In the Laboratory of the Novel Author(s): Peter Brooks Source: Daedalus, Vol. 92, No.

2, Perspectives on the Novel (Spring, 1963), pp. 265-280 Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of American Academy of Arts & Sciences Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20026777 . Accessed: 24/03/2011 23:59
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PETER

BROOKS of the Novel

Il ?agit de d?crire, et non pas ni d'analyser. d'expliquer ?Maurice Merleau-Ponty

In the Laboratory

rise of the novel as a genre the rise of realism as a phi parallels em a attitude. Both the and concept and its formal losophy literary in the century Balzac the reached perfection bodiment invented, to the Naturalist But the form contemporaneous nineteenth. novel, the Symbolist poem, seemed to cast a longer shadow into the twen to have exhausted tieth century, and by 1922 Ulysses the appeared resources of the realistic method. This landmark led critics to specu late that the novel had run its course and was entering the death it. which had engendered agony with the society and the world-view was come to in the Thirties, Forties, and Fifties of this century What such speculation. In France, the form gave litde reason to gainsay most typically employed was the ironic r?cit so brilliandy exempli fied by Gide and Camus; the apparatus of the novel was put increas of distortion ingly at the service of the point of view. Subjective nar characters and the of the involutions actions, reality, symbolic an interest to rative voice have in what Henry tended supplant so war in called life." "felt and political Further, James aptly Europe, in battle have engendered contours of which the fictions ideological are a counters for of the atti reality merely expression philosophical tude. And critics have reiterated that the novel and Realism died The is a question of interest, of a writer's desire to explore and describe the concrete phenomena lives, at among which man the same time that the writer records a man's moral or psychological he is no more "unselective" than any well-aimed history. Although 265 together. "Reahsm"

PETER BROOKS the realist refuses to abstract or internalize what, in its ex seems to as as him Dr. irrefutable stone, and ternality, Johnson's sense in man. a seem to therefore to be There would important one as a which could say that if the novel exists genre, it is because a reconstruction it of this phenomenological and by world, permits a kind of direct, this reconstruction, criti non-discursive undogmatic, cism of hfe denied to other forms. It is to this of the novel, it seems to me, that the group conception of French writers who have in the past few years gained notoriety under the label of "anti-novelists," or simply "new "pre-novelists," want to return. in no sense is Their novelists," return, however, atavistic. It implies a trial of new for their which take techniques a of As Butor the real. Michel expresses objective re-apprehension formelle dans le roman, loin de s'opposer au r?al it, "L'intervention isme comme trop souvent une critique ? courte vue, est l'imagine non la condition sine qua d'un r?alisme plus pouss?."1 The average in Nathahe Sarraute's words, who novehst, chooses, contemporary is condemning either to "faire du Joyce" or to "faire du Constant," to a conventional of reality. She, and limited apprehension himself in reviving "realism" as a revolu Butor, and Alain Robbe-Grillet, are a new in which for novel every work, tionary slogan, calling renews our vision of the world. its through experimentations, reahsm takes, as the common This sophisticated and intellectual denominator of its affirmations, the position of modern phenomenol ogy: that an honest account of the human condition must resist all essentialist analysis and start with description?neutral, "objective"? the world. Since the designation of the phenomena which constitute is open to debate, solutions and the concrete of these phenomena "new and other novelists" these reorientations are, hap proposed by are in closest at their different. agreement They pily, thoroughly in their common disgusts and rejections. of point departure, as audience The author who has gained the widest propagandist not does Nathahe for the movement, Sarraute, typify its aims, but are collected in most her critical articles?the important of which of liquidation. of its program reveal much du Soup?on?do UEre is on the personnage, the char attack Her most frequently repeated in the nineteenth acter as he was developed century, admirably and as he in Aspects Forster of the Novel, by E. M. expounded in some Her survives in the average novel published position today. in Mr. Woolf and Bennet that echoes by Virginia ways expressed so many character?here "round" the Mrs. Brown op years ago: camera, 266

The Laboratory of the Novel

posed to "fluid," rather than "flat" and detailed characters?fully no in his environment, an intrinsic in holds longer aux gros reader. More the "personnage importantly, character of an identifiable motivation psychological we can encompass and understand, is as false and

securely placed terest for the

mobiles," any whose behavior as as Arnold Bonnet's situated Edwardians. boring circumstantially is no such a coherent as There and a thing makeup, psychological novelist must fight against his reader's desire to find one, his tendency to and clarifying keys. Thus the soup?on: typify, to find simplifying the novehst must operate with a distrust of his reader, must sub stitute for the normal and between character reader, relationship one of suspicion and evasion. The modern novel's experiments with fragmentation and disloca are on the the the necessity?that posited assumption?even as an individual of coherent character can and will be reconstructed a reader who a thus wins composition, by victory over an initial sense of loss and confusion. This reconstructed is merely character a to who, according disguise of the eminently bourgeois personnage Mme Sarraute, must be eliminated. to dehneate She proposes charac ter only in skeletal form, as a sort of coat rack on which to hang obser vations of the small psychological movements which she feels to be the essential constituent of reality and with which?rather than with a on our solid totality?we social intercourse. carry tion in her first book, As illustrated Tropismes?originally published in 1939, the magic before roman had been formula nouveau long are essential uttered?these the particles psychological tropisms, reactions which, take two when human unnamed, unseizable, place come into contact?breathless, miniscule embarrassments, beings terms are Mme Sarraute's bio intentionally are and existences social full of logical: psychic microscopic animals extending their antennae, and withdrawing from touching those of others. Our more or less coherent are con conversations a sous-conversation which wells up through the stantly menaced by surface to reveal our true, slimy thoughts and, since the passage is fluid and continuous, from inside to outside to destroy any hard of character. The escape outhnes from this atomistic reality is in covers up individual the term which the verbal commonplace, dif and holds off the ferences, gives one the illusion of decisive solidity, in ever-imminent breakdown communication. pohte Mme Sarraute has given powerful and continuously entertaining in all her novels, to this vision most expression perhaps successfully fears, hurts, our diseases. 267

PETER BROOKS we in Le Plan?tarium. As in Portrait d'un inconnu and Martereau, are a world movements in into of and motivations plunged petty one or two characters which do emerge through the internal logic of what are at first, autonomous atoms. But these tropisms seemingly, remain the active agent; these track one another, biological particles for each An air the detective other's weaknesses. of story looking over in Portrait d'un inconnu) the proceed (even stronger hangs for an explosion which does not occur, ings, and we are ever waiting a decisive of act to purge the world. (This sense of faux policier, our resolu violence of and reality constantly expectations deceiving to many "new novels," and can be thought of tion, seems common as their see all Robbe stance toward the romanesque: Quixotic Le Grillet's du temps, Claude Mauriac's novels, Butor's L'Emploi D?ner en ville, Marc Saporta's La Qu?te.) The trouble with Mme the willed Sarraute's fictions is that one eventually revolts against to the realm of her studies have thus far been confined banality: on discussions of lavished the petty, her high artistry has been or not an oak door should have a chrome doorknob. Her whether she creates cannot always save it from refreshing hatred of the world the reader's indifference. One cannot quarrel with another's vision of reality, but it can constitute be advanced Sarraute's phenomena that Mme perhaps too hmited a world for her novels to realize Butor's "r?alisme plus zone of the in a She seems rather to operate pouss?." specialized the novel, and in this she is at odds with subjective psychological other important of the "new novel." A Russian by representatives and it is the involuted, self birth, she is an admirer of Dostoevsky, man that her conversations of the underground torturing monologue most resemble, while her characters' louche and sous-conversations one of the world remind and uneasy with objective relationships in Sartre's La Naus?e. Roquentin L'Ere du soup?on, Robbe-Grillet, In reviewing while supporting her attacks on the novehst who behaves as if reality were "une chose connue d'avance," the affirmative part of Mme censured Sarraute's as to the nullifaction world set out of she the had program leading to rediscover.2 He objects to her concern with profondeurs and her refusal to find a line of separation between the internal and the ex is a man for whom the outside world exists as ternal. Robbe-Grillet and "there." Conversation, the uttered hard, resistant, something a a our contour and which word, has weight sharply separate it from it and the objective world from which it takes its sous-conversations; 268

The Laboratory of the Novel

we our and which ignore at reality which peril, in should carefully transcribe. This, the honest novelist methodologi reduced to its essen cal terms, means describe: man's environment, of things, and the novel becomes tials, is a collection rigidly phe in the sense that the object is the center nomenological, "objective" the social and moral of attention, while superstructures?including this basic term, and conceal both exemplify the character?which form constitute a
are cut away.

an Existentialist, or of a Robbe-Grillet's starting point is that of nature. Trag are "other," man is alienated from Romantic: objects re from man's the tragedy of the absurd?arises edy?including to bridge the his constant attempt fusal to accept this otherness, and the objective world. Because we cannot himself gap between we try to domes in the total neutrality of our environment, believe sense a the agony of ticate it by endowing soul, then things with "le monde n'est ni from this soul. But to Robbe-Grillet, separation Il est, tout simplement."3 One must recognize? signifiant, ni absurde. the world anti-Romantic and here he takes the decisive step?that is "other," and one must refuse, as the world refuses, its assimilation re which collaboration emotional to human terms, the unhealthy
sults in "nausea."

to be this refusal, the novelist has an obligation implement 'l?' avant d'?tre "seront he describes the objects which will precede their presence their signification. 'quelque chose'"4; from his vocabulary all meta banish The novehst must rigorously a connection it between since inevitably language, implies phorical realms: to say that sunlight is "fierce" the human and the objective or a town "nesded" in a valley is to prolong the life of a he. In place a institutes Robbe-Grillet of metaphor, neutral, flat style in which as details objects he geometrically they impinge upon the eye and in to those character-revealing which engage physi totally refuses Pension Vauquer. of place exemplified by the celebrated ognomies our senses, the most replaces "objective" of completely Sight, the so since the Ro cultivated organs carefully by poets synesthesic sur to is reduced mantic period; outlines, reality "non-significant" a to that resists the temptation faces, and measurements glance by Gestalt. most substantial It is not for nothing, then, that Robbe-Grillet's and that the novel led critics to is entided Le Voyeur, achievement To literal: foresee an "?cole du regard." A voyeur, however, seer, a neutral observer, but victim of an obsessional is not a simply state. In taking 269

PETER BROOKS a alienated criminal, a man hopelessly protagonist psychopathic a situation he be from the world, Robbe-Grillet is both underlining heves to be inseparable from the human condition, and doing some even in its recent modifica of his critical which more, thing theory, has account. As Jean Ricardou tions, does not give an adequate se la de "Les du refus conscience, it, choses, marqu?es expressed ce que la conscience and the narrator refuse."5 Mathias de chargent to the objects that the criminal do not attach emotional significance are condition. not in Mathias' mental glance details; they implicated we know the of narrate what Yet these objects his story: rape, torture, to of a thirteen-year-old and murder girl is only the objects used ex but vastly commit the crime?a Sherlock Holmes procedure, are not related since even those objects which through panded De actions. use to the and emotions his of tell the story protagonist of insistent the mind's the the of description spite style, neutrality of reality, is our certain things, its return to selected configurations the contempla For Mathias, and aberrations. clue to its movements an escape from confronta is tion of a shining nickel-plated bicycle the organization of the tion of the act he has just committed: a substitute for the lost spatial and temporal machine becomes of his day. organization and clocks: from the thinks in terms of maps This protagonist is and his start, he day of selling wrist scheduling re-scheduling on to account need for his use of time the "?le natale." The watches is imperative when minutes?in which that a gap of forty or fifty apparent in the middle of the crime?exists he committed as is known Roland Bardies has well remarked, his day; the crime, as "une faille de et du temps,"6 and ismore important l'espace only as this fault in the world than as the act viewed phenomenological this gap in his alibi?which The failure to eliminate of a psychopath. as much for himself as for anyone else?is he is constructing paral in terms of leled by his failure to keep memory (rendered images the from obtaining shots of objective configurations) photographic status of present time, of lived reality. The obsessive nature of these rendi remembrances charges the objects which represent them. This are there, remain state through objects which tion of an emotional the exponent of a neutral, yet reflect the state, makes Robbe-Grillet as as much inven Flaubert's indirecte new and rigorous which, style our renews of vision tion, reality. more recent novels have led critics to question If Robbe-Grillet's reason so the label "objective," originally liberally accorded him, the it becomes 270 as

The Laboratory of the Novel

is that the of detailing the contours of the outside world technique has increasingly state. In La been put at the service of a subjective an extreme: the subjective-objective to is Jalousie, paradox pushed is geometrical, the language and the central clinical, analytical; never appears; yet the the jealous husband, is character, language the expression of his regard, which registers and reports the action of the novel. The protagonist is known only as a condi psychological we is known at all in his because tion; the condition participate only ex is in of since The restricted the condition, scope glance. glance on a most limitation takes of the itself, ternalizing jalousie: physical of the impressions recorded are those obtained by looking through the slats of a shutter, so framed and incomplete. Never have we never we known so htde about a protagonist; have yet participated so in his view of die world. completely affective condi may be dramatizing are and purposes from divorced tions, his techniques completely take an extreme example?a those of?to Surrealist. The world is not a distorted of it; emotion is projected by subjective appropriation in its hard remains the world the which, detail, against protagonist. seems a His most recent novel, Dans Le Labyrinthe, reply to those who have accused him of an unavowed interest in "psychology"; here his chosisme and we are confronted with page reaches paroxysm, though at right angles. after page of identical facades and streets intersecting states unequivocally In his foreword to the novel, Robbe-Grillet that we are not to look for in of the allegorical significations wanderings soldier in a city about to be overrun by the enemy; this wounded we are to content ourselves with the gestures of lead reality. These us toward the end of the book to the roots of novehstic creation, in over the and and the inspira narrator, revery things: contemplation tions of his tale, are briefly glimpsed. This glimpse is intriguing, but it is undeniable that we have suffered much boredom along the way. as a "cin?-roman"?for is the scenario?published More exciting which became a film under the di L'Ann?e derni?re ? Marienbad, rection of Alain Resnais. of the cinema, Robbe-Grillet is that, The advantage contends, a to to tend become in reduced novel their signifi whereas objects cances (e.g., an empty chair), on the screen they are; they have exist ence previous to, or at least contemporaneous with, their significance. And yet, the film L'Ann?e derni?re, more than any other of Robbe has given rise to an infinite number of interpre Grillet's productions, that at least one set of images shown tations based on the assumption 271 Even Robbe-Grillet

PETER BROOKS a dream world. the unreality?or present super-reality?of in to differing the scenarist and the director proudly admitted to find his own, of film each viewer and the terpretations encouraged to Surreal to combat the of course did analogies confusing nothing are The views reconcilable and ism, anti-Realism, Impressionism. to the scenario, when we consider the author's remark, in his preface "X" (Giorgio Albertezzi) whether that it is the story of a persuasion: is referring to a real past or inventing one for purposes of seduction, or liberation, of "A" becomes this present, past (Delphine Seyrig), "A" of its takes on the contours of reality, and ends by persuading truth. Dreams become realities: they must be concrete images before a force. Robbe-Grillet, persuasive they will fix in the mind and have in his view of the it seems to me, has remained remarkably consistent in his insistence that the and the mind of and the world, interplay of the narrative was located in the latter. material has tried to "r?agir These are the methods by which Robbe-Grillet dit de l'analyse, qui a submerg? le roman contre ce flot romanesque, sous silence la r?alit? au de pures abstrac au profit point de passer tions."7 The next move of the "new novel" perhaps seems paradoxical cen at first glance: Butor returns to Balzac and the nineteenth only to itself, La Com?die Humaine. To monument label tury's greatest novel "Balzacian" is to miss the point that the the facile conventional the most revolutionary Humaine Com?die the of reahsm represents of le the device novel. in of the the achievement Through history a fictional crea cross reference whereby retour des personnages?the tion, a Canalis, becomes more charged with allusion and significance is estab than an actual poet, a Lamartine?a unique relationship it the rivals: novel civil the novel and the lished between register life.8 of The real a the sphere concentric becomes sphere within a from of "slice differs image suggests how much Butor's position world will de of this created the internal relations life" theory: their truth, not on external reality, but on the value of its for pend of life outside the novel, own created hfe; yet they are exemplary an illustration and a lesson apphed to it. to Butor, fies in its tangency with The novel's strength, according from life. The novel is a descrip real life and its formal separation : "le roman doit suffire ? susciter tion and a possible reading of reality il est le domaine C'est pourquoi ce dont il nous entretient. ph? excellence o? ?tudier de le lieu par par excellence, nom?nologique ou peut nous appara?tre; c'est fa?on la r?alit? nous appara?t quelle r?cit."9 It follows from the du roman est laboratoire le le pourquoi must That 272

The Laboratory of the Novel

nature of the novel that writing about hfe changes life: experimental thus Balzac's composition altered his view of the Com?die Humaine of the two "eternal verities" in whose he undertook it; the inner hght a to the to in relation sphere began adopt revolutionary position a tested fare, is immoral: outer. The conventional novelist, serving up "il se fait complice de ce profond malaise, de cette nuit dans laquelle nous nous d?battons."10 And the novehst's to innovate is obligation new matched to the critic's relations the by responsibility explicate new and between which each brings: thought reality publication "Ces relations ne sont pas les m?mes selon les romans, et ilme semble est de les d?brouiller, de les du critique que la t?che essentielle ?claircir afin que l'on puisse en extraire tout son enseignement."11 out of this Written with moral purpose, this engagement deep of the interpretation of experience, Butor's novels, despite problems their polish, Proust did12? often resemble?as thought Balzac's involve the attempt "anteromans," prenovels. They characteristically to capture reality in writing, and take as their protagonists men whose to hfe is im need to apply a hterary organization and interpretation are not so much will books those his Butor's perative. protagonists as renditions of the between write, or might have written, interplay such novels and the reality from which they derive. Jacques Revel of of La Modification, Pierre Vernier L'Emploi du temps, L?on Delmont on Butor's own statement, of Degr?s all play variations "Je n'?cris une romans mais les unit? dans ma les obtenir vendre, pas pour pour une est moi l'?criture colonne vert?brale."13 The vie; pour difficulty the spinal column won't cohere, when the and the drama arise when to writing; Butor's narrative then becomes, world refuses reduction a as well as the account of an attempt to organize experience, judg ment of the techniques therein employed. in the vast, wet, gray Manchester-like Jacques Revel, Frenchman a sense of incompre of undertakes his Bleston, city journal out of to hension and hatred, in a desire to understand what has happened eve seven one since in his months arrival. He the him May begins in his day he must, ning to evoke and record his arrival in October: seven months' gap from must try widening, by-day account, keep this to diminish it and make past time catch up to present time. But pres ent time is itself in the process of modification. As Revel points out, is there the analogy is to a detective the story: present, die days of the judicial inquiry starting at the time of the crime, and there is the in sequence of events leading up to the crime. The crime itself?if, to and one?tends the mind remains has been there lost, deed, get 273

PETER BROOKS toward the past, seeking a coherent of it, while interpretation to pile up in the present. Time continue strata cannot be and laid end to end; evocation separated destroys neat demarca on the narrative of the tions. Present time encroaches past, distorts it, and the Bleston of the winter months, instead of becoming clearer, more obscure and a grows progressively menacing, "pieuvre gris?tre," turned events
Balzacian town-monster.

The clutch

imminent at straws,

failure false

of Revel's

narrative

edifice

makes

him

and explanation, of organization principles a stained in found window the symbols picturing simphfying glass a a in in of of the Theseus detective Cain, story tapestry legend, or de Bleston ( subjective, story called Le Meurtre objective, simply a as facile and locative genitive?), melodramatic which, ordering of in Don Quixote. Some critics have reality, plays the role of Amadis that the "point" of the novel is Revel's loss of the love of maintained even this much can be said for certain, for not two English girls; on the the belated Bailey sisters seems, once again, emphasis placed an attempt to find an easy answer for his spiritual sickness. With we to construct have the failure of Revel's narrative, reality from the pieces we can find, and these do not always suggest that his inter are correct; we are thrown back on a pre-literary experi pretations ence with which we must come to terms. to Revel's schemata and from a failure It is from an overattention to perceive how the flux of a world reproduced modifies them, that can claim that L'Emploi du temps demonstrates F. W. Dupee the the dialectic of the vitiation of life by the novehst's philosophy.14 By the nar book, life asserts itself, claims its rights, takes its toll, without aware to which of the extent of it, an indication rator's being a is du is evoked. richer book "felt" and than temps L'Emploi reality as an La Modification, which might be described the subsequent a in the protagonist's mind of Paris superposition "emploi du lieu," of life, and a description of the way in which and Rome, two modes the two alters a life: the concrete detail of a train journey between an arche between Michel Leiris has called the book a counterpoint or minute and the "verismo" realism which typal "voyage initiatique" it from the common version of the night journey.15 differentiates from the narrative stance The book has gained justified notoriety it: is in tests in the addressed the second which Butor protagonist a disembodied as "vous," im voice, a technique which person, by reader in the character's situation. the Further, mediately imphcates is one which has observed, the device as Bernard Pingaud seeks to 274

The Laboratory of the Novel

the gap between bridge a narrator he-narrative: who has objectivized method tween subjective seeing himself a and the objective I-narrative a as is subjective agent "you" to his own acts.16 The witness

himself, become the interplay be Butor's with preoccupation emphasizes to wring and the former man, subjective struggling objective can remain sub from the the who of latter, only meaning experience to for the has accounted The himself novelist ject experience. lucidly of innovation: the necessity Il fallait absolument que le r?cit soit fait du point de vue d'un personnage. Comme il s'agissait d'une prise de conscience, il ne fallait pas que le per int?rieur en dessous du niveau sonnage dise je. Il me fallait un monologue du langage du personnage lui-m?me, dans une forme interm?diare entre la premi?re personne et la troisi?me. Ce vous me permet de d?crire la situa tion du personnage et la fa?on dont le langage na?t en lui.17 As always with Butor, we literary creation. are, plunged in the real, at the sources of

It is consistent with Butor's view of the serious purpose of the should be valid only within novel that such a technique its immedi ate context, and should not be to fix itself as an authorial permitted His latest novel, Degr?s, mannerism. employs totally different meth a its theme is and of ods, principles investigation, hardly less than a is the attempt made Its starting point whole culture. lyc?e by to compose a total Pierre the of Vernier, picture professor, geography to his Pierre life of his students, an account to be presented nephew, of the class, when he is grown up. The finished work Eller, a member should reveal the total sense of a year of hfe to one who could not takes as his it as a unit while he was hving it. Vernier understand a series familial of triadic structural principle relationships original the faculty and which he discovers or, more tenuously, posits, within a contact of three student body of the school. This provides points; But every verifiable to all three. he one, encompass hopes by knowing ones to situate and support the need for unverifiable fact exhibits to aid him in the collection it, and Vernier must call upon his nephew to a disastrous human leads This collaboration of material. quickly a violation of friendships. and Exploitation spying exploitation, structure of the novel: Vernier weaves itself into the very narrative of the book as if it were from Pierre Eller's relates the mid-section aims. an act at odds with his reportorial imaginative point of view, on a as Vernier is based The entire narrative, realizes, increasingly narrator's on of the violations and the void; lie, founded supposed 275

PETER BROOKS and fund of information underline the falsity of continually the procedure. un The mobile truth of human motive and emotion continually the organizing dermines is which Vernier superstructure attempting to rear upon it. The attempt must fail: the double narrative princi triad, collapses when Pierre Eller be ple, the base of the original comes the open enemy of his uncle, and Vernier, and ex alienated hausted by his efforts to englobe such a vast segment of hfe, sinks as into sickness. The final parle?"?rings phrase of the book?"Qui the admission of the impossibility of a coherent point of view. In intellectual another, every logic, too, the failure is inevitable: when fact necessitates verifiable several unverifiable ones, when every mo an ment of time captured and recorded imphes unending chronologi our can on a sort of cal recession, best instruments operate only the sig uncertainty principle. To capture and fix the living organism, is to destroy its vitality; to convey nificant human event and emotion, or fixation. Vernier's is to renounce this vitality any organization a flat map: as to is the round project projecting analogous globe onto he explains to his students, one may choose his distortion, but distor tion there must be. are vast, for into it of the enterprise The scope and implications are woven of Shakespeare, all the readings of the lyc?e: fragments Dante with the of thermody laws Homer, Racine, Rabelais, mingle on the discovery of to namics and Vernier's lecture America symbolic is itself only part of the whole in form a rich cultural tapestry which an situate his nephew. The project resembles which Vernier would a year in A La Recherche du temps perdu and a Ulysses combined, one of its when the Lyc?e Taine which will only have meaning actors confronts it ten or twenty years later. As Henri Jouret, the of the initial triad and the more objective narrator of third member the failure is a magnificent the final section of the novel, realizes,
one:

vision

. . . dans l'?dification de cette tour d'o? l'on devait voir l'Am?rique, s'est form? quelque chose qui devait la faire exploser; il n'a pu ?lever que quel
ques

mais qui a min? le sol sur lequel ils se dres suspendu tous les travaux, sent, et c'est pourquoi tout ce qu'il me reste ? faire devant ce vestige d'une
et en d'une souffrir puisse d'inach?vement, en or, c'est future, musique le passant, que pour lui deviennent de ruine de l'?tayer les choses peu, pour quelque cet autour, pour que car dans ces insupportables,

pans

de murs,

et

s'est

produite

cette

conflagration

qui

non

seulement

conscience que ?tat

poutres
rouille

tordues,
et

dans
le vent.

cet ?chafaudage
. . ,18

d?chiquet?,

le soleil change

la

276

The Laboratory of the Novel

is finally reexamine the task of the reader: he must Salvage Vernier's goal and his method, must reconstruct for himself the phe nomena on which the novel has been only a partial and oblique com the reader must put novel, failed novel, created mentary; finally reality, This mands and "outside strenuous of his reader reality" together, to draw the artistic and moral de in
consequences.

effort and final lucid consciousness are identical to those the novelist of writing. The

that Butor has known

the exploratory novel:

creation

"le" in the passage

is the

Cette prise de conscience du travail romanesque voiler en tant que d?voilant, l'amener ? produire en lui ses ?l?ments qui vont montrer comment r?el, et en quoi il est ?clairant pour ce dernier; le
savoir ce qu'il fait, le roman ? dire ce qu'il est.19

va, si j'ose dire, le d? ses raisons, d?velopper il est reli? au reste du romancier commence ?

been more

has the novel been so thoroughly about itself, yet never has it so with is much broader and And the reality. engaged reality than Robbe-Grillet's human world of arrested objects: Butor so in the captures the vitality of children's conversations, suggesting texture of the work the necessity both for Vernier's undertaking and his failure. Yet, since the novel is the laboratory in which we answer our questions about human life, the r?le of the intellect remains pri is first of all in the style: Butor's The mary. place of the intellect moves in long and prose analytically slowly phrases carefully articu sentences. of ten lated into paragraphs within In die maintenance sion between to this to a the allegiance style and the allegiance world given the freedom to be itself lies Butor's genius. It is he who can is giving us the most exciting illustration of what a neo-realism Never

mean.

and Mme Butor, Sarraute, Claude Along with Robbe-Grillet, near the top of any list of the "new novelists." Simon is usually a masterful While he is unquestionably and although the novelist, to discern "school" we have been attempting is undeniably loose, seem to have htde to do with Simon's efforts would the nouveau roman and much to do with American impressionism, especially with Faulkner. The degree of his imitation of Faulkner automatically seem a Faulknerian makes Simon's enterprise suspect. In his novels, the action, mythologizing and Biblicizing?a voice drowns voice involved. The narrative is yet vitally analytical, ponderous, put to a in emotion of from rather than of chro fragments, logic gether with all the Faulknerian which parentheses, qualifications nology, 277

PETER BROOKS of the judgments preceding depiction a series of in time of judged, suspension heroically enlarged are individual stills. Since Simon's purposes and his fictional world one need not cry and one may admire the idiosyncratic, plagiarism, skill with dis which Faulkner's novelistic he has adapted great not coveries to his own ends. But admiration should conceal the fact no re that he is not an innovator and that his techniques provide orientation of the novel. one moves When from the nucleus of Robbe-Grillet, Butor, and another, events Mme Sarraute to the peripheral authors who figures and younger have been attached by critics and journalists to the "movement," con ever more nections become tenuous. That Claude Mauriac, for ex seem to annul one

the impulsion toward a new reahsm is apparent ample, understands in his choice, as tide of his latest novel, of the phrase with which concerns: La Mar Paid Val?ry its the novel reproached quotidian en ville, next sortit ? Le heures. author of D?ner But the quise cinq to Mme Sarraute, to whom his owes debts, seems writing lacking in serious intent; he is rather an erudite and clever entertainer. Mar a gamut of novelistic guerite Duras, who has covered approaches, was welcomed nouveau roman with Le Square and to the (by some) Moderato novels of almost disembodied Cantibile, dialogue. More en ?t? and U Apr?s-midi et Dix soir de Heures demie du recendy, Monsieur Andesmas which her idiosyncratic techniques, develop seem only to resemble would those of Robbe-Grillet. superficially a fusion to his editor, is Marc Saporta (who, according pursuing in La Qu?te a rather tire of "old" and "new" novels) has produced some imitation of Robbe-Grillet, where we sense?as, it seems to me, we rarely do with his master,?an of reality. His impoverishment No. 1?a "novel" of unbound sheets which the Composition a modish is to shuffle and read in any direction he chooses?is dream of Le Livre. Philippe of Mallarm?'s Sollers, implementation leader of the young and lively Tel Quel group (this quarterly was seems a rather what constructed in 1960) has beautifully founded in Le Parc. The future of any move of aestheticism gratuitous piece seems unsure: that it will end up pro it is entirely possible ment not but novels. new, novelty ducing silent (Butor's recent pub the "school" is remarkably At present of novels in France annual are the and in lications verse), production seems to fall into the more traditional as elsewhere categories. With work of the central innova the the and the paroxysm polemic past, not it is: more what for its for tors should emerge novelty clearly reader 278 recent

The Laboratory of the Novel

its difficulty, litt?rature de coterie, but novels sake, not, despite out of an intransigent of an extreme technical sophistication written to a rediscovery litera moral commitment of the relations between a ture and the is of existence. That "reality" thoroughly phenomena is elusive and variable concept does not really matter: what matters as to Mme Sarraute is the of task states, reahsm, which,
saisir, en s'efforcant de tricher le moins

own

aplatir pour venir ? bout des contradictions et des complexit?s, ? scruter, avec toute la sinc?rit? dont il est capable, aussi loin que le lui permet l'acuit? de son regard, ce qui lui appara?t comme ?tant la r?alit?.20 No one would that the "new novelists" have discovered contend to renew this scrutiny; but their reaction the only methods is a use and the as a of the reaffirmation of novel the healthy necessity
form.

possible

et

de

ne

rien

rogner

ni

References 1. Michel 2. Alain Butor, "Le roman "Le comme r?alisme, recherche," la R?pertoire, et Paris, l'avenir 1960. du p. 9.

Robbe-Grillet,

psychologie,

roman,"

Critique No.
3. Robbe-Grillet,

111-112
"Une

(Ao?t-Septembre,
voie pour le roman

1956).
futur," NNRF, No. 43 (Juillet,

1956), p. 80.
4. 5. Ibid., Jean p. 83. "Description et infraconscience chez Alain Robbe-Grillet,"

Ricardou,

NRF, No. 95 (Novembre, 1960), p. 898.

6. Roland Barthes, in "Litt?rature symposium, et litt?rale," Le Figaro Critique, Litt?raire, No. 100. 1958.

7. Robbe-Grillet 8. See Butor, "Le p. p. 9. 10.

29 Mars,

"Balzac roman

la r?alit?,"

R?pertoire. R?pertoire, p. 8.

9. Butor, 10. 11. 12. Ibid., Ibid.,

comme

recherche,"

See Marcel Balzac's too

Pastiches Proust, the pre-literary style, to actuality to be close to seek a pre-literary ?

in mind Proust had of the crudity m?langes. to Proust of his work, which seemed quality con seems literature. Butor's great style often roughness. R?pertoire, p. 272.

et

sciously 13. Butor,

"Intervention

Royaumont,"

279

PETER BROOKS
14. F. W. Dup?e, "An Imaginary Island," The Reporter, Vol. 25, No. 2 (July 20,

1961).
15. Michel Leiris, "Le r?alisme mythologique de Michel Butor," Critique, No.

129 (F?vrier, 1958).

16. 17. Bernard Pingaud, "Je vous il," Esprit, Guth, Le No. Figaro 7-8, ( Juillet-Ao?t, Litt?raire, No. 1958). 607 ( 7 D?cem

"Portrait-Interview"

by Paul

bre, 1957).
18. Butor, 19. Butor, 20. Nathalie Degr?s, Paris, 1960. p. 385. R?pertoire, Paris, 1956. p. p. 274. 141.

"Intervention Sarraute,

? Royaumont," L'Ere du soup?on,

280