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julieannholland's review against another edition
challenging
informative
slow-paced
3.0
Hmm...not sure I could repeat anything back to you that I remember from this book. Like...geez...it is pretty difficult to understand. I did have to read this entire thing in about two days, a little less, and I think that had a lot to do with it. I also have several jobs and several credit hours at school, so I'm sure that if I didn't have so much already clogging the learning pipes in my brain this might not have been so bad. But, quite frankly, it was very difficult to understand and I didn't really like it.
I do think there are interesting things, concepts, and theories that Grillet offers at times. But, I don't really agree with any of them, nor could I tell you about any of them a week later. He tends to think very differently than I do, which is fine, and I appreciate getting to see another standpoint, but at the same time I just found myself miserable and left completely lost in what he was trying to say.
There were times when I got it and understood, which is why it does have 3 stars. It gave me a new way of thinking and looking at something. But you can bet all your life savings I will not be picking this book back up ever again unless forced.
And, another part that bugs me that doesn't really have anything to do with the book, but he is writing on the idea of a new novel. This was written in 1963, but is a collection of Grillet's essays spanning back to 1950 - 1953. My professor is having us read this as an example and a source to write a creative story that is avant-garde and will mimic his ideas of a new novel. Sir, it is 2022. If you want us to write something new and avant-garde, I think having us read a book that is at least within the last decade would be helpful. There wasn't really anything new about this book at all anymore.
So, yeah, at times I thought it was fine and offered a unique perspective, and other times I wanted to burn it. That's all you really need to know I suppose.
I do think there are interesting things, concepts, and theories that Grillet offers at times. But, I don't really agree with any of them, nor could I tell you about any of them a week later. He tends to think very differently than I do, which is fine, and I appreciate getting to see another standpoint, but at the same time I just found myself miserable and left completely lost in what he was trying to say.
There were times when I got it and understood, which is why it does have 3 stars. It gave me a new way of thinking and looking at something. But you can bet all your life savings I will not be picking this book back up ever again unless forced.
And, another part that bugs me that doesn't really have anything to do with the book, but he is writing on the idea of a new novel. This was written in 1963, but is a collection of Grillet's essays spanning back to 1950 - 1953. My professor is having us read this as an example and a source to write a creative story that is avant-garde and will mimic his ideas of a new novel. Sir, it is 2022. If you want us to write something new and avant-garde, I think having us read a book that is at least within the last decade would be helpful. There wasn't really anything new about this book at all anymore.
So, yeah, at times I thought it was fine and offered a unique perspective, and other times I wanted to burn it. That's all you really need to know I suppose.
jeremidoucet's review against another edition
'L'écriture romanesque ne vise pas à informer, comme le fait la chronique, le témoignage, ou la relation scientifique, elle constitue la réalité. Elle ne sait jamais ce qu'elle cherche, elle ignore ce qu'elle a à dire; elle est invention, invention du monde et de l'homme, invention constante et perpétuelle remise en question.'
'[Le roman] n'exprime pas, il recherche. Et ce qu'il recherche, c'est lui-même.'
'N'imite pas le réel, collabore avec lui. Mets tes pensées et tes dons d'expression au service des jours et des faits qui les distinguent, asservis-toi à l'existence des choses, si tu n'es pas ce qui leur manque tu n'es rien, tu enrichiras ce qui est de ce qui était en toi le pressentiment.' (Joë Bousquet)
'[Le roman] n'exprime pas, il recherche. Et ce qu'il recherche, c'est lui-même.'
'N'imite pas le réel, collabore avec lui. Mets tes pensées et tes dons d'expression au service des jours et des faits qui les distinguent, asservis-toi à l'existence des choses, si tu n'es pas ce qui leur manque tu n'es rien, tu enrichiras ce qui est de ce qui était en toi le pressentiment.' (Joë Bousquet)
defk's review against another edition
ARG: I am natural continuation of the progress of the novel, embodied in the past by giants of literature like Flaubert, Kafka, Faulkner, Proust, Joyce, Beckett, etc. I'm achieving this by stripping my prose of any "obsolete notions" of past literature like character, story, message, meaning, metaphor or commitment to a cause.
Critics/reading public: No, you're not.
ARG: You just don't get me, because you are not as progressive as I am and you like Balzac.
Critics/reading public: Can we just wait 50 years and see who's right?
ARG: No problem, I am pretty sure stripping novel of everything besides description in service of some weird aesthetic purism is the way literature will go.
C/RP 50 years later: Ehm...
Also contains some hilariously bad interpretation of Kafka at the end.
Critics/reading public: No, you're not.
ARG: You just don't get me, because you are not as progressive as I am and you like Balzac.
Critics/reading public: Can we just wait 50 years and see who's right?
ARG: No problem, I am pretty sure stripping novel of everything besides description in service of some weird aesthetic purism is the way literature will go.
C/RP 50 years later: Ehm...
Also contains some hilariously bad interpretation of Kafka at the end.
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