RIP Alain Robbe-Grillet

he was still alive??

"the erasers" is fantastic, one of my favorite books. he reminds me a lot of durrenmatt, creating these very plainly described yet utterly impossible situations

Yes, he was 85. He had just released a book a few months ago.

Dear Alain,

When my French Lit prof taught his survey of French lit, he felt the need to include you. I could barely get through five pages of La Jalousie, and it was at the end of a very challenging semester for me. So I went to the bookstore and started to read the English translation. I still wasn't getting anywhere with it, so I started skimming it. And soon enough I had gotten through the book, since nothing per se "happens" in it, and it mostly seems to consist of psychologically pointed scenery. I hate narrative as much as the next guy, but this also wasn't what I wanted from literature. Still, big ups for trying something different, and for being such a hero to my French Lit prof, who was pretty awesome.

RIP.

Dear Alain,

I read through like a dozen paragraphs about the spacing and geometrical arrangement of banana trees on a plantation; and it was so unnecessarily exact that I decided there must be a secret in it; so I got out a pen and some graph paper and started plotting; I dunno, I thought the arrangement might say something like "ALAIN ETAIT ICI" or whatever; but no, jerk, it was just a banana-planting manual, thanks a lot

-- nta

Just yanking you, bro, sleep well

I must say I liked his work in theory rather than in practice, when we studied him at uni. Still, I found the theories of fractured time and place intended to reflect more accurately the way the memory works very appealing.

RIP

Don't forget the films. RIP cool French dude.

But don't do a search for The Slow Slidings of Pleasure at work.

Tried to get my book club to read one of yours, was turned down because no one could find a copy!

R.I.P.

This is one my my favorite authors - his most recent as far as I know, Repetition, was a genuinely shocking study in how to turn one's ideas about narrative into an actual page-turner. (I've read Jealousy too, I know readability wasn't always his strong suit. I read him in 2003 for about half the year and once I'd sorta locked in to his rhythms, the way you have to suspend your desire for a complete picture and allow everything to be inconclusive as you read, I found a real power in what he did. Sad to hear he is gone; he was an original.

:-(

I ws just looking for some of his bks today.

Caught 3 of his films at a retrospect late last year. I would've seen him talk, but that got moved to a later time so I couldn't hang around.

I loved The Erasers, but haven't read anything else by him. I wonder why (any recommendations?). The Erasers was the first step down a personal path that led me to Borges, Eco & Pynchon, among others, so I owe the man a lot. RIP

"jealousy" was boring- - too technical and alienated, though it's easy to see why it's considerd an "important" post modern book, with it;s original use of the subjective point of view.
anyway,RIP

In The Labyrinth was the one I bought and couldn't get through. I did watch Last Year At Marienbad many times and very much like the Mark Tansey painting of Robbe-Grillet Polishing Everything In Sight. RIP.

At the beginning of the first year of my degree, we were told that the end-of-year exam would contain a passage for translation, taken from Djinn. We weren't told which bit of Djinn it'd be taken from, but somebody who knew the book told us that the grammar started simple and became more complex with each chapter.

Nine months and zero revision later, I can tell you I was thoroughly relieved to sit down in the exam hall to find we'd been given the first paragraph of the first chapter :)

Sounds like a variation on this

Film series in Brooklyn, has anyone seen the four he directed?

http://bam.org/film/series.aspx?id=194

Just saw Trans-Europ Express last night. Bondage, trains, some meta business with Robbe-Grillet himself starring as "the screenwriter."

A bit silly, to be honest.

I saw Marienbad the other day with Anthong, and I suspect it would have been better without the dialogue.

Ha, were you perhaps at the same Cinematheque showing as me on Thursday?

twinbill in NYC:

http://www.filmforum.org/movies/more/the_man_who_lies_and_trans_eur

Saw Trans-Europ-Express tonight. For me, tedious--meta-tedious, I guess--but it looked pretty good. And Marie-France Pisier, wow.

http://www.cinema-francais.fr/images/affiches/affiches_r/affiches_robbe_grillet_alain/photos/trans01.jpg

Watched La Belle Captive last night, it had its moments but the lead actor looked an awful lot like William F Buckley with longer hair

Watched TEE last night. Kinda pointless but still somehow gripping. And as mentioned above, Marie France Pisier, wow. Those eyes.
I enjoyed seeing ARG in it, and wife Catherine, who both seemed surprisingly casual and charming.

Successive Slidings of Pleasure is on Amazon Prime. It came up under "Movies We Think You'll Like," so I think they really know me by now.

Nice. Prime doesn’t carry it where I am but I see the BluRay boxset of all his films is pretty cheap. Might pick that up

Watched La Belle Captive last night, it had its moments but the lead actor looked an awful lot like William F Buckley with longer hair

― JoeStork, Sunday, March 6, 2016 12:22 PM (five years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Sick

I was looking to get his script to Marienbad and it's out of print sadly

Something prompted me to go looking for Trans-Europ Express, and a great print turned up on the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/trans-europ-express-1966

About an hour in, I paused and checked to see if there was a Grillet thread where I could post...and found out I'd seen the film 11 years ago! Had absolutely no recollection of this as I watched. Anyway, basically what I said above--too-clever silliness--but I was even more taken this time with its look; one of the most beautiful looking films of its era, I'd say. A couple of screenshots I grabbed:

https://i.postimg.cc/FK5cqtqb/europ-1.jpg https://i.postimg.cc/Px6Cd06R/europ-2.jpg

I might watch it a third time with the captions off, that's how inconsequential the story is. According to IMDB: "This film was banned for a time by the British Censor because of its depiction of sexual bondage (which is now regarded as very tame). However, the ban was lifted at around the end of the 1960s."

Man, old ilx did not like Jealousy, huh? For me that book hit hard. Such glistening, aching absence.

it was big for me too! but I stand by "readability not its strong suit," it's hard going.

"Something prompted me to go looking for Trans-Europ Express"

It was that woman!