Snapshots.

by Alain Robbe-Grillet

Book Overview

Alain Robbe-Grillet has long been regarded as the chief spokesman for the controversial nouveau roman. This collection of brilliant short pieces introduces the reader to those techniques employed by Robbe-Grillet in his longer works. These intriguing, gemlike stories represent Robbe-Grillet's most accessible fiction.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0394177843
• ISBN13: 9780394177847
• Release Date: October 1972
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Length: 72 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Studies for the Nouveau Roman

The short prose pieces comprising the collection, SNAPSHOTS, are studies in literary objectivity and minimalism. Honing his craft in post-war France, Alain Robbe-Grillet sought to strip from his work the hallmarks of French literature, indeed, nearly all of the literary conventions thought to add color and depth and psychological insight to prose. Instead, Robbe-Grillet endeavored to develop new techniques-largely based in visual observation-that would present scenes and characters and situations stripped of the customary subjectivity seemingly inherent in authorship, and the linear plotlines typically associated with fiction. The short pieces collected here, written between 1954 and 1962, demonstrate Robbe-Grillet's urge to experiment with a reductive technique. At the same time, the author adumbrates many of the themes that characterize his later and more fully developed works like JEALOUSY, THE VOYEUR, IN THE LABYRINTH--classics of the "nouveau roman." In this translation by Bruce Morrissette, the prose is stripped down to a level that makes Hemingway seem rococo by comparison. The pieces-one hesitates to call them stories-present scenes coldly and objectively, yet they also reveal Robbe-Grillet's erotic obsessions and his skillfully concealed manipulation of the reader's point-of-view. Despite the author's professed desire to "trust" the reader, he often cunningly and covertly rigs the game so that the reader must engage in mental twists and turns to visualize such subtle complexities as a mirror reflecting the contents of a room ("The Dressmaker's Dummy"), or a landscape mirrored on the surface of a pool of rainwater ("The Wrong Direction"). In the pieces, "Scene," "The Way Back" and "The Shore," the author opens up a bit to add snatches of dialogue, but the sketches in SNAPSHOTS largely describe a silent world. Even in the three pieces describing the movements of a crowd contained in the section "In the Corridors of the Metro" seem like a silent film played back at half speed. These works seem an attempt to slow down the world, and to blur the distinctions between "background" and "foreground," or "form" and "content." In "A Corridor," for instance, the author focuses as much attention on the motions of the people streaming through a hallway as he does on the identical posters advertising soda on the very walls that they pass through. The final piece in the collection, "The Secret Room," is an uncanny homage to the 19th Century decadent French painter, Gustave Moreau. Applying his objectivist techniques in the service of Symbolist sado-eroticism, Robbe-Grillet effectively conveys the very liquid quality of Moreau's painting technique, as well as the almost suffocating layering of details that characterize the painter's works. The author skillfully presents this erotic scene in a way that suggests a painting in motion, rather than a conventional narrative of the scene. Richly ambiguous, the short prose pieces in SNAPSHOTS admira

Nouveau Roman

It seems that when this book came out that it was very radical. It was very visually oriented. It was like looking at paintings. This is not Robbe-Grillet's best book, but it distills what was so great about him. When I was a younger writer, this stuff was a big influence. It was very existential, minimal, and bare. I think that some of this style is better suited for film.

Reread classic

Having just read Peter Nadas' "A Lovely Tale of Photography", I had to reread Robbe-Grillet's "Shapshots". Why? Because they both tell stories based on visual description. The traits they have in common, the points at which they diverge are a fascinating comparison.I don't mean to imply you must have read Nadas to enjoy Robbe-Grillet. Robbe-Grillet is very consistent in his objective observer technique - the senses which are most subjective - taste, smell and touch are all but absent in Snapshots. Some of the shapshots such as The Dressmaker's Dummy tend to require mental gymnastics to visualize the scene precisely as described. Others such as The Way Back are easier to visualize and provide an implied plot line.This short book is well worth the time to read - either for enjoyment or for a reminder of what was avante-garde 50 years ago.

cest fantastique!

robe-grillets use of "transmedial" dialogue gives the book an unearthly realism not uncommon with pynchons earlier works---ooh la la baby