The Elegant Variation: ROBBE-GRILLET DIES

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February 18, 2008

ROBBE-GRILLET DIES

The father of the nouveau roman has died at 81.

He was the most prominent of France's "new novelists," a group that emerged in the mid-1950s and whose experimental works tossed aside traditional literary conventions like plot and character development, narrative and chronology, chapters and punctuation. Others included Claude Simon, Michel Butor and Nathalie Sarraute.

Robbe-Grillet was inducted into France's Legion of Honour, and was one of the 40 so-called "immortals" of the prestigious Academie Francaise, the anointed protector of the French language.

You can read more in this 2003 interview with Bookforum. You can also consult his Books and Writers page, as well as some resources from The Modern Word.

Posted at 11:53 AM in Obit | Permalink

Comments

And the new new novel. Not to be pedantic.

Posted by: John Shannon | February 18, 2008 at 04:38 PM

I did a longer piece on ARG on my blog, if you're interested.

Posted by: maitresse | February 18, 2008 at 05:48 PM

Good fucking riddance.

Posted by: Gerry Marlott | February 18, 2008 at 09:06 PM

Lovely writer. The idea that "The Voyeur" and "The Erasers" have no plot or narrative baffles me. As does the idea that Simon and Robbe-Grillet were basically doing the same thing.

Posted by: Amateur Reader | February 20, 2008 at 09:41 AM

one of the crimes of the 20th century (and a little of this one) is that robbe-grillet was denied a nobel prize. Along with nabakov! it makes me want to sling dynamite!

Posted by: william beaird | July 26, 2008 at 07:10 AM

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The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."

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*Now in Paperback*

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SECOND LOOK

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The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

February 18, 2008

ROBBE-GRILLET DIES

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog. A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog "Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

February 18, 2008

ROBBE-GRILLET DIES

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism