but keeps abandoning him. One thing that's interesting, but also frustrating, is that Robbe-Grillet never bothers to get in the heads of his characters. This is apparently because of his rejection of the "psychological novel." Thus, no names, no thoughts, everyone utterly impenetrable. Frustrating for the first half, interesting for the second.
Would I recommend it? Maybe to someone who already likes all things French. But I'm not sure I know any of those people.
December 17, 2021
Puiki ma啪a knygut臈, gerai atitinkanti besikartojan膷ius, ne啪inia aplink k膮 besisukan膷ius labirinto ratus. U啪burianti, hipnotizuojanti, kei膷ianti s膮mon臈s b奴sen膮. Tarsi koks ilgai grojantis Edwardo Hopperio paveikslas.
February 21, 2019
It is a mystery with no crime and no detective. It is unsolvable. Or is it. Lucky for me the person who previously owned this copy figured it all out and wrote the five-word solution on the last page. I shall use my Ouija board to interface with the specter of Chief Inspector R-G immediately and report the findings.
December 26, 2021
Dar viena klasik懦 klasika, kai nesinori 膷ia i拧lindin臈ti su savo komentarais. 膶ia keis膷iausia, kad tikiesi i拧 to kultinio-programinio k奴rinio, kad bus toks visai dirbtinas, techni拧kai novatori拧kas, ir 寞domus formaliai, bet ne寞domus realiai. Ir nieko pana拧aus. Vis tiek 寞sijauti ir vis tiek pergyveni d臈l to pagrindinio veik臈jo, ir vis tiek li奴dna paskui, ir vis tiek labai faina baigus skaityti, kad yra toks pas膮moninis ai拧kumas tik, o jokio siu啪etinio ai拧kumo n臈ra. Keistai malonu, kad daug galim懦 eig懦 ir pabaig懦, daug sp臈jim懦 ir suvedin臈jim懦, ir visi negalutiniai.
September 6, 2021
Along with "Jealousy," one of Robbe-Grillet's finest novels. An elegant labyrinth that's both an enactment of how stories are composed and an oddly moving tale of a soldier trying to deliver a package in a war-torn city before it's overrun by enemy troops. Slow to unfold - I started it 3X before it finally caught me - but worth the effort.
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August 28, 2024The Difference between Reverie and Postmodern Structure
Robbe-Grillet has become difficult to read. That's because he is conventionally introduced as the leading member of the "Nouveau roman," along with Nathalie Sarraute and Michel Butor, a generation championed by Roland Barthes and others鈥攊n other words, a product of the late 1950s in France, destined to be occluded both by poststructuralists like Foucault and Derrida and by his own later work, which declined in quality.
I take all these characterizations from descriptions in reviews, including the New York Times (Rachel Donadio, Feb. 24, 2008). It may be that no other major modern writer has a later career that is so thoroughly ignored. As of 2024, the English-language Wikipedia gives a paragraph to Jealousy and The Voyeur and a line to one book published in the 1980s.
Every author speaks to us from their period, and no author I know has an even reputation for all of their work. But when those judgments are pervasive, it can be difficult not to see the text as a symptom.
Dans le labyrinthe (1959) is the last of the four novels generally said to be significant鈥攊t's the one on the precipice, even though it has also been called his most characteristic. In online descriptions, the book seems to be taken as a sort of dream narrative, because it becomes difficult to keep track of the different levels of reality. In the opening page, the weather changes abruptly and time passes oddly; in the opening section, a steel engraving, later a painting, reveals a scene in a bar that becomes real. These appear to readers to signal that the book is a dream or a meandering consciousness, exempt from form. Some writers notice that the book seems to be a story about how a story is written. (The weather changes, for example, because the author changes his mind about it.) That, too, is taken as a license for the author to wander wherever his imagination takes him. People have pointed to the book's first word, "je," and its last one, "moi" (there is no other mention of the first person in the book) as evidence that what fills the pages is in the implied author's mind, and therefore formless or improvised meditation. But is In the Labyrinth actually structureless?
(Some bookkeeping: readers have identified the person who identifies as "I" and "me" with characters in the novel, including a doctor, but the text itself speaks against that. The "I" and "me" that frame the book do not designate a person in the book. The narrative is focalized, in Genette's term, first on the soldier and then the doctor.)
Lethcoe's three levels
I think the principal attempt to find structure is an article by James Lethcoe (The French Review, February 1965). He proposes three levels of narration:
(1) "Concrete, geometrical descriptions of the room" that open the novel, described from the point of view of a person lying on the bed.
(2) "The narrator's story about the soldier who appears in the painting on the wall." This begins as an ekphrasis, but becomes an account of events that could have led to the arrangement of figures in the painting.
(3) Passages "suddenly... in the consciousnss of the soldier."
To this I would add:
(4) Passages in the second half of the book focalized on the doctor, after the soldier dies. Lethcoe reads these passages as extensions of (2), in which the narrator continues to imagine the lives of characters in the painting. Bruce Morrissette thinks the book's framing narrator (the one who is the "je" of the opening) "merges with the doctor," in an "effort finally to push the narrator himself into the story." But that effort fails, and after having experienced (3), (4) seems a distinct level. (Morrissette, "Evolution of Narratrive Viewpoint in Robbe-Grillet," Novel: A Forum on Fiction, 1967, p. 30.)
Lethcoe notes that the aspparently arbitrary and sudden nature of the shifts between these levels is actually partly logical: some leaps are made via objects that the narrator associates with different levels, and some apparent disjunctions are just the result of the narrator allowing himself to write flashbacks both "in the narrator's story and in the soldier's mind" (p. 502). Lethcoe provides a graph of the levels, which reveals some patterns (for example "a number of rapid fluctuations... corresponding to shift of levels... at the beginning," as the narrator decides on the weather and stops noting his immediate surrpundings. But the graph looks random, and doesn't reveal an overall structure, except that it begins and ends with level (0), which is the "je" and "moi," the voice of the person who writes, or recounts, the book. Lethcoe does discover that if you read only for level (2) passages, the novel is chronological, but that's not a deduction from his graph.
The meaning of the word "labyrinth"
Some scholars have explored the metaphor of the labyrinth: Ben Stolzfus notes labyrinths in Joyce, Borges, and Kafka, and says it is the product of a "descralized world" and "may be a central image of our time" ("Robbe-Grillet's Labyrinths: Structure and Meaning," Contemporary Literature, 1981, 294, 297). Morrissette, one of the North American champions of the Nouveau roman, reads the labyrinth as a way to implement:
"a new type of authorian intervention that permits, by means of an athor placed within the fictional field, the use of free modalities of narration that would be impossible in the system of existentially justified viewpoints" (p. 30).
This would make Dans le labyrinthe an unstance of "unnatural" narrative as theorized by Brian Richardson (who unaccountably leaves out Robbe-Grillet; Style, vol. 50, 2016, 385-405).
Some of these readings are inevitably true, but in this novel I think the principal direction of the metaphor is the geometric and linear form of the labyrinth: confined passages, branching unexpectedly, with no free or undefined space. Structure is everywhere: in Oulipian terms it's all constraint. "An impression of rigorous necessity" is created, in the words of one reviewer (Marc Bensimon, Books Abroad, winter 1961, 45).
The structure of the narrative
Lethcoe's levels make sense of the logical structure of the narrative, but his graph fails to reveal any further structure in the syuzhet, the way the narrative is organized. Dans le labyrinthe suggests that this particular orderly disorder may represent the feverish thoughts of a dying man (the soldier dies in a fever), and Lethcoe notes that a dying man might "attempt to fix the objects... of the room where he is dying" (p. 506), but it's a curious systematic delirium. The grammatical choices Robbe-Grillet makes, using pass茅 compos茅 along with past participles as modifiers, creates, according to E.T. Rahv, a temporality in which "the present mood" prevails鈥攃ontributing to the lack of structure in the normal sense. (Rahv, in Modern Language review, 1971, 77.)
Lethcoe also notes moments of lucidity just before the soldier dies, and when the focalization shifts to the doctor, and I would add numerous passages in which the narrator is carefully describing objects. He finds something of "the manner of a fugue" in these moments, but there is no evidence of that. It's the other way around: delirium is rigorously excluded in the name of exact delination of visual experience, simple narratives, and levels.
For me, this is the interest of the book: the insistent and often apparently misplaced or unnecessary precision in levels and descriptions, applied to fever, delirium, and death.
Postscript
One last point about the narrative: the contents of the mysterious box that the soldier carries around are revealed, at the end, to be a collection of personal items. Several commentators online think of these as "trivial," a disappointment given that the box could have had a bomb, or human remains. A better reading is to see these as the poignant remainders of a life, inert and largely without narratives, just like the inert objects described throughout the novel鈥攁 sudden influx of affect in a cold narrative.
Robbe-Grillet has become difficult to read. That's because he is conventionally introduced as the leading member of the "Nouveau roman," along with Nathalie Sarraute and Michel Butor, a generation championed by Roland Barthes and others鈥攊n other words, a product of the late 1950s in France, destined to be occluded both by poststructuralists like Foucault and Derrida and by his own later work, which declined in quality.
I take all these characterizations from descriptions in reviews, including the New York Times (Rachel Donadio, Feb. 24, 2008). It may be that no other major modern writer has a later career that is so thoroughly ignored. As of 2024, the English-language Wikipedia gives a paragraph to Jealousy and The Voyeur and a line to one book published in the 1980s.
Every author speaks to us from their period, and no author I know has an even reputation for all of their work. But when those judgments are pervasive, it can be difficult not to see the text as a symptom.
Dans le labyrinthe (1959) is the last of the four novels generally said to be significant鈥攊t's the one on the precipice, even though it has also been called his most characteristic. In online descriptions, the book seems to be taken as a sort of dream narrative, because it becomes difficult to keep track of the different levels of reality. In the opening page, the weather changes abruptly and time passes oddly; in the opening section, a steel engraving, later a painting, reveals a scene in a bar that becomes real. These appear to readers to signal that the book is a dream or a meandering consciousness, exempt from form. Some writers notice that the book seems to be a story about how a story is written. (The weather changes, for example, because the author changes his mind about it.) That, too, is taken as a license for the author to wander wherever his imagination takes him. People have pointed to the book's first word, "je," and its last one, "moi" (there is no other mention of the first person in the book) as evidence that what fills the pages is in the implied author's mind, and therefore formless or improvised meditation. But is In the Labyrinth actually structureless?
(Some bookkeeping: readers have identified the person who identifies as "I" and "me" with characters in the novel, including a doctor, but the text itself speaks against that. The "I" and "me" that frame the book do not designate a person in the book. The narrative is focalized, in Genette's term, first on the soldier and then the doctor.)
Lethcoe's three levels
I think the principal attempt to find structure is an article by James Lethcoe (The French Review, February 1965). He proposes three levels of narration:
(1) "Concrete, geometrical descriptions of the room" that open the novel, described from the point of view of a person lying on the bed.
(2) "The narrator's story about the soldier who appears in the painting on the wall." This begins as an ekphrasis, but becomes an account of events that could have led to the arrangement of figures in the painting.
(3) Passages "suddenly... in the consciousnss of the soldier."
To this I would add:
(4) Passages in the second half of the book focalized on the doctor, after the soldier dies. Lethcoe reads these passages as extensions of (2), in which the narrator continues to imagine the lives of characters in the painting. Bruce Morrissette thinks the book's framing narrator (the one who is the "je" of the opening) "merges with the doctor," in an "effort finally to push the narrator himself into the story." But that effort fails, and after having experienced (3), (4) seems a distinct level. (Morrissette, "Evolution of Narratrive Viewpoint in Robbe-Grillet," Novel: A Forum on Fiction, 1967, p. 30.)
Lethcoe notes that the aspparently arbitrary and sudden nature of the shifts between these levels is actually partly logical: some leaps are made via objects that the narrator associates with different levels, and some apparent disjunctions are just the result of the narrator allowing himself to write flashbacks both "in the narrator's story and in the soldier's mind" (p. 502). Lethcoe provides a graph of the levels, which reveals some patterns (for example "a number of rapid fluctuations... corresponding to shift of levels... at the beginning," as the narrator decides on the weather and stops noting his immediate surrpundings. But the graph looks random, and doesn't reveal an overall structure, except that it begins and ends with level (0), which is the "je" and "moi," the voice of the person who writes, or recounts, the book. Lethcoe does discover that if you read only for level (2) passages, the novel is chronological, but that's not a deduction from his graph.
The meaning of the word "labyrinth"
Some scholars have explored the metaphor of the labyrinth: Ben Stolzfus notes labyrinths in Joyce, Borges, and Kafka, and says it is the product of a "descralized world" and "may be a central image of our time" ("Robbe-Grillet's Labyrinths: Structure and Meaning," Contemporary Literature, 1981, 294, 297). Morrissette, one of the North American champions of the Nouveau roman, reads the labyrinth as a way to implement:
"a new type of authorian intervention that permits, by means of an athor placed within the fictional field, the use of free modalities of narration that would be impossible in the system of existentially justified viewpoints" (p. 30).
This would make Dans le labyrinthe an unstance of "unnatural" narrative as theorized by Brian Richardson (who unaccountably leaves out Robbe-Grillet; Style, vol. 50, 2016, 385-405).
Some of these readings are inevitably true, but in this novel I think the principal direction of the metaphor is the geometric and linear form of the labyrinth: confined passages, branching unexpectedly, with no free or undefined space. Structure is everywhere: in Oulipian terms it's all constraint. "An impression of rigorous necessity" is created, in the words of one reviewer (Marc Bensimon, Books Abroad, winter 1961, 45).
The structure of the narrative
Lethcoe's levels make sense of the logical structure of the narrative, but his graph fails to reveal any further structure in the syuzhet, the way the narrative is organized. Dans le labyrinthe suggests that this particular orderly disorder may represent the feverish thoughts of a dying man (the soldier dies in a fever), and Lethcoe notes that a dying man might "attempt to fix the objects... of the room where he is dying" (p. 506), but it's a curious systematic delirium. The grammatical choices Robbe-Grillet makes, using pass茅 compos茅 along with past participles as modifiers, creates, according to E.T. Rahv, a temporality in which "the present mood" prevails鈥攃ontributing to the lack of structure in the normal sense. (Rahv, in Modern Language review, 1971, 77.)
Lethcoe also notes moments of lucidity just before the soldier dies, and when the focalization shifts to the doctor, and I would add numerous passages in which the narrator is carefully describing objects. He finds something of "the manner of a fugue" in these moments, but there is no evidence of that. It's the other way around: delirium is rigorously excluded in the name of exact delination of visual experience, simple narratives, and levels.
For me, this is the interest of the book: the insistent and often apparently misplaced or unnecessary precision in levels and descriptions, applied to fever, delirium, and death.
Postscript
One last point about the narrative: the contents of the mysterious box that the soldier carries around are revealed, at the end, to be a collection of personal items. Several commentators online think of these as "trivial," a disappointment given that the box could have had a bomb, or human remains. A better reading is to see these as the poignant remainders of a life, inert and largely without narratives, just like the inert objects described throughout the novel鈥攁 sudden influx of affect in a cold narrative.
September 1, 2019
乇賵丕蹖鬲 禺賵亘 賵 鬲乇噩賲賴鈥屰� 亘丿. 鬲丕夭賴 丕賵賱卮賲 讴賱蹖 鬲毓乇蹖賮 讴乇丿賴 丕夭 鬲乇噩賲賴鈥屰� 禺賵丿卮.
July 7, 2019
锌褉芯褔懈褌邪胁 谢懈褕械 褌芯屑褍, 褖芯 褋锌芯泻褍褋懈胁褋褟 薪邪蟹胁芯褞, 邪谢械 褔懈褌胁芯 邪卸 薪邪写褌芯 薪械 屑芯褦, 邪屑械褉懈泻邪薪褑褨 屑械薪褨 屑懈谢褨褕褨 :) 袪芯斜-覑褉褨褦, 褟泻 褨 斜褨谢褜褕褨褋褌褜 屑懈褌褑褨胁 写芯 薪褜芯谐芯, 写芯胁芯写懈褌褜, 褖芯 胁懈褏褨写 褨蟹 谢邪斜褨褉懈薪褌褍 - 褑械 胁懈褏褨写 褨蟹 卸懈褌褌褟, 邪 泻褨薪械褑褜 谐褉懈 - 褑械 锌褉芯褋褌芯 泻褨薪械褑褜. 褋芯谢写邪褌, 褖芯 薪械胁褨写褜-泻褍写懈 薪械褋械 (斜械蟹)褑褨薪薪懈泄 锌邪泻褍薪芯泻, 锌褉芯屑芯胁懈褋褌懈泄 褋懈屑胁芯谢 锌懈褋褜屑械薪褋褌胁邪, 褖芯 薪芯褋懈褌褜褋褟 蟹 褨写械褟屑懈 褟泻 蟹 锌懈褋邪薪懈屑懈 褌芯褉斜邪屑懈, 邪谢械 胁芯薪懈 薪褨泻芯屑褍 薪械 锌芯褌褉褨斜薪褨, 斜芯 胁 锌邪泻褍薪泻褍 - 薪邪写褌芯 芯褋芯斜懈褋褌械, 褟泻械 薪械 褑褨泻邪胁懈褌褜 蟹邪谐邪谢. 褋褌邪褉褨 锌懈褋褜屑械薪薪懈泻懈 薪械 褏芯褌褨谢懈 褉芯蟹胁邪卸邪褌懈, 褌芯屑褍 褩褏 薪械 褔懈褌邪褞褌褜.
November 11, 2019
禺賷丕亘丕賳賴丕賷 禺賱賵鬲 卮亘賷賴 亘賴 賴賲 丕賷 乇丕 鬲氐賵乇 賰賳賷丿 賰賴 夭賷乇 亘丕乇卮 丿丕賳賴 賴丕賷 亘乇賮 爻賮賷丿 倬賵卮 卮丿賴 丕爻鬲. 倬賳噩乇賴 禺丕賳賴 賴丕賷賷 卮亘賷賴 亘賴 賴賲 亘丕 趩乇丕睾 賴丕賷 禺丕賲賵卮 賵 倬乇丿賴 賴丕賷 賰卮賷丿賴 卮丿賴貙
賲乇丿賷 亘丕 賱亘丕爻 爻乇亘丕夭賷 賵 亘爻鬲賴 丕賷 亘賴 夭賷乇 亘睾賱 丿乇 丕賷賳 禺賷丕亘丕賳賴丕 丿乇 丨丕賱 诏匕乇 丕爻鬲. 毓亘賵乇 趩賳丿 亘丕乇賴 丕夭 禺賷丕亘丕賳 賴丕賷 鬲賰乇丕乇賷 丿乇 噩爻鬲噩賵賷 噩丕賷賷 賵 賰爻賷 賰賴 賳丕賲 卮丕賳 乇丕 賳賲賷 丿丕賳丿. 爻乇诏乇丿丕賳 丿乇 賷賰 賴夭丕乇 鬲賵貙 丌賷丕 丕賷賳 賳賵卮鬲賴 丿丕爻鬲丕賳 丕賷賳 賰鬲丕亘 丕爻鬲責
丕卮鬲亘丕賴 賳賰賳賷丿 丕賷賳 爻乇亘丕夭 賷賰賷 丕夭 鬲氐丕賵賷乇 鬲丕亘賱賵賷 乇賵賷 丿賷賵丕乇賷 丕爻鬲 賰賴 賲丕 乇丕 亘賴 丿乇賵賳 禺賵丿 賰卮賷丿賴貙 賳賵賷爻賳丿賴 丿乇 丨賷賳 鬲賵氐賷賮 丕噩夭丕賷 鬲丕亘賱賵 賳丕诏賴丕賳 賲丕 乇丕 亘賴 丿乇賵賳 賰卮賷丿賴 賵 亘丕 鬲氐丕賵賷乇 賴賲乇丕賴 賲賷賰賳丿貙 丨鬲賷 亘賴 賰乇丕鬲 禺賵丿 乇丕 丿乇賷賰 鬲丕亘賱賵 賵 賷丕 毓賰爻賷 丿賷诏乇 賲賷丕亘賷賲貙 丕夭 卮乇賵毓 賷賰 倬丕乇丕诏乇丕賮 鬲丕 倬丕賷丕賳 丌賳 爻賮乇賷 丿乇 夭賲丕賳 賵 賲賰丕賳 丿丕乇賷賲.
丿乇 丕賷賳 賰鬲丕亘 丿丕爻鬲丕賳賷 賵噩賵丿 賳丿丕乇丿 賵 倬乇 丕夭 鬲氐丕賵賷乇賷 丕爻鬲 賰賴 卮丕賷丿 賴乇 乇賵夭 亘丕 丌賳 賲賵丕噩賴 賴爻鬲賷賲貙 賳賵賷爻賳丿賴 賷 鬲賵丕賳丕 賲丕 乇丕 亘丕 禺賵丿 丿乇 賱丕亘賷乇賳鬲賷 亘賷 氐丿丕 丿乇 禺賷丕亘丕賳賴丕賷賷 禺賱賵鬲賷 賴賲乇丕賴 賰乇丿賴 賰賴 丿乇 丕賳鬲馗丕乇 賴噩賵賲 爻乇亘丕夭 賴丕賷 丿卮賲賳 賴爻鬲賳丿.
丿乇 丕賷賳 賰鬲丕亘 丿丕爻鬲丕賳賷 賵噩賵丿 賳丿丕乇丿 賵 爻乇丕爻乇 爻乇诏卮鬲诏賷 丕爻鬲.
卮亘賷賴 夭賳丿诏賷 禺賵丿 賲丕 賵 卮亘賷賴 爻乇诏乇丿丕賳賷 禺賵丿 賲丕 丿乇 夭賲丕賳 賵 賲賰丕賳 丨賯賷賯賷 賵 禺賷丕賱賷 賲丕賳 賵 夭乇 丕賳鬲馗丕乇 丿卮賲賳丕賳 丨賯賷賯賷 賵 禺賷丕賱賷 賲丕賳.
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倬 賳: 丕賷賳 丕孬乇 丕夭 丌賱賳 乇賵亘 诏乇賷賴貙 賳賵賷爻賳丿賴 賷 賮乇丕賳爻賵賷貙 賷賰 乇賲丕賳 賳賵 丕爻鬲 賰賴 丕夭 爻賳鬲 賴丕賷 倬賷卮賷賳 乇賲丕賳 賳賵賷爻賷 倬賷乇賵賷 賳賲賷 賰賳丿.
丌賱賳 乇亘 诏乇蹖 蹖賴 賲蹖鈥屭堐屫�: 乇賲丕賳 賳賵 貙 丿乇 亘丿鬲乇蹖賳 賲毓賳丕蹖 禺賵丿 貙 亘丕夭 賴賲 賳賴囟鬲蹖 丕爻鬲 丿乇 亘丿毓鬲. 禺氐賵氐蹖鬲 賳賴囟鬲 亘丿毓鬲 賴丕听 丕蹖賳 丕爻鬲 讴賴 亘賴 鬲丿乇蹖噩 丕夭 亘蹖賳 賲蹖 乇賵賳丿 鬲丕 倬蹖賵爻鬲賴 噩丕蹖 禺賵丿 乇丕 亘賴 亘丿毓鬲 丿蹖诏乇 亘丿賴賳丿.
January 10, 2025
禺賵賳丿賳卮 丨賵氐賱賴 賲蹖禺賵丕丿 賳賴 丕蹖賳 讴鬲丕亘 亘賱讴賴 丕讴孬乇 讴丕乇賴丕蹖 丌賱賳 乇賵亘-诏乇蹖鈥屰屬� 丕蹖賳胤賵乇蹖賴. 讴鬲丕亘 卮賲丕 乇賵 倬卮鬲 蹖賴 丿賵乇亘蹖賳 爻蹖賳賲丕蹖蹖 賯乇丕乇 賲蹖丿賴 讴賴 亘賴 鬲賲丕賲 噩夭卅蹖丕鬲 賵 馗賵丕賴乇 賵 亘蹖乇賵賳 丌丿賲 賴丕 賲蹖鈥屬矩必ж操� 賵 亘賴 賳丿乇鬲 亘賴 丿乇賵賳 卮禺氐蹖鬲 賴丕蹖 丕蹖賳 讴鬲丕亘 乇禺賳賴 賲蹖讴賳賴. 丕爻賲蹖 丕夭 賴蹖趩讴爻 賳蹖爻鬲 賲孬賱 丕蹖賳讴賴 賵丕賯毓丕賸 鬲賵 丿丕乇蹖 鬲賵 禺蹖丕亘賵賳丕 賯丿賲 賲蹖夭賳蹖 賵 丕夭 讴賳丕乇 丌丿賲賴丕蹖 乇丿 賲蹖卮賵蹖 讴賴 丕爻賲卮丕賳 乇丕 賳賲蹖鈥屫з嗃� ...
賯亘賱丕 讴賴 卮丕賴丿 乇賵 禺賵賳丿賴 亘賵丿賲 禺賵賳丿賳卮 亘乇丕賲 爻禺鬲 亘賵丿 賵 亘毓丿 蹖禺 賴賮鬲賴 鬲賵賳爻鬲賲 鬲賲賵賲 讴賳賲 丕賲丕 丕蹖賳 蹖讴蹖 賳賲蹖丿賵賳賲 亘禺丕胤乇 毓丕丿鬲 讴乇丿賳 亘賴 賯賱賲卮 亘賵丿 蹖丕 讴賴 賵丕賯毓丕賸 亘乇丕賲 噩匕丕亘 亘賵丿 讴賴 賯乇丕乇賴 趩賴 丕鬲賮丕賯蹖 丕禺乇 讴鬲丕亘 亘蹖賮鬲賴.
賯亘賱丕 讴賴 卮丕賴丿 乇賵 禺賵賳丿賴 亘賵丿賲 禺賵賳丿賳卮 亘乇丕賲 爻禺鬲 亘賵丿 賵 亘毓丿 蹖禺 賴賮鬲賴 鬲賵賳爻鬲賲 鬲賲賵賲 讴賳賲 丕賲丕 丕蹖賳 蹖讴蹖 賳賲蹖丿賵賳賲 亘禺丕胤乇 毓丕丿鬲 讴乇丿賳 亘賴 賯賱賲卮 亘賵丿 蹖丕 讴賴 賵丕賯毓丕賸 亘乇丕賲 噩匕丕亘 亘賵丿 讴賴 賯乇丕乇賴 趩賴 丕鬲賮丕賯蹖 丕禺乇 讴鬲丕亘 亘蹖賮鬲賴.
January 29, 2025
"袙 谢邪斜褨褉懈薪褌褨" - 褏懈屑械褉薪邪 锌芯写芯褉芯卸 泻褉褨蟹褜 褌褍屑邪薪 褉械邪谢褜薪芯褋褌褨 褌邪 褨谢褞蟹褨褩. 袗胁褌芯褉 蟹屑褍褕褍褦 褔懈褌邪褔邪 蟹邪薪褍褉懈褌懈褋褟 褍 褋胁褨褌, 写械 褔邪褋 褨 锌褉芯褋褌褨褉 褉芯蟹褔懈薪褟褞褌褜褋褟 褨 胁褋械 胁褨写褔褍胁邪褦褌褜褋褟 薪褨斜懈 褍 谢懈褏芯屑邪薪褑褨. 袉褋褌芯褉褨褟 褋芯谢写邪褌邪, 褖芯 斜谢褍泻邪褦 屑褨褋褌芯屑 锌褨写 褋薪褨谐芯锌邪写芯屑, 褋褌邪褦 屑芯薪芯褌芯薪薪芯褞, 谐褨锌薪芯褌懈褔薪芯褞 屑芯蟹邪褩泻芯褞 锌芯胁褌芯褉褨胁 褨 写械褌邪谢械泄, 薪邪褔械 谢邪斜褨褉懈薪褌 蟹 褟泻芯谐芯 薪褨褟泻 薪械 胁写邪褦褌褜褋褟 胁懈泄褌懈. 袧邪写蟹胁懈褔邪泄薪懈泄, 薪械锌芯胁褌芯褉薪懈泄 写芯褋胁褨写.
February 27, 2015
I don't blame anyone for disliking this book. There are a lot of things reasonably expectable from novels and stories in general; most of those things seem to be or actually are missing.
So why did i care enough to read the whole book? What entertained me? I know that nothing within the three intro essays felt applicable to my reading experience. Did i like the book, though? "No ... Yes ... Maybe" is what i'd attempted to utter when i was the motionless ARG character inside me. But i think i was am merely the a narrator. Fitting the pieces of narrative and description together within me, as i encountered them, satisfied me. In a stretchy synaptic tingling kind of way.
Though Robbe-Grillet ain't evil for having an alien mind or a concept of The Novel that challenges mine, if there's a war to determine the fate of The Novel, i wouldn't be able to knowingly kill him and i wouldn't want to fight beside him in the trenches either.
A simplistic plot(less) summary. Events are told and things are described. Most everything involves a soldier carrying a box. He jumpcuts from nexus to nexus within a city with plenty of buildings but without landmarks. Streets are identical. This must be shown on a screen. Animated. Like with crayons. No. Or stop motion photography. Cards with the dialog written. Not many cards. It will be easy for me because there are no people moving about the streets with the soldier. A boy with a cape. A man with a fur-lined coat and an umbrella. One at a time with the soldier. I can draw that. But the many soldiers. And in the caf茅. It's an etching, the eye ingests the patrons, bartender, and waitress within one. All sleeping within one army barracks hospital room. A sort of family unit inside one residential one-room residence. The soldier might be injured, sick, or simply unable to experience time. Normally. Or at all. No. I'm thinking of the narrator. It's snowing and he has a sallow complexion with a certain amount of days' beard growth. Or rain. Silent snowfall, even vocalizations, called speech, might not be auditory. It's all his thoughts. The tree falls inside a skull. I can tell you that. No one hears a thing. Read images of vision. I stopped summarizing some time ago.
So why did i care enough to read the whole book? What entertained me? I know that nothing within the three intro essays felt applicable to my reading experience. Did i like the book, though? "No ... Yes ... Maybe" is what i'd attempted to utter when i was the motionless ARG character inside me. But i think i was am merely the a narrator. Fitting the pieces of narrative and description together within me, as i encountered them, satisfied me. In a stretchy synaptic tingling kind of way.
Though Robbe-Grillet ain't evil for having an alien mind or a concept of The Novel that challenges mine, if there's a war to determine the fate of The Novel, i wouldn't be able to knowingly kill him and i wouldn't want to fight beside him in the trenches either.
September 25, 2018
Para entrar en el laberinto que traza Robbe- Grillet hay que olvidarse de la f贸rmula que nos ense帽aron en la escuela sobre las partes constitutivas de un libro: introducci贸n, nudo y desenlace. Puede que sirva para la mayor铆a de las novelas, pero en esta no. Y cuesta un poco despegarse de ella, mucho m谩s si uno viene leyendo libros que la respetan al pie de la letra.
De todos modos, se puede recolectar un argumento que sufre variaciones y es, por lo tanto, bastante fragmentario. Hay un soldado, hay un paquete, hay una calle que encontrar. Y tambi茅n hay (y eso es lo 鈥渘uevo鈥�, lo que extra帽a al lector) una acumulaci贸n de descripciones de objetos sin sentido. O tal vez lo tengan. En el laberinto marea, rompe esquemas, cambia de escenarios abruptamente, de voces, oculta todo lo que uno quiere descubrir mientras lee. Puede llegar a ser frustrante muchas veces.
Me enter茅 de que Robbe- Grillet se inscribe en la lista de autores que ya no usan las locaciones, los muebles y las cosas en general como un relleno de la novela que se mimetiza con los personajes, como sucede en Balzac. Los objetos est谩n ah铆 (no lo digo yo, lo dice 茅l en Por una novela nueva ) porque el hombre los cre贸 y piensa en ellos todo el tiempo. Se puede estar de acuerdo o no, pero tiene su l贸gica y es para tener en cuenta.
Personalmente, me encant贸. No me cruzo habitualmente con libros como estos y me dieron ganas de que fuera diferente. Por lo pronto, s茅 que quiero leer En el laberinto otra vez鈥� y fijarme si puedo salir de 茅l con m谩s facilidad.
De todos modos, se puede recolectar un argumento que sufre variaciones y es, por lo tanto, bastante fragmentario. Hay un soldado, hay un paquete, hay una calle que encontrar. Y tambi茅n hay (y eso es lo 鈥渘uevo鈥�, lo que extra帽a al lector) una acumulaci贸n de descripciones de objetos sin sentido. O tal vez lo tengan. En el laberinto marea, rompe esquemas, cambia de escenarios abruptamente, de voces, oculta todo lo que uno quiere descubrir mientras lee. Puede llegar a ser frustrante muchas veces.
Me enter茅 de que Robbe- Grillet se inscribe en la lista de autores que ya no usan las locaciones, los muebles y las cosas en general como un relleno de la novela que se mimetiza con los personajes, como sucede en Balzac. Los objetos est谩n ah铆 (no lo digo yo, lo dice 茅l en Por una novela nueva ) porque el hombre los cre贸 y piensa en ellos todo el tiempo. Se puede estar de acuerdo o no, pero tiene su l贸gica y es para tener en cuenta.
Personalmente, me encant贸. No me cruzo habitualmente con libros como estos y me dieron ganas de que fuera diferente. Por lo pronto, s茅 que quiero leer En el laberinto otra vez鈥� y fijarme si puedo salir de 茅l con m谩s facilidad.
October 31, 2011
En el laberinto tiene traducci贸n al espa帽ol por M.A. Asturias y, consecuentemente, posee una sonoridad y un control r铆tmico exquisitos en nuestra misma lengua 鈥攑rivilegio al que pocas veces accedemos en textos traducidos. Sin embargo, el fuerte del libro no est谩 all铆.
Robbe-Grillet maneja una t茅cnica dif铆cilmente comprable: los juegos de repeticiones en los que introduce 鈥攐 no鈥� cambios dentro de la estructura mayor de la novela recuerda un rond贸 sonata. A su vez, la posici贸n del narrador le permite confundir planos y realidades con soltura envidiable.
Las im谩genes, por su lado, solo son comparables a la pel铆cula de Resnais con gui贸n del mismo Robbe-Grillet; y si a esto se le suma la originalidad de la historia en un mundo que poco o nada tiene que envidiar al borgiano se tendr谩 que acordar que En el laberinto es una obra maestra de lectura obligada.
Robbe-Grillet maneja una t茅cnica dif铆cilmente comprable: los juegos de repeticiones en los que introduce 鈥攐 no鈥� cambios dentro de la estructura mayor de la novela recuerda un rond贸 sonata. A su vez, la posici贸n del narrador le permite confundir planos y realidades con soltura envidiable.
Las im谩genes, por su lado, solo son comparables a la pel铆cula de Resnais con gui贸n del mismo Robbe-Grillet; y si a esto se le suma la originalidad de la historia en un mundo que poco o nada tiene que envidiar al borgiano se tendr谩 que acordar que En el laberinto es una obra maestra de lectura obligada.
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September 9, 2016亘丕乇夭鬲乇蹖賳 丕鬲賮丕賯 丕蹖賳 乇賲丕賳 貙 鬲賵噩賴 賳賵蹖爻賳丿賴 亘賴 噩夭卅蹖丕鬲 丕爻鬲.趩蹖夭蹖 讴賴 丿賯鬲 賵 丨賵氐賱賴 蹖 倬乇 乇賳诏 賲禺丕胤亘 乇丕 賲蹖 胤賱亘丿 .禺丕賳賳丿賴 丕蹖 讴賴 賲蹖 亘丕蹖爻鬲 鬲丕 亘賴 爻乇丕賳噩丕賲 乇爻蹖丿賳 賲兀賲賵乇蹖鬲 貙 倬丕 亘賴 倬丕蹖 爻乇亘丕夭 賽 賳賯卮 丕賵賱 丿丕爻鬲丕賳 丿乇賴夭丕乇鬲賵蹖 卮賴乇貙讴賵趩賴 賴丕 貙禺丕賳賴 賴丕貙讴丕賮賴 賵...乇丕賴 亘蹖丕購賮鬲丿 賵 賴賲乇丕賴 亘丕卮丿.丿乇 丕蹖賳 丕孬乇 亘丕 賳丕賲賴丕 噩夭 丿乇 蹖讴 賲賵乇丿 貙爻乇 賵 讴丕乇 賳丿丕乇蹖賲貙丿蹖丕賱賵诏賴丕 亘爻蹖丕乇 讴賵鬲丕賴 丕爻鬲 貙亘丕 噩賲賱賴 賴丕蹖 亘賴 蹖丕丿賲丕賳丿賳蹖 亘乇禺賵乇丿 賳賲蹖 讴賳蹖賲 丿乇 亘蹖卮鬲乇 賲賵丕乇丿 丿乇诏蹖乇 賳诏丕賴 讴乇丿賳 亘賴 鬲賵氐蹖賮丕鬲 賳賵蹖爻賳丿賴 丕夭 丕卮蹖丕亍 賵 賮囟丕賴丕貙丨乇讴鬲 賵 鬲讴乇丕乇 賴爻鬲蹖賲 貙
賲蹖卮賵丿 诏賮鬲 芦丿乇 賴夭丕乇鬲賵禄 丕夭 丌賳 噩賳爻 丌孬丕乇蹖爻鬲 讴賴 讴賴 丕賳诏丕乇 丨乇賮 禺丕氐蹖 亘乇丕蹖 诏賮鬲賳 賳丿丕乇丿 賵 丿乇 毓蹖賳 丨丕賱 丕夭 倬鬲丕賳爻蹖賱 亘丕賱丕蹖蹖 亘乇丕蹖 賳賯丿 賵 亘乇乇爻蹖 丕夭 夭賵丕蹖丕蹖 诏賵賳丕诏賵賳 亘乇禺賵乇丿丕乇 丕爻鬲.
丿乇 倬丕蹖丕賳 鬲賵氐蹖賴 賲蹖 讴賳賲 丕诏乇 丨賵氐賱賴 蹖 丿丕爻鬲丕賳蹖 亘丕 乇蹖鬲賲 蹖讴賳賵丕禺鬲 賵 亘丿賵賳 賴蹖噩丕賳 乇丕 賳丿丕乇蹖丿貙亘賴 丕蹖賳 讴鬲丕亘 賳夭丿蹖讴 賳卮賵蹖丿!
賲蹖卮賵丿 诏賮鬲 芦丿乇 賴夭丕乇鬲賵禄 丕夭 丌賳 噩賳爻 丌孬丕乇蹖爻鬲 讴賴 讴賴 丕賳诏丕乇 丨乇賮 禺丕氐蹖 亘乇丕蹖 诏賮鬲賳 賳丿丕乇丿 賵 丿乇 毓蹖賳 丨丕賱 丕夭 倬鬲丕賳爻蹖賱 亘丕賱丕蹖蹖 亘乇丕蹖 賳賯丿 賵 亘乇乇爻蹖 丕夭 夭賵丕蹖丕蹖 诏賵賳丕诏賵賳 亘乇禺賵乇丿丕乇 丕爻鬲.
丿乇 倬丕蹖丕賳 鬲賵氐蹖賴 賲蹖 讴賳賲 丕诏乇 丨賵氐賱賴 蹖 丿丕爻鬲丕賳蹖 亘丕 乇蹖鬲賲 蹖讴賳賵丕禺鬲 賵 亘丿賵賳 賴蹖噩丕賳 乇丕 賳丿丕乇蹖丿貙亘賴 丕蹖賳 讴鬲丕亘 賳夭丿蹖讴 賳卮賵蹖丿!
September 29, 2018
噩丕賳賲 乇丕 诏乇賮鬲 鬲丕 亘賴 丕賳鬲賴丕 乇爻蹖丿. 讴爻賱 讴賳賳丿賴 亘賵丿 賵 讴賳丿. 讴鬲賲丕賳 賳賲蹖鈥屭┵嗁� 讴賴 賲賴丕乇鬲 亘爻蹖丕乇蹖 丿乇 鬲賵氐蹖賮丕鬲 亘賴 讴丕乇 亘爻鬲賴 卮丿賴 亘賵丿 賵 卮亘丕賴鬲鈥屬囏� 讴賱丕賮诏蹖 爻乇丿乇诏賲蹖 丿乇 蹖讴 賴夭丕乇鬲賵 乇丕 亘賴 禺賵亘蹖 丕賱賯丕 賲蹖鈥屭┴必嗀� 賵 丕賱亘鬲賴 讴鬲賲丕賳 賳賲蹖鈥屭┵嗁� 讴賴 氐賮丨丕鬲 丌禺乇貙 賴賲鈥屭嗁堎� 丌禺乇蹖賳 氐賮丨丕鬲 跇賱賵夭蹖 卮丕蹖丿貙 丕賳丿讴蹖 亘乇 噩匕丕亘蹖鬲 丕孬乇 丕賮夭賵丿賴鈥屫з嗀� 丕賲丕 丿乇 賳賴丕蹖鬲 丕蹖賳 丕孬乇蹖 賳亘賵丿 讴賴 亘倬爻賳丿賲 賵 丿賵爻鬲卮 丿丕卮鬲賴 亘丕卮賲. 亘賴 賯賵賱 賮乇賴賳诏蹖鈥屬囏ж� 丕夭 賳賵毓 賲賳 賳亘賵丿.
賴賳賵夭 亘賴鬲乇蹖賳 丕孬乇 乇賵亘 诏乇蹖鈥屰屬� 亘賴 诏賲丕賳賲 卮丕賴丿 丕爻鬲.
賴賳賵夭 亘賴鬲乇蹖賳 丕孬乇 乇賵亘 诏乇蹖鈥屰屬� 亘賴 诏賲丕賳賲 卮丕賴丿 丕爻鬲.
October 17, 2014
丿爻鬲蹖 丿乇 賴賵丕 賲丕賳丿賴, 丿賴丕賳蹖 亘丕夭 賲丕賳丿賴, 爻乇蹖 蹖讴 賵乇蹖 賲丕賳丿賴, 丕賲丕 鬲賳卮 噩丕蹖 丨乇讴鬲 乇丕 诏乇賮鬲賴 趩賴乇賴 賴丕 讴噩 賵 賲毓賵噩 卮丿賴, 丿爻鬲 賵 倬丕賴丕 禺卮讴 卮丿賴, 賱亘禺賳丿 亘丿賱 卮丿賴 亘賴 卮讴賱讴, 賴賵爻 賴丕 賯氐丿 賵 賲毓賳丕蹖卮丕賳 乇丕 丕夭 丿爻鬲 丿丕丿賴 丕賳丿. 亘賴 噩丕蹖 卮丕賳, 丿蹖诏乇 趩蹖夭蹖 亘丕賯蹖 賳蹖爻鬲, 賴蹖趩 趩蹖夭 噩夭 丕賮乇丕胤, 賵 睾乇丕亘鬲, 賵 賲乇诏
March 27, 2017
讴鬲丕亘 亘卮丿鬲 鬲賵氐蹖賮蹖賴
鬲賵氐蹖賮 賲讴丕賳 亘丕 噩夭卅蹖丕鬲 夭蹖丕丿貙 丕氐賱丕 丿乇诏蹖乇 卮禺氐蹖鬲賴丕 賳蹖爻鬲貙 亘蹖卮鬲乇 禺胤 爻蹖乇 丕賵賳賴丕 乇賵 丿賳亘丕賱 賲蹖讴賳賴 賵 禺蹖賱蹖 卮讴爻鬲賴 賵 丿乇賴賲 夭賲丕賳 賵 賲讴丕賳 乇賵 賯丕胤蹖 賲蹖讴賳賴 亘胤賵乇蹖 讴賴 丌禺乇 讴鬲丕亘 賲蹖鬲賵賳蹖丿 丿蹖丿 讴賱蹖 丕夭 丕賵賳趩賴 乇禺 丿丕丿 乇賵 丿丕卮鬲賴 亘丕卮蹖丿
亘賴 賲匕丕賯 賲賳 禺賵卮 賳蹖丕賲丿!
鬲賵氐蹖賮 賲讴丕賳 亘丕 噩夭卅蹖丕鬲 夭蹖丕丿貙 丕氐賱丕 丿乇诏蹖乇 卮禺氐蹖鬲賴丕 賳蹖爻鬲貙 亘蹖卮鬲乇 禺胤 爻蹖乇 丕賵賳賴丕 乇賵 丿賳亘丕賱 賲蹖讴賳賴 賵 禺蹖賱蹖 卮讴爻鬲賴 賵 丿乇賴賲 夭賲丕賳 賵 賲讴丕賳 乇賵 賯丕胤蹖 賲蹖讴賳賴 亘胤賵乇蹖 讴賴 丌禺乇 讴鬲丕亘 賲蹖鬲賵賳蹖丿 丿蹖丿 讴賱蹖 丕夭 丕賵賳趩賴 乇禺 丿丕丿 乇賵 丿丕卮鬲賴 亘丕卮蹖丿
亘賴 賲匕丕賯 賲賳 禺賵卮 賳蹖丕賲丿!
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September 6, 2015Read this ages ago. Don't remember much about it, except that it was very haunting.
February 12, 2018
效芯屑褍褋褜 胁械褋褜 褔邪褋 锌褉芯褔懈褌邪薪薪褟 锌械褉械写 芯褔懈屑邪 胁褋锌谢懈胁邪谢懈 芯斜褉邪蟹懈 褟泻芯褩褋褜 写懈褔邪泄褕芯褩 褉邪写褟薪褋褜泻芯褩 邪薪褨屑邪褑褨褩 褌懈锌褍 , 斜芯 褨 褋褞卸械褌 薪邪屑 锌械褉械写邪褦褌褜褋褟 褋褌邪褌懈褔薪懈屑懈 泻邪写褉邪屑懈, 胁褨蟹褍邪谢褜薪懈屑懈 芯斜褉邪蟹邪屑懈, 褟泻褨 斜褍胁邪褦 斜芯谢褟褔械 褋锌褉懈泄屑邪褌懈 褔械褉械蟹 谐褉褍斜械 锌芯胁芯写卸械薪薪褟 邪胁褌芯褉邪 蟹褨 褋谢芯胁邪屑懈. 袗谢械 锌褉芯褔懈褌邪胁 褟 褑褞 泻薪懈卸泻褍 胁褨写 褋懈谢懈 蟹邪 写胁褨 谐芯写懈薪懈, 褨 锌褨褋谢褟褋屑邪泻 胁芯薪邪 谢懈褕懈谢邪 谐褨褉泻邪胁芯-锌褉械泻褉邪褋薪懈泄.
小褌懈谢褜 薪邪锌懈褋邪薪薪褟 邪卸 薪械胁懈薪芯褋薪芯 芯锌懈褋芯胁懈泄,褔械褉械蟹 褖芯 蟹邪斜谢褍泻邪褌懈 褍 褌械泻褋褌褨, 薪邪褔械 胁 褌芯屑褍 谢邪斜褨褉懈薪褌褨, 薪邪写谢械谐泻芯. 袚邪褉褟褔泻芯胁褨褋褌褜 褌邪 褋锌谢褍褌邪薪褨褋褌褜 褋胁褨写芯屑芯褋褌褨 芯锌芯胁褨写褨 谢懈褕械 锌芯褋懈谢褞褦 械褎械泻褌.
袧褨泻芯谢懈 薪械 褋褌邪胁 斜懈 褕褍泻邪褌懈 薪褨褔芯谐芯 褋褏芯卸芯谐芯.
小褌懈谢褜 薪邪锌懈褋邪薪薪褟 邪卸 薪械胁懈薪芯褋薪芯 芯锌懈褋芯胁懈泄,褔械褉械蟹 褖芯 蟹邪斜谢褍泻邪褌懈 褍 褌械泻褋褌褨, 薪邪褔械 胁 褌芯屑褍 谢邪斜褨褉懈薪褌褨, 薪邪写谢械谐泻芯. 袚邪褉褟褔泻芯胁褨褋褌褜 褌邪 褋锌谢褍褌邪薪褨褋褌褜 褋胁褨写芯屑芯褋褌褨 芯锌芯胁褨写褨 谢懈褕械 锌芯褋懈谢褞褦 械褎械泻褌.
袧褨泻芯谢懈 薪械 褋褌邪胁 斜懈 褕褍泻邪褌懈 薪褨褔芯谐芯 褋褏芯卸芯谐芯.
June 2, 2018
A strange experimental read that feels like a half-forgotten memory. You wander down the same streets, pass the same houses, in search of a meeting spot you cannot remember the name of for a purpose you can no longer recall. The snow falls, doors creak open and lights are turned out. A challenge in the beginning, but well worth the read.
September 20, 2023
Was not loving it. I like the lack of metaphors and the lack of use of the narrator鈥檚 viewpoint in his descriptions. But I don鈥檛 need pages upon pages of extremely intricate detail on the smallest things.
July 3, 2024
I enjoyed this quite abit, it's different and a fresh way of looking at how story's can be told, I would hold off on calling this great though.
April 8, 2019
There were continual, unannounced shifts between scenes, between points in time, and between levels of reality (i.e. "reality" vs. painted image vs. photograph vs. memory). There was an enormous amount of intentional repetition, with only slight variation, forcing the reader to be attentive for new information and to resist boredom and confusion. Lastly there was the author's own preface stating that the story is not to be read allegorically or symbolically or even as an account or version of an historical event. It is clearly intended to be an experiment in a different way to write a novel; but it does not read as a fun experiment, in the way that Joyce or Burroughs typically do. There is something captivating or entrancing about the book that draws the reader forward, but I can't say it's an enjoyable read, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone unless they were actually looking for an example of a difficult, slightly unpleasant post-modern novel. It bears some resemblance to Beckett's trilogy, but, again, I found there to be something fun or quaint about Beckett, something lacking in Robbe-Grillet... Oh well.
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