‘The reputations of many documentary film-makers rest on their production of one or two ground-breaking pictures. But there are some, such as William Greaves, whose real achievements only become apparent when we look at the full accumu‚lation of their work. In Greaves’s case this was made possible by a recent retrospective of his films at the Brooklyn Museum. It included a screening of his never-released, unconventional, cinema‚verite-ish feature film Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968/1971), which is now being screened at festivals, art houses, and museums. Moreover, Greaves is still making innovative, rigorous films -as demonstrated by his documentary Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice (I989), a historical biography of the black feminist civil rights leader Ida Wells that recently aired on PBS’s “The American Experience” and that has won numerous prizes on the festival circuit.

‘Black independent film-maker Bill Greaves has played a significant if not always fully appreciated role in the creation of a new post-1968 era in U.S. documentary cinema-one that is characterized by greater cultural diversity among those making films. During the nineteen-fifties and early nine‚teen-sixties Greaves endured a protracted struggle to establish himself as a documentary film-maker of artistic integrity. By the mid-nineteen-sixties he finally began to produce films on subjects of particular importance to African Americans. In 1968, while continuing to further develop his own still limited film-making opportunities, Greaves began to assist a new generation of young black documentarians through the initial stages of their professional careers-film-makers such as Kent Garrett, Madeline Anderson, and St. Clair Bourne. Greaves was not only a harbinger of a new era of multicultural film-making but a pivotal figure in the history of African-American cinema.

‘Greaves, in addition to being an important historical force, has produced an impressive and surprisingly diverse body of work, both in ap‚proach and subject matter. This testifies, on one hand, to his inventiveness and broad range of interests and, on the other, to the numerous prac‚tical exigencies he has faced over several decades. Greaves has received much recognition for his work as executive producer and co-host of public television’s “Black Journal,” an Emmy-winning public-affairs series, and for his direction of such ground-breaking films as the historical documentary From These Roots (1974), which looks at Harlem during its cultural renaissance in the twen‚ties and early thirties. However, the broader course of Greaves’s career and the substantial contribution he has made to African-American film production-from acting in black-cast films during the nineteen-forties to serving as executive producer on Richard Pryor’s 1981 hit, Bustin’ Loose – are only now starting to receive adequate attention.

‘Even aside from the scores of films and tele‚vision programs that Greaves has produced, directed, edited, photographed, written, and/or appeared in, his career itself deserves attention for the way it traces many aspects of African-Ameri‚can involvement in (and exclusion from) motion picture, television, and related industries. He was born and raised in Harlem and educated at Stuy‚vesant High School. While enrolled as an engineer‚ing student at City College of New York during the early forties, Greaves used his skills as a social dancer to become a performer in African dance troupes. From there he moved into acting at the American Negro Theater and was soon working in radio, television, and film. Among the films he was featured in (and sometimes sang in) at this time were the whodunit Miracle in Harlem (1947), one of the most technically polished of black-cast films, and the Louis de Rochemont-produced Lost Boundaries (1948), a highly popular film based on a true story about a black doctor who set up a practice in a New England town while “passing” for white.’ The doctor and his family are played by white actors (in keeping with Hollywood conventions of the day), while Greaves portrays a debonair black college student who is completely comfortable with his African-American identity as he interacts with his white counterparts. It was an image seldom if ever seen in American films prior to that date. Greaves’s role here clearly prefigured many of those played by Sidney Poitier in the next decade, and one is apt to wonder whether Greaves would have become one of the crossover stars of the fifties had he remained in screen acting.

‘Greaves has constantly struggled against being stereotyped in his work-as an actor and as a filmmaker. His work has always displayed diversity: he has balanced his numerous documentaries with repeated forays back into fiction film-making, such as Bustin’ Loose (as executive producer, 1981) and the never-released, hurriedly made black exploitation feature The Marijuana Affair (1974). Furthermore, Greaves has alternated films on contemporary subjects and issues with historical treatments. Films focusing on African-American concerns are countered by numerous films preoccupied with other issues (i.e., Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One); according to Greaves, roughly half his films have addressed topics other than the black experience. Industrials and government‚sponsored films that operate within circumscribed parameters are offset by films in which Greaves took large artistic or financial risks.

‘In many respects Greaves has adapted what is most positive and progressive in Grierson’s writings regarding the possibilities of and need for nonfiction films that can inform and educate the public. His approach has differed from that of many leftist or art-oriented documentarians – Barbara Kopple being one example of the former and Errol Morris an instance of the latter – in that his conception of film-making avoids fetishizing the individual work and instead looks to each work as one instance in a larger struggle. It takes a pragmatic rather than a romantic approach, one that has its roots in the black filmmaking experience  – in the race films of Oscar Micheaux, Spencer Williams, and William Alexander, which were typically made under remarkable financial constraints. Yet if Greaves’s career, like that of Melvin Van Peebles, resonates with this legacy, it has done so within an entirely new social and cultural framework. This framework, characterized by the end of legally sanctioned segregation (though not of racial discrimination) and by the dominance of television, has altered the very terms of black film-=making.

‘Like those leaders that are the subject of some of his films, Greaves has had insight into the changing realities of his time, has persisted, and, often enough, has triumphed. An examination of the career of William Greaves suggests that we need to rethink our conception and periodization of documentary film practice, which has typically been divided into two eras – the one before the cinima-viriti revolution of 1960 (e.g., Primary, Chronicle of a Summer) and the one after. There are other turning points of equal or perhaps even greater importance, not all having to do with technology. The year 1968 can be seen as a watershed, a moment when access to the means of production and distribution began to be more open; not only “Black Journal” but “Inside Bedford Stuyvesant” and “Like It Is” also began to air in that year. These and other initiatives – such as Newsreel, Third World Newsreel, and New Day Films – began to chip away at white male hegemony in documentary film-making. Today, documentarians come from much more diverse backgrounds in terms of race, gender, and publicly acknowledged sexual orientation. Although problems of discrimination and social democracy have not been fully overcome even in this limited area, the manner in which these substantial changes have occurred needs to be better understood. Such historical reconsiderations are particularly urgent at a moment when many ideologues have launched gross polemics against multiculturalism, “political correctness,” and arts funding-seemingly to taint if not obliterate our memory of these achievements.’ — Adam Knee and Charles Musser

 

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Stills

 

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Further

William Greaves Site
William Greaves @ IMDb
The Daring, Original, and Overlooked Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Take One
50 Years Later, We Still Don’t Know Whether This Film Is Fact or Fiction
William Greaves @ The History Makers
Book: William Greaves: Filmmaking as Mission
Making the Film: About William Greaves
“This Film Is a Rebellion!”: Filmmaker, Actor, Black Journal Producer, and Political Activist William Greaves
Three Short Films by William Greaves
William Greaves @ letterboxd
William Greaves Collection, 1968-2003
Queer & Now & Then: 1971
William Greaves on Booker T. Washington & Frederick Douglass
Remembering William Greaves
An Independent for All Seasons: William Greaves
What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been: William Greaves’ Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Take One
The Whirlwind World of William Greaves
William Greaves @ MUBI
6 Filmmaking Tips from Pioneer Documentarian William Greaves
William Greaves: Pushing Boundaries

 

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Extras

Speaking Freely: William Greaves

African American Legends: William Greaves

Discovering William Greaves

 

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Interview: William Greaves on Symbiopsychotaxiplasm

 

Robert Chilcott: Your film has been categorised as experimental, or avant-garde, but it’s not really…

William Greaves: It is and it isn’t. It’s a series of paradoxes. There is no creative predecessor of this film. It has a multiple set of aesthetics, which draw on different concepts – improvisation, cinema vérité, traditional Hollywood film styles. It’s a collage, a smorgasbord, a series of metaphors, like jazz, or like how a lot of music is developed. In other words, you can’t pigeonhole this film, which is partly my intention anyway.

RC: In the 1968 version they have a very serious debate where everyone is academicising, though this is much less so in the present day version, where there is more of a technical discussion. Do you think that kind of passionate semiotic analysis has been somehow lost today?

WG: In Take 2½ there isn’t that kind of confrontation. Take One has a lot of conflict in it. Take 2½ was just an attempt to allow whatever was going to happen to happen, without them trying to find out what my motives are. There’s still a lot of confusion, a degree of chaos, because they’re all intelligent people trying to rationalise some clarity of why the film is being done, but there wasn’t any conflict in relation to me as authority that they were challenging, as there was in Take One. In 1968, everything was being questioned – civil rights, woman’s issues – so it was a metaphor for America during that whole period, particularly the war in Vietnam, and the anger of American youth. In Take 2½ there hasn’t been that kind of dissent, although after we made the film it was beginning. Take 2½ reflects the passivity of the crew. The actors also did not challenge me in front of the camera, as they had done in Take One.

RC: How did Soderbergh and Steve Buscemi get involved?

WG: Steve Buscemi was at Sundance. We had the screening, and the projection failed. The theatre went black, so I had to announce to the audience that it was not a part of the film, even though the film was somewhat unorthodox! Steve was in the audience – we became friends, and he said he would try to help the film. He wanted to be a part of it in some way, and so I invited him to be co-executive producer with Steven Soderbergh, who was putting up the funds for me to finish Take 2 with these two actors. We had done the Symbiopsychotaxiplasm series – take 1, take 2, take 3, take 4, take 5 – each time with a different pair of actors. Shannon and Audrey were the actors for take 2. Soderbergh wanted to know more about take 2, so I decided to use the first part of take 2 with these two actors, then, some thirty years later – what developments had taken place in their lives in the intervening years, both from the standpoint of the fictional situation as well as themselves as actors. So I mixed those two levels of reality that ran concurrently, then when we came to the moment of climax, the psychodramatic component, again it’s like a smorgasbord, a jazz combo, a riff, a spontaneous moment. I wanted to yield to any wild idea I got through the process of shooting the film. At one point the scene on the bridge with the two actors, I saw Marsha with these sunglasses on, watching from afar, and I thought she looked like some supernatural being come down to earth to look at this cosmic event – what can I do to use her in this scene to mediate this conflict between the two actors. I gave in to that intuition – it would play very interestingly in the film, so I had them walking up these stairs, which in my mind was going up to another level of reality, and when they got up there she explained, in psychodramatic terms, what she was going to do to deal with the basic conflict that was developing in the screen test. What happened then was invariably you find the psychodramatic event, the relationship of the individual to some moment of karma, and they utilise their own spontaneity.

The psychodrama process is much more profound, much more immediate – it quickly moves the individual into this area of empathy, and what you get is a terrific performance. It’s like cinema vérité, not like conventional Hollywood shooting where you can do the scene again – it’s a one time event, which if it happens you have to be there to catch it, there’s no second take. Because the actors are very skilled actors, they collaborated on this moment, using the psychodramatic components, mixed with the method, and it worked very well. What happened then, of course, is that people who are in the audience become somewhat confused – are they acting? Is this true? My feeling is that it’s a very rich, human moment.

RC: Do you think a lot of actors resist that kind of non-acting, because when they finally see it they go “but I wasn’t acting!” and they want to be able to justify the acting craft?

WG: Yes, but it’s also an eye opener for the actor because they discover there are more emotions and richness in their real life than they realise. They cannot predict that they will find that level of emotion, but to be exposed to it, to become part of it. I think these two actors have become somewhat changed, discovering feelings they did not know were available to them, in front of a camera. A camera is a very intrusive element that tends to make people nervous. Like the Heisenberg principle of uncertainty, the means of perceiving often destroys the thing that’s being perceived. In other words the camera is focussed on the actors, and the actors become distracted from the basic circumstances they are supposed to be involved in, with the intrusiveness of the camera. You realise the camera investigates the psyche, the soul of the actor, in a way that makes the actor extremely self conscious. So the means of observing, as with Heisenberg, the electron microscope destroys the atom, so you never know what reality ultimately is.

 

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12 of William Greaves’ 18 films

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Emergency Ward (1959)
‘Stylistically, Emergency Ward falls somewhere between the “Free Cinema” of Lindsay Anderson’s Every Day Except Christmas (1957), with its carefully prepared set-ups and tripod-dependent shooting style, and the cinema-verite style of Lonely Boy (1961), by Roman Kroiter and Wolf Koenig. (Not uncoincidentally, Koenig served as Greaves’s cameraman on the film.) Emergency Ward was shot over the course of many nights and exposes us to the range of people admitted to the hospital: accident victims, people with imagined illness, people abandoned by their families, and others who are just plain lonely. Grierson’s influence on Greaves is evident in this film: Greaves humanizes his subjects and reassures the viewer that the emergency ward at this institution is run as responsibly and as well as the post office in Night Mail. The doctors know their jobs and care; orderlies and nurses are ennobled. At the same time, this film might be seen as a forerunner of Frederick Wiseman’s Hospital (1968), for instance in its visual sensitivity to character quirks, although it ultimately lacks Wiseman’s aggressiveness and sense of style.’ — Adam Knee

the entirety

 

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Wealth of a Nation (1966)
‘This film created by the U.S. Information Agency explores freedom of speech in the United States. The original description is that it “illustrates that freedom of thought and expression, including violent dissent, is a source of national strength in U.S. politics, education and the arts.” It was created by William Greaves, a prominent African-American filmmaker and producer from the 1960s-2000s. His career led him everywhere from the National Film Board of Canada, to Africa, to India and around the world. One of his jobs was with the U.S. Information Agency (USIA). The USIA’s primary goal was to promote understanding, “inform, and influence foreign publics in promotion of the U.S. national interest, and to broaden the dialogue between Americans and U.S. institutions and their counterparts abroad.”’ — DOCS Teach

the entirety

 

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Still A Brother: Inside the Negro Middle Class (1968)
‘A TV production by African-American documentarian William Greaves, Still a Brother deals with the conflicts of the Black middle class against the backdrop of the political revolution of the 1960s. Narrated by legendary writer/director/activist Ossie Davis, this was the first Black-produced doc to ever receive an Emmy nation, and deals particularly with the question of whether to align oneself with members of your race regardless of class status, or whether to emulate white standards in order to rise in the limited areas permitted by society. Speakers include Dr. Percy Julian, Julian Bond, St. Clair Drake, among others. An important, rarely screened work by one of the true greats.’ — Black Film Centre, Indiana University

Excerpt

 

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Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Take One (1968)
‘In his one-of-a-kind fiction/documentary hybrid Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Take One, director William Greaves presides over a beleaguered film crew in New York’s Central Park, leaving them to try to figure out what kind of movie they’re making. A couple enacts a break-up scenario over and over, a documentary crew films a crew filming the crew, locals wander casually into the frame: the project defies easy description. Yet this wildly innovative sixties counterculture landmark remains one of the most tightly focused and insightful movies ever made about making movies.’ — The Criterion Collection

Trailer

Watch an excerpt here

 

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The Voice of La Raza (1972)
‘Produced by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, this film traces the ongoing struggle for equality by the Spanish-speaking residents of the United States. Through a fictitious scenario and real discussions with a range of individuals, including local business leaders, parents, and student activists, the film explores job discrimination and the resulting hardships within the Hispanic community. Many of the interviews are conducted by actor Anthony Quinn, who relates his own family’s struggles as Mexican immigrants in East Los Angeles.’ — Texas Archive

Watch the film here

 

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The Fight (1974)
‘In 1971, maverick filmmaker William Greaves trained his cameras on both Muhammad Ali and his opponent, Joe Frazier, ahead of the “Fight of the Century” at New York’s Madison Square Garden. The epic battle was supposed to be Ali’s big comeback following the suspension of his boxing license in 1967. In addition to the media circus surrounding both combatants, Greaves shot the match in its entirety from a dizzying array of camera angles, making the director’s cut of The Fight both an invaluable historical document as well as a virtuosic piece of filmmaking.’ — African American Film Fest

Trailer

 

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From These Roots (1974)
‘Explores the extraordinary artistic, cultural and political flowering that took place in Harlem during the “Roaring 20s.” This vivid portrait of the “Harlem Renaissance” is created entirely with period photographs.’ — letterboxd

Watch the film here

 

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w/ Rick Baxter Ali the Fighter (1974)
‘Ali the Fighter was made in 1975, when the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier fight was still fresh in everyone’s memory banks. Thus, a generous portion of the documentary’s running time is given over to graphic footage of that famous bout. Filmmaker William Greaves frames these scenes with a fine thumbnail sketch of Ali’s rise to glory, beginning with his “Cassius Clay” days back in Louisville. Fortunately, the film was made long before Ali’s profound physical and mental debilitations.‘ — alibris

the entirety

 

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That’s Black Entertainment (1989)
‘Semi-interesting documentary that covers black filmmakers from the 1910s through the 1950s. It’s too bad this film spends so much time bashing Hollywood’s era of blacks on screen instead of talking about the black producers of the day. Several rare film clips are shown of these films so you’ll want to keep your pen ready to write down some of the titles. I really hope someone like Kino or Criterion will release some of these important films, which aren’t discussed anymore. Even though this documentary is interesting, it would also be great for a film historian to go back, in greater detail, and tell the story of these filmmakers.’ — Michael_Elliott

the entirety

 

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Ralph Bunche: An American Odyssey (2001)
‘William Greaves chronicles the life and times of the world-renowned African American United Nations statesman, who not only pioneered the organization’s peacekeeping and conflict resolution strategies, but was also one of the leading advocates of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The first person of color to win a Noble Peace Price, Ralph Bunche became a symbol of racial progress throughout the world in a time when black Americans were marginalized in a largely segregated America. This superb film offers a rich and largely neglected perspective on twentieth-century American intellectual and political history.’ — full frame

Excerpt

 

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Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take 2 ½ (2005)
‘A movie about making movies about making movies. In 1968, William Greaves shot several pairs of actors in a scene in which a woman confronts her husband and ends their relationship. In “Take 2 1/2,” Greaves starts with 1968 takes of one of these pairs of actors plus footage of the crew discussing the film’s progress. Then, 35 years later, Greaves brings back to Central Park those actors and some of the original crew (plus others) to film a reunion of the characters Alice and Freddie. We watch scenes of these characters and discussions among the actors and crew. Greaves explores and dramatizes the dialectic in the creative process.’ — trakt.tv

Watch the film VOD here

 

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Nationtime – Gary (2020)
‘Nationtime – Gary is the long-lost film that William Greaves made about the National Black Political Convention of 1972, when 10,000 black politicians, activists and artists went to Gary, Indiana, to forge a national unity platform in advance of the Republican and Democratic presidential conventions. The delegates included the entire range of political thinkers — Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale, Pan-Africanist Amiri Baraka, PUSH founder Jesse Jackson, elected officials Ron Dellums, Charles Diggs, Walter Fauntroy, Richard Hatcher, Carl McCall, plus key women in the fight for racial equality — Coretta Scott King, Betty Shabazz, Fannie Lou Hamer and Queen Mother Moore (who was arguing for reparations). Entertainers Harry Belafonte, Dick Gregory, Isaac Hayes and Richard Roundtree lent their star quality and entertained the crowds. Sidney Poitier narrated the film.

‘One of the most powerful films Greaves ever made, this is the director’s original 90-minute version that was never released. Found in a Pittsburgh warehouse in 2018, the 48-year-old film was painstakingly restored by IndieCollect under the supervision of Louise Greaves, the director’s widow and filmmaking partner. It re-emerges at a time when the Black Lives Matter movement is galvanizing support across the nation. As we head into the presidential conventions of 2020, Nationtime is a must-see for all who care about ending racist attitudes and practices in this country, once and for all.’ — Lightbox Film Center

Trailer

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, I’m kind of glad I found that book late after the hubbub about it was over. Gisele was close with him and always said he was a dear guy. I met him once, and he was very friendly. And he nominated ‘God Jr.’ for the Prix Goncourt, which is definitely one of my life’s highlights. Speaking of Trintignant, I just yesterday realised I’ve never dome a Haneke Day for some unknown reason, so I made one. Everyone, If you’re trying to reach Mr. Ehrenstein re: his sale or other reasons, his email is acting weird, so hit him up instead via [email protected]. ** Dominik, Hi, D! It was a seminal book for me, but what he was saying was exactly what I needed to read at the time I found it. Thanks about my toe. It’s being a total bastard. Today they will impose the new restrictions for Paris, so we’ll see what that means later on, and fingers crossed. Cool, will do about ‘Des’. I just need to find out how to get to it in France, above board or underground. What’s on your day’s agenda? Ha ha. Spotting Richie Manic at your local cafe love, Dennis. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, T. That’s what I also hear from my other LA sources. Good god. So sorry about the family death, and that she’s away, and that you’re not there. I dream of waking up in Tokyo almost daily. Or daydream. The new Kaufman should be under my belt this week, if the powers-that-be don’t shut down our theatres today. I haven’t read the new Alex Ross, but I really like his thinking/writing, so I’ll seek it. Hm, interesting question about R-G vis-a-vis Wagner. I’ll try to remember to ask Catherine R-G the next time I see her. Hang in there big time, Tosh. I hope you’re using your sequestering to work on your new book. ** Sypha, Hi, J. Well, if you’re making such progress on your new collection, the weirdness is sliver lined at least. Of course I love the length of the collection. DC-ish length. ** Misanthrope, Hi. Oh, is that true about the dick sizes? Interesting. Yeah, maybe small dicks are in vogue. I suppose I do tend to pick escorts whose dicks aren’t the main draw. Apart from Kayla getting sick, that birthday sounds pretty exciting. Is she right as rain again? Great about the guitar purchases. Hey, I didn’t start making films until I was in my 60s, so I wouldn’t sweat the late start. Strange you say that about my recorder because I actually have a recorder here with me in Paris, albeit for sad reasons. When I was in LA one time showing ‘PGL’, the brother of my first serious boyfriend Robert came to the screening. I hadn’t seen him since the 70s. Robert died of AIDS in the 80s, and his brother told me that one of Robert’s last wishes was to give me his old recorder. (Robert and I were in a ‘recorder consort’ together). And he handed it to me. That was very heavy, and I brought back home with me, and it’s on a shelf. But I don’t think I’ll jam with it. I used to play guitar pretty okay as a teen, so maybe I’ll borrow one and make a mess with you that way. ** Steve Erickson, Ah ha. Very curious. Everyone, Steve has made a new music track partly inspired by Mellotron Day, and let me facilitate him telling you all about it. Steve: ‘And here is my song “Mello Satin Tangerine Pillow”. It was hard to work melodically with the 7-second tape loops and their abrupt ends. I wound up editing some of them in a sampler so that they fade out, as well as adding effects like phasing and wah-wah. I plan to do more work with the mellotron samples.’ That’s quite a title, man. There’s been a little written/discussed here about the hoo-hah around ‘Cuties’ in the US, most of which consists of people thinking it’s just the billionth recent example of Americans having gone completely insane. I’ve read some reviews of the ‘Goat’s Head Soup’ reissue. It’s strange to me that there seems to be such a concerted effort to give that record some kind of due that it was supposedly not accorded at the time. Granted, I haven’t listened to it in a long time, but I can’t imagine it magically not being the point where their muse began to tell them bye-bye. ** Ian, Hi, Ian. Glad you liked it so much. Me too, duh. Mega-book, that one. And how awesome that it fed your writing. Best possible ever outcome. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi. It’s a stellar book, but I would probably start with one of the novels, ‘The Voyeur’ maybe? ** politekid, Hey there, Oscar! So cool to see you! I’ve actually been thinking about you a lot while following the whole Tate mess, figuring your job would have been effected but hoping not against hope. I just read yesterday that a big bunch of art world big wigs and famous artists signed some thing trying to force the Tate into using part of their government bail-out to keep the employees they’ve cut? Do you think that’ll work? Seemed like pretty big public pressure maybe. I completely love your Phd topic to the max, which should not surprise you in the slightest. It made me immediately excited. So add me to the thumbs-up contingent. I’ll put my mind to trying to think up examples. Great about the script! ‘Wow’ and not knowing where they are … I mean, it doesn’t get better, does it? Fantastic! Man, I hope I’ll be able to get over there and see the show by then. Fuck knows what’ll happen you-know-what-wise, but I’m going to angle to. Plus there are other big reasons to get over there. (Possible London-based co-producer for Zac’s and my new film, for one). Anyway, super exciting, man! Another yes on ‘Des’. It’s inevitable now. Stuff with me is fine, working on things, making things, directing itself interesting directions, … not so bad. Again, so great to see you! Hang out, keep me up! ** Nik, Hi, Nik! A pleasure to be in your presence. Glad the post hit the sweet spot. I was just the other day trying to do a post about Sarraute’s ‘The Golden Fruits;’, my favourite of hers, only to find absolutely zip to work with since it also seems to have become her most obscure book. Grr. I’m good other than a very slooooow healing broken toe. Paris is all right, although we’re getting new restrictions imposed today because the COVID cases are rising fast. Nice you’re on campus. That sounds dreamy. I’ve only seen pix of the Bard campus, but it looks dreamy. That’s really great news about the collection of Mark Baumer’s work. Wow. Yeah, I was/am an admirer of his work and him. So good of you and Blake to do that. Yes, my new novel has a home (Soho Press), and the tentative release date is September 24, 2021. A long ways away, but still. Take care, sir. ** Right. Why not spend a bit of your day investigating the films of the very interesting and way too overlooked filmmaker William Greaves? Sound like a plan? See you tomorrow.

 

‘David Shields recently dismissed most contemporary novels as “antediluvian texts” that “could have been written by Flaubert 150 years ago”. “In no way,” claimed the author of Reality Hunger, “do they convey what it feels like to live in the 21st century.”

‘He has a point – albeit one that Alain Robbe-Grillet had already made in 1965 when he deplored the fact that young French novelists were praised for writing “like Stendhal” but castigated as soon as they refused to abide by the “dead rules” of a bygone age. Along with Michel Butor, Nathalie Sarraute and Claude Simon – the main proponents of the new novel (nouveau roman) – Robbe-Grillet stood resolutely in the second camp. In his essays, he returns time and again to the notion that the novel, from Stendhal to Joyce, has constantly evolved – hence the absurdity of using “the norms of the past” to judge the fiction of today. Far from representing a rejection of the past, the quest for a new novel was thus very much in keeping with the history of a genre which, by definition, must always be renewed.

‘Feeling that his work was too often misrepresented by the critical establishment (with a few notable exceptions including Barthes, Blanchot and Nabokov), Robbe-Grillet published a series of articles to set the record straight. In 1963 they were collected in Towards a New Novel – for my money, one of the most important works of postwar literary criticism. However, these “critical reflections” were never meant to constitute a manifesto. Every novel, according to Robbe-Grillet, is a self-sufficient work of art which cannot be reduced to some external meaning or truth that is “known in advance”. “The New Novel,” as he put it, “is not a theory, it is an exploration.” Why bother writing a book that illustrates a rule when “the statement of the rule would suffice”?

‘Quoting Heidegger at the beginning of an essay on Waiting For Godot, Robbe-Grillet writes that the human condition is “to be there”. In another essay, he states that it is “chiefly in its presence that the world’s reality resides”. So there you have it. Man is here, the world is there and the distance between the two lies at the heart of the new novel project. We endow the world with meaning (or meaninglessness) in order to control it. From this point of view, the writer’s traditional role was to excavate nature in order to unearth the “hidden soul of things”. Robbe-Grillet calls for the creation of a new form of fiction that reflects the “more modest, less anthropomorphic world” we live in today – one which is “neither significant nor absurd,” but simply is.

‘This seemingly anodyne observation has serious literary ramifications. Gone is the traditional hero of yore who believed the world was there to be conquered and whose hour of glory coincided with the triumph of individualism. Gone is the humanist “communion” between people and things: “Things are things, and man is only man.” Gone is the notion of tragedy, which Robbe-Grillet sees as a twisted ploy to reaffirm this solidarity: “I call out. No one answers. Instead of concluding that there is no one there (…) I decide to act as if someone were there, but someone who, for some reason or other, will not answer”. In the new novel, “Man looks at the world” but “the world does not look back,” which precludes any symbolism or transcendence. The novelist’s task now is to describe the material world, not to appropriate it or project himself onto it; to record the distance between human beings and things without interpreting this distance as a painful division. All this implies that the “entire literary language” be reformed. Similes and metaphors, which are often used gratuitously to confer literary status upon a text, are seldom innocent since they tend to anthropomorphise the world.

‘The new novel is routinely attacked for being inhuman and coldly descriptive. Robbe-Grillet responds that his work is in fact far less objective than the godlike, omniscient narrator who presides over so many traditional novels. Description here is purely subjective and takes centre stage, whereas in Balzac, for instance, it simply sets the scene by lending the plot an air of authenticity. Instead of referring to an external, pre-existing reality, Robbe-Grillet’s descriptions seem to create their own objects, their own hallucinatory reality. “Nothing,” he explains, “is more fantastic, ultimately, than precision.”

‘The reality of any work of art is its form, and to separate style from substance is to “remove the novel from the realm of art”. Art, Robbe-Grillet reminds us, is not just a pretty way of presenting a message: it is the message. Like the world out there, a novel is self-sufficient and “expresses nothing but itself”. Its “necessity” has nothing to do with its “utility”. Whenever an author envisages a future book, “it is always a way of writing which first of all occupies his mind,” which leads Robbe-Grillet to state – provocatively – that “the genuine writer has nothing to say. He has only a way of speaking”. Creative writing classes should always start and end on that note.’ — Andrew Gallix

 

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Further

Alain Robbe-Grillet, The Art of Fiction
AR-G @ Editions de Minuit
AR-G @ goodreads
POUR UN NOUVEAU ROMAN, d’Alain Robbe-Grillet
L’INFLUENCE DE LA NAZISPLOITATION DANS L’ŒUVRE D’ALAIN ROBBE-GRILLET
Video: Soirée en l’honneur d’Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet, The Way Back
Obituary: AR-G
Alain Robbe-Grillet: Bucketfuls of semen
Video: Blow up – Vous connaissez “Les gommes”, d’après Alain Robbe-Grillet ?
Alain Robbe-Grillet se reflète à l’infini
Alain Robbe-Grillet, vous connaissez ?
ALAIN ROBBE-GRILLET, PÈRE DU NOUVEAU ROMAN
Buy ‘For a New Novel’

 

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Extras

Tom McCarthy on Alain Robbe-Grillet

Robbe Grillet, Experimental Fiction & Myth

Alain Robbe-Grillet Exhibition at the Cafesjian Center for the Arts

Apostrophes : Alain Robbe-Grillet et Robert Kanters “La création littéraire”

 

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Interview
from Senses of Cinema

 

Back in 1958 Roland Barthes wrote that “there is no Robbe-Grillet school”. Decades on, aside from the nouveau roman, can you see a traceable influence of your work on the contemporary novel?

There is no such thing as a Robbe-Grillet school of thought! Barthes, in his articles on me, reduced my first two novels into something fascinating, but something which was closer to his train of thought than to mine. In his articles, one on The Erasers and the other on The Voyeur, he emphasised the projection onto the object, thus creating a paradox around the concept of objectivity. In this way he completely ignored the phantasms which were already playing such an important part in the works, and thus he ignored the projection onto the outside world of the personal inner world. He interpreted these two novels as representative of a literary statement, where objects were viewed purely as they were and nothing else. Barthes viewed my work from a very subjective point of view and projected his own value system in his interpretation, which, when all is said and done, he was perfectly entitled to do as a critic.

From my point of view, there never was a school; when I gathered around me a number of writers like Claude Simon, Nathalie Sarraute, and later Marguerite Duras, there was never any intention of gathering people whose outlook was the same, and whose research aimed at the same objective. What in fact brought us together was that the same criticism was leveled at all of us, namely that we did not write like Balzac. Consequently, sharing the same criticism, we all made up the nouveau roman, or New Novel, as compared to the traditional style of writing. Each one of us had to strive in the direction each of us had chosen for himself or herself. I have always fought against the normalisation, the standardisation, of the New Novel — this is one of the reasons why I found myself in opposition to a younger generation of theoreticians who tried to structure the concept of the New Novel and excluded Marguerite Duras from the movement, for instance.

When we meet we are aware of a certain solidarity amongst ourselves, a type of brotherhood. During the last big gathering in New York we realized that we had a common language. For instance, when we talk about the notion of consciousness — the ‘Balzacian Conscience’, the 19th century concept of writing is a totalitarian concept, it is all comprehensive, inside man, it englobes everything, it is whole and stable, whereas in the New Novel we deal with a consciousness which is outward looking, as defined by the philosopher Edmund Husserl, in other words, a consciousness of something — a fragmented mobile consciousness.

Because the outside world is fragmented, consciousness must also be so, and this way it looses the overall coherence which it had a hundred and fifty years ago, and at the same time this consciousness is constantly changing, constantly struggling against itself, forever creating new images — Sartre called it “freedom”.

In its earlier development the nouveau roman was called many things — objective literature, école du regard, phenomenological novel, etc. — in hindsight do any of these descriptions seem more accurate than others?

When critics used the term “phenomenology”, they had no idea of what it could be. They liked the word, but when one looks closely at what they wrote one gets the impression that phenomena are external to man, fulfilling its own life independently from man — this is not what Husserl meant by phenomenology. He meant a moving consciousness, projected outward towards the phenomenon, this very phenomenon exists because of this projection outside myself. It is in this movement outside of me towards an object that the phenomenon appears. Phenomenology does not exclude man, as critics seem to imply. Already, you can see a different sort of consciousness appear in Albert Camus’ The Outsider, particularly in the first part of the novel.

Critical analysis has emphasised the role played by “the eye” in my novel Jealousy, but I would say that “the ear” plays an equally important part in it. As for the word “objectif” critics have made numerous mistakes. Barthes launched the concept but gave it a thwarted meaning. Barthes always liked controversy and enjoyed using words in a context other than the one usually used or understood. In his article on The Erasers he described the work as “objective literature”, and he immediately defined this adjective by referring to the dictionary and thus giving it the meaning of “projection towards the object”. As for the traditional school of criticism, they stupidly omitted Barthes’ definition of “objective” and described my work as objective in the sense of meaning that the subject had completely disappeared.

I would describe the type of literature I write as a subjective type of writing, but geared to the idea of “projected towards the object”.

When critics looked at what I was writing, which emphasized the subject, the subjectivity of a theme, they said that I was attempting to be objective but failed. They ended up with a complete contradiction of the original intention.

From the period of the film Last Year at Marienbad critics started to speak about the concept of surrealism, of phantasmagory. They spoke about the cinema of phantasms. There had been no change in my work, but the approaches to my work were divided, sometimes emphasising the subjective element, and at other times the objective element. Barthes even speaks about Robbe-Grillet No. 1, No. 2, No. 3; yet when one becomes aware of the symbols of Last Year at Marienbad, one should re-read my earlier novels and one would realize that the symbols were already there.

What do you think is the current state of the nouveau roman?

To understand a new form of literature is a difficult thing for people. For instance, I would say that Flaubert is better understood today than he was in his own time, during the period he was writing Madame Bovary. There have been profound changes in the world, and consequently in the outlook of readers.

The New Novel is doing well, better than ever, because now it has a lot of readers. Not only do books sell, but they are better read and understood. For instance, with the last of Marguerite Duras’ books, The Lover, I had the impression that the book had become “visible” (popular) yet it is as complex as her previous work. But it was better understood because these concepts had made their way.

Given the gradual dissemination of Barthes’ idea of “ecriture” over the course of time, do you think that the nouveau roman has lost some of its autonomy from other kinds of novelistic practices? Has it become more elusive to define or recognize?

No, I don’t think so, because Barthes has disappeared from the New Novel. He was connected to the idea of the New Novel, but during the fifties and sixties. Since Jealousy, In the Labyrinth and Last Year atMarienbad, Barthes distanced himself from the movement.

Barthes really has not had much effect on the New Novel. There were moments when our outlooks coincided and other moments when they did not. What harmed the New Novel was not Barthes’ views, but the simplification of what he had said, which reduced the whole impact to a bland, neutral, factual type of writing.

I address these questions in my latest book, Le miroir qui revient.

Could you comment on this quotation from Umberto Eco: “But the moment comes when the avant-garde (the modern) can go no further, because it has produced a metalanguage that speaks of its impossible texts (conceptual art). The postmodern reply to the modern consists of recognizing the past, since it cannot really be destroyed, because its destruction leads to silence, must be revisited; but with irony, not innocently.’

I am interested in your thoughts on the debate between modernism and postmodernism, and their relation to your work.

I never spoke of destroying the past. Flaubert has been my inspiration. As for Umberto Eco, he is a dual character. He was at the vanguard of the modernist movement, but he is now writing populist novels. He was the theoretician of the avant-garde movement, but he has come back to the past. He speaks in this quotation about himself.

The idea that the avant-garde has failed and that one must back track is absurd. The avant-garde must by definition fail, because each writer must go to the ultimate conclusion of his or her ideas. Each writer must continue to progress in his/her chosen direction.

As for Postmodernism, it is a bad description. It was created as a specific concept, situated in a precise context — that of German architecture. It means a reaction against the utilitarianism of the Bauhaus type of architecture. It was used in literature in the seventies, especially in American criticism. It was misunderstood and misapplied. I have not understood either, all the more that in some articles I was viewed as a postmodernist and in others I was viewed as a modernist. I do not like this word as its use is pretty much impossible.

You seem to share an interest with the Pop artists in the signs/images of popular culture and, like them, there is an ironic position taken in your work.

I like popular images when they are taken up by art. For instance, a tin of Campbell’s soup is not a work of art, it becomes so when Warhol has been inspired by it. Marcel Duchamp was the first to have taken ordinary objects and to have transformed them in his work.

The American School of painting, like the work of Robert Rauschenberg, is in fact a perfect example of the way Pop Art has been inspired by everyday objects.

In literature a book like La maison de rendez-vous, or Project For a Revolution in New York, are also inspired by popular imagery, but this imagery is completely transformed in the writing process. I don’t believe in naïve pop culture, the filtering process of art is essential to make it an artistic work.

When I deal with popular imagery as a source of influence in my work, I use it as a critically distancing process. I don’t use the word irony when I speak of my work, I’d rather use the word humour. Irony, in the French language, is a value judgement, whereas humour means that you stand back and it does not automatically imply a value judgement.

The humour in my work was understood only of late. For a very long time I was viewed as a novelist and film director lacking in humour. With Last Year in Marienbad very few people saw humour in it.

What of the erotic imagery in your novels and films?

The erotic imagery in my books and films are just that, materials drawn from the influence of pop images which I use. In Roland Barthes’ terms, I pick out certain elements which I simplify to the level of significant objects. I transform them, purify them and create a new semiotic system out of them, to communicate and create something else. It is true for all of my imagery. I use the pop art imagery as creative material to produce something else, to communicate another message.

Was there any relation between the French New Wave movement in the cinema and the nouveau roman?

The New Wave is even more difficult to delineate than the New Novel, because in the case of the New Novel we are dealing with innovators, whereas in the New Wave there have been remarkably academic filmmakers like Claude Chabrol, or others who are middle-of-the-road intellectuals, like François Truffaut; they were very successful immediately because they were intellectual in their approach. However, there have been pure innovators like Jacques Rivette and Jean-Luc Godard. Therefore a certain parallel can be drawn with the New Novel from only a section of the New Wave directors. We do feel a certain common interest with the innovators in their field. Cahiers du cinéma have criticised Rene Clair, but he is much more innovative than Truffaut or Chabrol.

Finally, what novels do you like of late?

The New Novel of course! Everything which interests me I call a New Novel. To me it is not a closed shop or world, new people come in all the time.

 

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Book

Alain Robbe-Grillet For a New Novel
Northwestern University Press

‘Alain Robbe-Grillet, one of the leaders of the new French literary movement of the sixties, has long been regarded as the outstanding writer of the nouveau roman, as well as its major spokesman. For a New Novel reevaluates the techniques, ethos, and limits of contemporary fiction. This is a work of immense importance for any discussions of the history of the novel and for contemporary thinking about the future of fiction.’ — Northwestern University Press

‘Far from being a manifesto, For a New Novel is a releasing book, releasing in the fullest sense. It shows the possibilities of the novel, and possible ways of thinking about the novel; and it shows how little most of us . . . have dared to think, and why. Amazing. As for importance, I doubt that fiction as an art can any longer seriously be discussed without reference to Robbe-Grillet.’ –Eliot Fremont-Smith, New York Times

 

Excerpt

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. On grown men too. Here’s hoping. ** Damien Ark, Hi, D. Yes, Halloween’s mostly cancellation in the US (and elsewhere) is a very, very sad thing, and it makes my thematic post making more difficult, but I persist, and my Halloween posts under duress will start showing up here very soon. My pleasure re: your book gracing this blog, man. Whenever you’re ready. Thank you for saying that. Our interactions here about your work and everything else are very rewarding for me too. xo ** Sypha, Yes, and his prices are so reasonable. I’m sorry to hear about your strange recent weeks. I mean, general strangeness is the order of our current day, and the last thing one needs is personal strangeness on top. Always the greatest to have you here, pal, so just whenever you feel like it’s a boon on your end. ** Dominik, Hi, D! Ha ha, so true. Oh, I banged my foot against something a few weeks ago and seem to have broken my baby toe. Not the first time, but it’s taking forever to stop being swollen and painful, which is weird. So I might have to see a doctor even though doctors always say broken baby toes have to get better on their own. Anyway, it’s annoying. Any minute now, I think, on the new restrictions. They’ve already been imposed in the other two hot spots (Marseille and Bordeaux), and, in those cases, it’s not so, so bad: no gatherings of more than 10 people, no parties, no weddings, etc. Bars and restaurants closing earlier. No alcohol drinking in public at night. Some events cancelled. Things like that. We’ll see, gulp. Right, makes sense about your plan re: moving to Amsterdam. I hope the proofreading thing continues to interest you. Seems like it will. Yes, the new SCAB is super great, maybe the best one yet? Seems highly possible. You rule. Ha ha. Love that turns a Zoom call into a crawl-through secret international passageway, Dennis ** G, Hey, G. Steal away. I steal little things from those escorting authors all the time, but don’t tell them. Have a very mighty Wednesday! ** _Black_Acrylic, We had a mini-heatwave here yesterday too. Today as well but slightly less heated. Summer is being obnoxiously stubborn. I’m curious about ‘Des’. I’m gonna find a way to see it. The book is very good, definitely one of the very best books about serial killers. ** Steve Erickson, Wouldn’t surprise me. Oh, cool, always happy when a post helps lead an artist somewhere productive. Man, the ‘Antebellum’ reviews are brutal. Yours too, I assume. I’ll find out. Everyone, Here’s Steve Erickson: ‘My review of the dreadful slavery-themed horror film ANTEBELLUM came out today’. My Facebook survival method is to (1) stay apolitical there, (2) stay away from groups (except fun stuff like GbV and theme park lover ones and so on), (3) unfollow liberally. The ‘Cuties’ controversy is so fucking endemic of the utter knee-jerk unthoughtful shit swamping so many American brains. Urgh. ** Okay. I originally made today’s post to launch on Robbe-Grillet’s birthday, but then I fucked up and missed the date. So it’s kind of a rather late R-G birthday thing. I’ve done a fair number of R-G posts here, but I’ve never focused on ‘For A New Novel’, a book that heavily and  permanently impacted the way I thought about fiction and wrote fiction when I read it in the early 80s. I highly recommend it, at least to writers who are content to never write popular, best selling novels. Or even fairly popular ones, ha ha. See you tomorrow.