taking sides: friedrich durrenmatt vs. alain robbe-grillet

Of Robbe-Grillet's work, I've only read Djinn, again for an exam. The book has a Pereccy contrivance of becoming more gramatically complex with each chapter. At the beginning of the year, we were told we'd be set a passage from the book for translation, but not which passage. I don't know of anyone who bothered to read the book before the exam and thankfully we were set the first page (the simplest, gramatically - all present tense and whatnot). It was kind of a let-down that they were so easy on us. Shortly after I left it was in some league table as the best French department in the country (joint with Cambridge). Ho ho yeah right.

But to answer the question, based on knowledge of one work by each author, I choose AR-G.

French A-level was MUCH better for the set texts (Jean De Florette! Camus!)

FD most recently had out a Vintage paperback called "the assignment," which was a very recursive, strange, thin little book.

but what i like him best for is "the judge and his hangman," aka "der richter und sein henker," a story about a master criminal and the master detective who has chased him for decades. there is something about the solidity of details, and the impossibility of determining their relevance, that reminds me very much of AR-G, whose only book i've read is "the erasers," which i just finished last week.

FD also wrote a stunning short story about a man who takes his morning train, which enters its customary tunnel, and simply never comes out the other side, despite going faster and faster and faster...

Nice thread. Got hold of FD's The Execution of Justice, but I see that from the other Durrenmatt thread that this wasn't liked.

Really liked Grillet's 'Topology of a Phantom City' earlier this year, which I enjoyed but couldn't spend more time with, unfortunately.

i might like it better now! when i read it, i was comparing it with "judge and his hangman" and it suffered next to that.