RIP Alain Robbe-Grillet

So Alain Robbe-Grillet, the king of the French new novel, died on Monday at the age of 85. I find it just a little funny that back in October I wrote a piece linked to by The Guardian about Robbe-Grillet’s new novel, “Un Roman Sentimental.” The title: “And I Thought He Was Dead.”

So now I guess I’m right.

Alain Robbe-Grillet was disliked in France, but admired internationally — very similarly to Jacques Derrida, who received acclaim from many institutions in the U.S. and abroad, but wasn’t well respected at home in France. And I can’t help but laugh at the satire on the LA Times blog:

The Pope of the New Novel is dead.

Or, let me rephrase that: The body of Alain Robbe-Grillet is room temperature though seemingly cooler to the touch, with slack surface areas along its longitude and discolorations in transverse patterns. The anterior section is a faded beige while the dorsal area and extremeties show evidence of settlement.

Now if he repeated that about twenty times, with slight deviations that indicated a gradual and haunting psychological shift of an unnamed protagonist, then he would actually have a Robbe-Grillet novel.

But I’m joking as well. In actuality, I liked Robbe-Grillet work’s very much, as it introduced an entirely new method of novel construction (the James-Wood-voice in my head is currently disagreeing). For me, his work was even entertaining, very much like a puzzle to piece together, although I know that many people were put to sleep by him. At least I admired his early work, since the later work tended to devolve into his erotic fantasies. But most of this is related in the article I wrote before.

Here’s two more noteworthy obits:
Guardian obit which is mainly an examination of the significance of Robbe-Grillet’s “new novel”
Times Online — beginning is quick biography, but the rest details the implications of his literature