‘Alain Robbe-Grillet’s novel Un Roman Sentimental was published in France in October 2008. Less than six months later, on the 18th of February, 2008, Robbe-Grillet was dead. This last book of a writing and filmmaking career that spanned almost six decades was more or less roundly dismissed as obscene, the product of an octogenarian author possibly no longer in his right mind. On a French television show in 2007, the interviewer asked the author if, like Apollinaire’s notorious, pornographic novel Les Onze Mille Verges, Un Roman Sentimental was not simply a literary curiosity. After expressing justified indignation at the comparison, Robbe-Grillet replied that, to his way of thinking, every work is a literary curiosity, “La Jalousie was a literary curiosity.” Curiosity or not, it seems odd that the last work by the man dubbed “the pope of the new novel” should be deemed so devoid of merit as to be of no interest to the American literary establishment, but an editor at the French publisher Fayard confirms that, indeed, all their publishing contacts in the US turned the book down in 2007 due to its subject matter, considered beyond the pale. This pious exhibition of moral opprobrium can be classified as, at best, wrongheaded; at worst, it’s a business decision–a wish not to invite the kind of negative attention the book appears to go hand in hand with–parading as ethics.
‘The novel purports to transform into a work of literary fiction the author’s own avowed catalogue of perverse fantasies, which he claims have remained unchanged since the age of twelve, and that he has been taking notes on over the years, every one consisting of transgressions perpetrated against young girls. In the course of 239 numbered paragraphs, and in a series of theatrical set pieces evoked in sumptuous detail, we read about the education of Gigi, a girl of fourteen, by her father (also her lover) in matters erotic, more specifically sadomasochistic, with the assistance and participation of a chorus of girl children who are submitted to progressively more excruciating, savage, and brutal acts of torture and rape–the reader is spared no detail of organs lacerated, blood spilled, fluids propagated. There are also digressions, in the form of flashbacks and asides that fill in the story of this or that sundry character, each producing their own miniature hair-raising fable.
‘The unusual coupling produced by this wedding of the style Robbe-Grillet pioneered in the ’60s to the narrative of a traditional libertine novel–that form wherein a tale consists principally of successive episodes and encounters culminating in orgasms for one or more characters–proves felicitous, achieving a Brechtian sort of distanciation. The descriptions of the machinery of torture, in close-up–the pulleys and winches and their operation, the materiality of the gruesome dildos, seats of nails, the multiple parallel blades penetrating flesh, the virgins strung up in a circle by their feet, or the redheads fed to rabid dogs–all in lapidary, almost scientific language, with nary a hint of common morality, produce an unholy kind of terror and pity, and firmly relegate these scenes to the realm of the fantastic, from which they sprang. This feeling of unreality is furthered by the relentless pitch of the cruelties, mounting in intensity, and the fact that the reader is given virtually no notion of what sort of world might exist beyond the confines of the torture chamber. What we do learn leads, on the one hand, to a sense that the universe of Sentimental is indeed very different from our own, and then, on the other, a sickening sense that there may be more similarities than differences–these references being confined to the description of a global economy whose elaborate rules and regulations are all aimed at nothing more than collecting money, either to maintain social status or to support a corrupt state or government whose pecuniary interests are rivaled only by its own complicity and participation in the perpetration of sexual torture. The socioeconomic world of the book might not stand up to scrutiny as a functioning republic, but it does, overall, reflect Robbe-Grillet’s mistrust of laws, authority, and righteousness, and cement his last novel’s standing as a dark–indeed, very dark–fairy-tale reflection of Western culture’s less pleasant proclivities. …
‘If writing is an attempt at making sense of one’s strange relationship to the world, this final venture by Robbe-Grillet to harness and convey the material generated by his unconscious appears an almost heroic act. A shrewd man, he might have chosen not to publish this book, or to have it appear pseudonymously, aware of the condemnation it would court. Many asked–and many will go on to ask–whether he might have taken leave of his senses, to which the answer might be that, indeed, in a manner of speaking, he had: abandoning the sense in the quotidian order of the world, he had opted for the sense, the order of literature, applying his arsenal of skills, honed over a decades-long career, to the task of organizing and structuring and then voluntarily relinquishing to public scrutiny a secret universe that had been his alone. The breaking of taboos might threaten to unleash untold terrors, but to transform revulsion and horror into a work of literature is an act of existential alchemy. It is the unspoken horror that festers behind the veils of decency and order, of the righteous and the law, and so perpetrates wrongs that cannot be righted.’ — D.E. Brooke
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Opening Un roman sentimental
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Further
Mike Kitchell ‘The Revolution is Never Televised’
‘Un Roman Sentimental’ board @ metafilter
RARA-AVIS: Robbe-Grillet Update
Alain Robbe-Grillet interviewed @ The Paris Review
‘Alain Robbe-Grillet – El fantastico se renueva’
AR-G interviewed @ Bookforum
‘The man who ruined the novel’
AR-G @ Scriptorium
Alain Robbe-Grillet ‘The Secret Room’
‘Famous French novelist’s marriage contract with his submissive wife set out their sex life’
‘Antonioni and Robbe-Grillet on Modernism’
‘Alain Robbe-Grillet and hypertext’
‘Alain Robbe-Grillet and the Origins of Inception’
‘Thoughts on Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Recollections of the Golden Triangle and Repetition‘
‘L’affaire de Robbe-Grillet’
‘Vladimir Nabokov Pro/Contra Alain Robbe-Grillet Pro/Contra Vladimir Nabokov Pro/Contra “Le Nouvel Roman” Pro/Contra…’
‘In Theory: Towards a New Novel’
‘French Passions: Tom McCarthy on Alain Robbe-Grillet’
Buy ‘A Sentimental Novel’
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Extras
Portrait du nouveau voyeur – Alain Robbe Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet Exhibition at the Cafesjian Center for the Arts
The Cinema of Alain Robbe-Grillet, a Promotional Short
Catherine Robbe-Grillet parle de son couple
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Interview
FT : Your new book, A Sentimental Novel, is causing quite an enormous scandal. Do you think culture was more tolerant in the 1960s and 1970s when you were publishing your early novels?
Alain Robbe-Grillet : Yes, because more and more we mix up fantasy and the realisation of the fantasy. When in fact it’s exactly the opposite. Someone who writes, in general, is someone who’s in control of himself, who controls his perversion by writing it down.
FT : That’s your impression?
ARG : I do not know … but I will use Aristotle to defend this thesis: catharsis. Said and done. And yet there is still today an invasion by the well thought out. This is to say that there is such an obsessive impulse to be politically correct, sexually correct, literarily correct, racially correct, etc … Now it seems that when something wrong is written, it is as if the writer is committing a crime. This is a total misunderstanding of that writing.
FT: You recently declined an invitation to read extracts from the novel at a literary festival by saying, ‘Parce que ce n’est pas de la littérature, c’est de la masturbation!’
ARG : This is true. Well, A Sentimental Novel does not belong to my literary work, to my mind. It is something else. It is only literature because I write how I write.
FT : You have represented many fantasies, some of them shocking, but from the moment there are children involved, it becomes very different. What do you expect?
ARG : As I said earlier, these are intimate writings that I wrote for myself, and this one is written with great care, with great concern to represent that which I have happening in my head, an autobiographical concern so to speak, and I think that is obvious. Since I was 12, I’ve always liked little girls, and I think lots of people are in the same situation. Love for the young — little boys for the homosexuals and little girls for heterosexuals — is something very widespread, but something easily mastered, something you don’t act on, do you? But to think about it hurts no-one.
FT : One of the widespread complaints about your novel is that it has conveyed the idea that child victims of pedophile crimes are consensual.
ARG : These people who complain are perverse, obviously !
FT : Why?
ARG : They read the novel, and they immediately erased the fact that it is literary writing, and they conveniently forget that they have realized the fantasy themselves in their heads! They should call the police, but against whom? Against themselves! These people should all be in jail! Because it is they who have made the realization in their sick minds!
FT : And this is your defense.
ARG : I mentioned Aristotle earlier, he made it clear that the poetic effect of catharsis only played according to certain rules of a distancing from the subject. That is to say, if the fantasy is expressed, so too … He was not talking about sexual fantasies, Aristotle, but if the idea is told with too sensual a passion then it nonetheless causes what Aristotle called mimesis. That is to say that the reader tends to want to make himself what he is reading. That is to say that the reader will be purged of his passions through my book!
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Alain Robbe-Grillet “Un roman sentimental, c’est masturbatoire”
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Towards a Symposium or an Argument
‘A Sentimental Novel isn’t a work that’s easy to deal with — or perhaps it is: complete dismissal as (or for its) pornographic excess seems a popular choice. There’s no question that the novel is, certainly at surface-level, deeply objectionable. More so than, for example, Urs Allemann’s Babyfucker — which, despite its outrageous title and ostensible subject matter, is so clearly removed from any sexual or other reality that it can readily be appreciated as a literary text. A Sentimental Novel is also a highly stylized work — but rather differently and, presumably, for many readers not anywhere near sufficiently (to excuse what goes on in these pages).
—-‘Let’s be clear: A Sentimental Novel is explicit, and most people are very uncomfortable with what it is explicit about: the sexual abuse and torture of adolescent and pre-adolescent girls.
—-‘The French concept of ‘roman sentimental’ (so the original title) is more akin to the English popular romance (and closer to Harlequin and Mills and Boon than Jane Austen) rather than the English-style ‘sentimental novels’ of the eighteenth (and, to a lesser extent, nineteenth) century, and part of Robbe-Grillet’s purpose is, of course, to completely upend any pre-conceptions readers might bring to a so-called text. Okay, it’s Robbe-Grillet, too, so they come with different expectations as well — and the French edition was published shrink-wrapped and with the pages uncut (plus a whole lot of publicity), so readers had a pretty good sense of what they might be getting themselves into; still it bears repeating: this is not your grand-mère’s kind of roman sentimental, and it’s not for sensitive souls. … ‘ (cont.) — The Complete Review
‘Disgusting. I think the sexualization of violence is one of the worst trends in the media and society today–with dire consequences to come. Of course, this complements my distaste for the sort of avant-garde bullshit artist that many academics love (and which Robbe-Grillet looks to exemplify). Why is it that books like Blood Meridian — which uses violence in service of a mythic allegory and doesn’t portray it positively at all — excite many academics to condemnation while something like this doesn’t?’ — sonic meat machine
‘Art certainly cannot advance under compulsion to traditional forms, and nothing in such a field is more stifling to progress than limitation of the right to experiment with a new technique. The foolish judgments of Lord Eldon about one hundred years ago, proscribing the works of Byron and Southey, and the finding by the jury under a charge by Lord Denman that the publication of Shelley’s “Queen Mab” was an indictable offense are a warning to all who have to determine the limits of the field within which authors may exercise themselves. We think that Ulysses is a book of originality and sincerity of treatment and that it has not the effect of promoting lust. Accordingly it does not fall within the statute, even though it justly may offend many.’ — Dr. Curare
‘We all have limits. I can’t stand seeing human beings tortured. Robbe-Grillet does not share that problem. The female characters in this book experience HORRIBLE ACTS OF TORTURE, like being whipped on their crotches as they pee, having their vaginas sawed open, and, oh, yes, getting red hot irons being put on their breasts. Doesn’t that sound fun? NO? I DON’T THINK SO EITHER.
—-‘What makes it more disturbing is that all the female characters are underage. Obviously, no one should have to endure stuff like this, but the fact that these are children experiencing such things makes it way worse. A baby is tortured too, and the narrator observes that you can tell it’s a female baby because of the “precociously sexy” expressions it makes. That made me even angrier and more disgusted, because it gave words to the theme that had heretofore been implicit: that the women in this story had done something to deserve these punishments, & were nothing more than objects.
—-‘I thought I’d give this a try because it was different, but I just can’t do it. I can’t believe that there are people in the world who find stuff like this erotic. It’s horrific and inhuman. & it perpetuates rape culture in a way that is nightmarish in the extreme. Nobody deserves … this. Nobody.’ — The Armchair Librarian
‘The contrarian who broke the boundaries of taste as he had once broken those of style, has proved too much for the squeamish. This was the Robbe-Grillet who has been lately written about. One imagines he is grinning all the way to hell at one literary journalist’s inane observation that because his last book, Un roman sentimental, included graphic descriptions of child rape and incest “he has blown his farewell”. Really? Memories are short and taste has changed. It is not just in the Anglo-Saxon countries that publishers have assumed that readers crave “accessibility”, that is, being told what they know already. It is not just in the Anglo-Saxon countries that restrictive prudishness and sexual correctness have reasserted themselves.’ — Jonathan Meades, New Statesman
‘I could pick up a pen and write anything, so… why this? The condemnation, at least from me, is not because it’s actual violence, it’s because clearly this writer is a deranged madman. If you read a story on Metafilter in explicit detail about a real-life case of people being abducted and tortured in horrific fashion before their painful, agonizing death, you’d be horrified. And if someone posted “I like to masturbate to these types of news stories!” you’d find that similarly repulsive.
—-‘Somewhere, sometime, things not unlike what this writer is describing have happened in a similar enough form; perhaps some twisted concentration camp commandante having some fun with the chattel, or a Caligula running rampant and unchecked. In that sense, such stories are like fictionalized re-tellings of actual events. The desire to read or write this is, to my mind, virtually indistinguishable from the acts themselves. Those who find this literary trash titillating are only prevented from acting it out by their lack of absolute monarchal power or control on the lives of others. Give them that, and the purchasers of this book would be ripping apart young girls and boys for sport in a heartbeat.’ — hincandenza
‘Un Roman Sentimental is a venomous flower of a novel which defies convention and taste and takes a tradition invented by the Marquis de Sade, principally in 120 Days of Sodom (the Prix Sade jurors presciently awarded their prize to Robbe-Grillet in 2004 for the whole of his oeuvre), and its film adaptation by Pasolini in Salò.
—-‘What constitutes pornography is very much in the eye of the beholder, but there is little doubt that this is an openly and joyfully pornographic book, in that it turns into an unbound celebration of deviancy at its most explicit and imaginative.
—-‘There is little doubt that Robbe-Grillet is a major writer and the precise, almost analytical prose that unfolds over the 239 short chapters is classically elegant even as the action moves from disturbing to perverse and well beyond. The book is intended to shock but also to arouse in the most unhealthy of ways, as an hypnotic waltz of domination and submission forces the reader to face his or her own morality or even sanity. Excessive it no doubt is, but it also engenders a worrisome form of fascination for the evil inside us, the temptations of sex for its own sake.
—-‘Since Sade, many French writers have continued to mine this lonely and disturbing area: Apollinaire, Louis Aragon, André Pieyre de Mandiargues … Robbe-Grillet, now 85, is not, as some critics have suggested, just another dirty old man, but another trailblazer on this perilous and very French road. And what could well be his final book should be read with the utmost care. Provocation, titillation or an intellectual divertissement? I remain uncertain. But one thing’s for sure: I cannot imagine any English or American writer daring to take such an unholy risk.’ — The Guardian
‘Once you could just have put Robbe-Grillet’s cold, precise style down to his training as an engineering draftsman, but, as he’s advanced into an old age, his sado-masochism has emerged in his writing like a creaky, angular, glinting ice phallus. Robbe-Grillet’s new novel Un Roman Sentimental, published in France in October, makes it perfectly clear: this old man gets off on slicing and dicing.
—-‘If Brecht’s criticism of Kafka as too much of a victim, a man “caught beneath the wheels”, is to some extent valid, perhaps a symmetrical attack could be made on Robbe-Grillet. He’s too much the victor. A member of the Academie Francaise (although too proud to wear its robes and take his seat there), the man might describe situations quite similar to those Kafka explored (torture, humiliation, cruelty), but it’s from the side of the sadist, not the masochist, the perpetrator, not the victim. The idea that the gracious and the disgraceful sit side by side at the very heart of French respectability wouldn’t surprise Jean Genet — today’s Robbe-Grillet could well be a character in his play The Balcony. It wouldn’t surprise Artaud either, or Foucault. The idea of a sadism at the core of the state probably wouldn’t much disturb Nicolas Sarkozy either. And Robbe-Grillet’s proclivities clearly don’t shock Catherine, his wife since 1957. She’s a writer of sadomasochistic novels and BDSM.
—-‘I’m quite sure I won’t buy the book. But there’s a good line in Marienbad: “If you can’t lose, it isn’t a game”. Art should be a high-stakes game. I’m glad that Robbe-Grillet is still allowing the possibility of losing everything by alienating everyone. Perhaps he’s a masochist after all.’ — Momus, Click Opera
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Book
Alain Robbe-Grillet A Sentimental Novel
Dalkey Archive Press
‘In France, Alain Robbe-Grillet’s final novel was sold in shrinkwrap, labeled with a sticker warning readers that this perverse fairy tale might offend certain sensibilities.
‘The book shares the story of Gigi, also known as Djinn, who is being schooled by her father to be a perfect slave and mistress. Running the gamut of unacceptable subject matter from incest to torture, this book abounds with vignettes exploring taboos and their representation in fiction, from the Brothers Grimm to the Marquis de Sade. It is titillating and disgusting, the work of a dirty old man, or brilliant agent provocateur–or both.’ — Dalkey Archive
Excerpts
1. At first sight, the place in which I find myself is neutral, white, so to speak; not dazzlingly white, rather of a non-descript hue, deceptive, ephemeral, and also altogether absent. If there were something to see in front of me, it could be seen without any difficulty under this even lighting that is neither excessive nor stingy, stripped, in the final analysis, of all adjectivity. Inside a space such as this, half-heartedly asserting its indifference, it’s neither hot nor cold.
2. The only problem upon reflection, is of a different nature altogether: I don’t know what I’m doing here, nor why I’ve come here, with what conscious or impulsive intention, if one could even say that there had been any intention at all at some point… But at what point? Perhaps I was driven here by force, against my will, in spite of myself even, or something along those lines. Am I in prison for some misdeed, offence, crime, or on the contrary, due to a misunderstanding, a victim of mistaken identity.
3. The room seems cubic, without any visible windows or doors, without any furniture or decoration. I am motionless, lying on my back, my legs outstretched, my arm resting alongside my body, my chest a little raised by an incline of about twenty degrees from the (metallic?) chassis of what must be a very low box spring, possibly such as can be adjusted, perhaps to an even greater height than normal, hinged like a patient’s in a hospital. So, could I be in intensive care at some clinic, surgical or other? The thought crosses my mind that this may well be a morgue where my lifeless body has been transported following an accident…
4. Something, however, just as quickly, prevents me from subscribing to this sort of hypothesis: if I were dead, and above all, exposed in this manner in the freezing atmosphere of a funeral chamber, I would feel the cold penetrate me little by little. Whereas, I feel the inverse sensation, the rising warmth of a bower, soon of heat even, accompanied by tropical, forest-like exhalations, whose damp and heavy blasts besiege me, disorient me, invade me. In my torpor, I believe I see diffuse light on the walls surrounding me moving, as if the sun, sifted by the leaves of immense trees teeming, up above, with a felted murmur, was alighting on land (and on me) in the form of a haze of particles without precise contours, without direction, without a plan.
5. Towards the back wall, the one onto which my languid eyes wander most easily, I distinguish, in the foreground of a picture that quickly proves to be a forest landscape of vertical and straight trunks, a sort of water basin so clear it becomes almost immaterial, an oblong widening of a limpid spring, as deep as a bathtub or deeper even, in between grey rocks, whose curved shapes are sweet to touch, welcoming. A girl is sitting there, on stone polished by wear that to her represents an ideal bench at the water’s edge, her long legs kick around unrestrained in the blue mirrored ripples of the lovely nymphæum that is as natural as it is picturesque, whose temperature must be identical to the room’s temperature and to those feminine charms undulating, already liquid, over the moving mirror and its unforeseen shudders.
6. The swimmer is so much a part of her warm, caressing, ambrosiac environment that she dwells there unperturbed, entirely naked. A barely ripe adolescent, she is graceful, shapely, and her flesh is so white, so far from the amber one might expect in a native—whose savage beauty, the color of bronzed caramel, and lively gestures like prey on the qui vive, would suit the apparent landscape from which she emerges—so improbable a milky apparition is she, that one might instead believe she is in a northern European bathroom, climate-controlled along the lines of a Turkish bath, wall-papered in a fanciful equatorial décor.
7. The girl, vaguely engaged in bathing, holds her arms raised on either side of her face. She is in the process of removing a towel made of white fluffy fabric wrapped around her head like a sort of madras, progressively releasing a mane whose pale golden tresses fall on her shoulders that she shakes lightly so as to tidy her supple curls, finally raising eyes of an azure to match her incarnation as a beautiful blond child, innocent and fragile. Did she lower her eyelids in my direction, for a brief instant?
8. But then a man’s voice is heard calling from outside, very near, imperiously: “Angina!” Or more precisely, “Ann-Djinn-a,” in a vaguely Anglo-Saxon pronunciation that, in any case, manages to avoid the offensive confusion with a sore throat hailing from colder lands. This, evidently, is the bather’s first name, for this latter, still holding her towel in her hands, promptly raises her face that she turns towards the wall on the right. This could be her father, or some other mature relative, who, from an adjoining room, is ordering her to join him in a tone that requires no reply. Besides, the girl obtemperates straight away.
*
We ate Japanese schoolgirls covered in burning caramel in which they had been dunked alive before our very eyes. It was very good. But they were dying much far too quickly, we ought to have watched them wriggling for much longer.
*
As for the three youngest little girls, Crevette, Nuisette and Lorette, who are seven, eight and nine years old, they are given plenty of amusement during their service. Taken back to their bedroom, they marvel about it. They’d been allowed to taste all the liqueurs they could make use of on their knees. They’d sucked vigorous men and perfumed young ladies. They’d been caressed, embraced, licked. Their too-childish orifices had been stuffed with exciting creams, before being very softly masturbated. They’d admired an adolescent burning like a torch. They’d seen sperm and blood spilling, but also the tears of schoolgirls being tortured. Towards the end of the night, they had descended into the cellars to attend the entreaties of a 13 year-old servant girl (sold by her family) who was made drunk. After having raped her in every fashion, the gentlemen had proceeded to spread her out on a special machine and stick needles all over her body, from which the four limbs were torn little by little. To finish, they completely detached one of her thighs by pulling the leg from the foot, and she was left to twist in a pool of blood and to die like that without assistance. Yes, it had really been great.
*
p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi! I agree, naturally. I have some JDs issues somewhere, but I’m not parting with them. That God, always intervening in everything, what a prick! Love is like a cloud, Holds a lot of rain, G. ** James, Happy to have made the acquaintanceship. I’m wondering whether it’s easier or harder to be entertained at 5 am. I watched the Sly Stone documentary last night and also danced as much as you can dance while lying on your stomach in bed watching a movie on a laptop. Yes, the next time someone wants to jack off in your rectum you can safely say, ‘Well, you can try.’ Sprouts … brussels or bean or alfalfa? You should be proud. There are even serious GbV fanatics whom your dedication puts to shame. I think all grandmas want great grandkids. That’s the grandma equivalent of the lottery. I looked up a Pikachu, and, yes, I did/do in fact know what looks like, I just forgot. I hope your relaxation had shelf life. ** Jack Skelley, Thanks, we’ll try to change a few innocent young minds. I look forward to hearing about your subdivided shit. ** _Black_Acrylic, Yes! Remember Huggy Bear? I just remembered them the other day for some reason. ** PL, Okay, I will. Good, you impressed her, and she was the arbiter, so congrats. I understand you, yes. Like when you’re writing a novel, there’s a point when it becomes very technical and you have to force yourself to pay attention to the emotional content or risk paving over it. Mm, I would try giving the psychotherapy a little time? Or realise/ decide that the part of you that makes art is a part of you that the therapist has no access to? Or something? Or I guess quit if the problem persists. I think one’s art making has to always take precedent over everything else. My guess is that you’re overthinking it re: your talent and prospects. Fear is evil, and fear is bullshit? Hang in there. ** Tyler Ookami, Poetry events would be better places if people spoke their poems rather than read them. I don’t know what means, but it feels like it makes sense. Well, can’t you kind of insist on shouting? You’re a collaborator, right? My vibe is that he’ll be malleable when it comes to being enlightened? ** Sypha, Pleasure. Nothing against ‘The Adams Family’, but I do prefer ‘The Munsters’, yes. Big Fred Gwynn fan, for one thing. ** Bill, Thanks, me too. I do know John McCowen’s playing a little bit. I can’t remember the context though. I’ll go use the bandcamp feast, thank you. Lucky you, I miss gigs. I need to get back in the habit. There’s this great experimental music venue here, Instants Chavirés, but it’s way across town, and I forget to check their schedule. ** Steeqhen, Congrats on the successful gay bar foray. Directing is big fun. Films or even this blog, which I guess I’m the director of. Luck with the exam and photo shoot. I’ve worn my hair the way I wear my hair since 1978. And luckily my hair style is never in nor out of fashion. It’s like a doorknob. That makes it really easy. I have a distinct feeling that you’ll do just fine whatever route onwards you choose. ** Nicholas., A short book, yay. I like ’em short, mine and others’. Media blitz, whoa. That’s a skill. I don’t have that one. Age 27 … I’d just published my first book of poetry, and I was working on my second one, and I was programming events at Beyond Baroque, and I was going to see bands play all the time, and I had acid reflux, and I didn’t have a boyfriend. So nothing bonkers on my end. Even when the blog lets people in, it still always acts weird. That’s a given. ** iwishiwasanon, I’m good. You’re welcome re: the Jones fest. I hope she saw your comment, and I think she probably did. Yes, tell your friends to show up, cool. Wow, enjoy NYC if you see this before you’re off to CDG. I don’t know what’s up and happening there right now. But it’ll find you probably. Safe voyage there. ** Steve, Okay, I’ll watch for the Criterion-related thing. I don’t know Alexander Horwath or that film, but I will. I assume the GB Jones book was considered obscene? There was a period when Canada was banning all sort of books from entering the country. ‘Frisk’ was banned in Canada for a couple of years, for instance. ** Midnight_Mass_Matt, Hello, welcome! Wish I was in Toronto, well, except for the presumed brutal cold there du jour, but let me pass that on to those in the vicinity. Everyone, A person who is involved in the imminent book by GB Jones, ‘The Witches’, popped in here yesterday and said this: ‘If you are in Toronto we hope to see some of you at the book launch March 1st. In the meantime if any of you are interested in the book check us out at @midnightmassbooks and our co publishers @heretichouse.’ ** HaRpEr, Great, you so should. Nice because I can see that you learned from those artists, but there’s no direct trace of their work in your film because you’ve clearly digested the work’s origins and built something that’s your own. I got that ‘sombre tone’ and the qualities you intended, I think. So we’ll both be showing our films in Thursday. Mutual great luck. Cool you read the Mallarme. He’s just incredible. If you ever get there chance to find a copy of ‘The Book’, the artist Klaus Scherubel’s attempt to recreate Mallarme’s never finished/realised giant work, it’s amazing too. I have a lot of issues with ‘Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution’. On the one hand, if you don’t know Queercore it’s fun and inspiring, but its portrayal of the movement is very slanted and very overly biased toward Bruce la Bruce whose influence and importance to Queercore is very overstated, while, meanwhile, very important figures/artists like Johnny Noxzema and Vaginal Davis and forebears like Jayne County are ignored. It’s unfortunate that it’s the only doc on Queercore because it’s quite inaccurate. But is it a fun and good if distorted place to start, I would say yes. ** Uday, Hi. Sontag had very good taste in films, for sure. Hm, I would have to say no about my work feeling like it’s getting done by itself. That sure would be nice, though. We have a little teaser trailer for ‘Room Temperature’ that will out pretty soon. A preferred library classification system? Huh, I guess maybe not? Other than alphabetical, for sure. Yeah, I guess just that. Why, do you? ** Bernard Welt, Chuffed that I helped make you feel good. Steve Lafreniere is a wildly under-recognized artist and arbiter and organiser and general sort of god type person. Great about the Kevin Wolff show. I was thinking the other day that someone really needs to do that, and there you go. January 2026 … I’ll clear that deck. ** Justin D, Thanks, yeah, we haven’t done a screening of ‘PGL’ in a few years. Pretty much whenever a festival shows a film of ours, we’re there. It’s expected. The SF one would be in the summer if we’re lucky enough to get chosen. It’s a more daring, experimental-friendly festival, so we have hopes. People are so weird, and, at the same time, not weird enough. What a quandary. ** Dan Carroll, The trenches, man, godspeed. Blogpost, excellent! I will devour it when the p.s. is dust aka pretty soon since you’re the last commenter. Sounds really interesting. Everyone, the mightily brained and writerly Dan Carroll has new blogpost up on his place, and it’s … and here I quote … ‘about this weird youtube makeup video I saw, Aileen Wuornos, Andrea Dworkin, etc.’. Sufficiently intrigued? Here’s where it is. ** Right. Today I’m spotlighting a to-do about the great Alain Robbe-Grillet’s final, and, strangely, most controversial novel. It caused a big fuss here in France, and I’ve included the book and a bit of the controversy to give you the whole shebang. And it’s a fascinating novel, need I ever say. Please have it. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
Ah, this is a treat! I adore that book. I remember grabbing it the moment it was released and getting lost inside it. I’ll re-read it very soon, thanks to this excellent post and reminder. Such a fantastic novel. Thanks for all the additional resources, Dennis! I’ll have great pleasure making my way through.
Exciting to see the image for your new film up top there!
Also cool to see you mention Huggy Bear – what a fucking great band – one of my favourites. I have two identical Huggy Bear sweatshirts (the cover of their Our Troubled Youth EP, in case one wears out one day). They just released a collected anthology of all the old HB zines, actually, called KILLED BY KIDS. It’s a lovely book to flick through – highly recommended!
Just having a quick coffee breather here. In the final days (I think) of last minute novel editing. I’ve got the week off work so I’m spending all day every day fine tuning my new book – can’t imagine it not being down by the weekend. Also, my new book of haikus is out on Kiddiepunk next week – excited for that to be out in the world!
OK, coffee glugged. Gonna jump back (i.e.close this tab and maximise my Word document again) into finishing my novel.
Love,
Thomas xoxo
Hey Dennis! This is obviously from a super layman-ish perspective, but did this influence Marbled Swarm at all? I’m only really picking up on the Nouveau Roman and boy/girl torture parts, so I may be missing the mark a little. Funny how that Cormac MacCarthy comment by “sonic meat machine” has aged, with the recent hubbub around his teenage girlfriend/muse.
Sadly I didn’t end up going to the museum you mentioned, although I definitely plan to next time I visit. My legs ended up going a little haywire, so I just stayed inside and read for most of the time, with a lovely view. I had a great train ride back, too – there was a fascinating guy I sat next to who talked at great length about his model train collection hobby, without any of the awkwardness or embarassment you’d expect with a hobby like that.
Thank you for the advice, much appreciated. Yes, I think I very much agree about distance kindling relationships – but me and my guy have a sort of push-pull relationship, where I want more separation, and he wants to understand me better – which sounds negative, but it’s very nice for both of us. Lots of love from here, see ya!
Hi!!
I must’ve read about “Sentimental Novel” here for the first time. I only remember that I got a copy immediately after learning about it. Maybe it’s time for a reread. Thank you for the lovely reminder!
No wonder; I wouldn’t part with them either!
Right? Unbelievable. Nazareth? Gonna give you all my love, boy, My fear is fading fast, Been saving it all for you, ‘Cause only love can last, Od.
Definitely joining in the Huggy Bear love. Their appearance on the UK TV programme The Word was maybe this country’s last great pop moment. Even as a schoolboy I could recognise that!
Back around then, I remember moving up to Glasgow and being around art students who were devouring AR-G’s novels. Don’t think that A Sentimental Novel was necessarily on their radar at the time, but I’m greatly enjoying this day.
Dennis, My 3 days pretty much sucked. I spent most of them sleeping. Woke up 4 a.m. Saturday throwing up like a madman. And then at 5 a.m. Very low-grade fever that went away, but my stomach’s been killing me. I thought I was out of the woods last night but woke up at 5 a.m. this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. And then threw up some bile or something. There were some black flecks, which I hope isn’t dried blood. Ugh. And of course, Alex is sick now too. He’s been carrying a low-grade fever on top of it. Who knows what we have?
Anyway, I’m still well enough to work, so I’ll be doing that today.
Hey Dennis,
I remember seeing Robbe-Grillet come up a lot with your name in interviews/books so I need to get acquainted with him!! Is this a good place to start?
Finished my exam which went so well that I feel ecstatic and almost like I’m dreaming; I felt so intelligent. Now I’m on the bus to the studio for my photoshoot, have a few props, including some books like a Rimbaud collection, Britney’s memoir, and my copy of Closer 🙂
My friend was telling me about her plan for a Masters, which sounded interesting. For now though, my plan is to take a year or so of pub working, random gig jobs, event hosting; basically just living a real life of experiences, and writing in the meantime. Then either a research project that I thought of as an option for my dissertation, but it is wayyyy too long; it’s all about entertainment and how it follows archetypes like ‘serialized’, ‘high-brow’, ‘exploitative’, and then a form that can be applied to the others, which is ‘social’. It could a whole book, plus I’d get to delve into Housewives academically! I also have two ideas at the moment that are novel-worthy, and some short film ideas in Cork.
hope the PGL screening on Thursday, plus the script writing and other tasks that Feb has assigned you!
Ah, Robbe-Grillet, my old bête noire . . . though I do recall liking this one when I first read it, back when it was published in English. Sometimes I joke about writing my own version of RECOLLECTIONS OF THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE, because I thought the Grove Press descriptive blurb for that book was so good, that I felt the actual novel didn’t really live up to the promised premise. Oo-er!
Glad to see that my memory was accurate ha ha.
Dennis — holy shit. Gotta read Sentimental Novel. Are the films good? Re: MUnsters vs Addams Family. AF had music by Vic Mizzy who also scored Green Acres and all those Don Knotts movies. BING!; xo Jack
Hiii I want to ask if you’re doing anything big this weekend since I might or might not be in Paris then. I still have to work things out logistically i.e. beg my parents for permission and I probably won’t have much free time but it’d be great if we happened to work something out!
p.s this book looks fascinating but it seems to be out of print in most places do you know where to find it? or just on pdf basis
early saturday morning could be possible for me to be specific!
but then again I think I’ll decide tomorrow how I feel about going since I’m still a little sick, if I don’t go to this weekend I’d still be there the first week of March!
Ach, blog time with my phone and not my laptop due to WiFi fuckery. I saw some Grillet earlier today, The Eraser(s?) I think it was called. I only kind of know the name. Generally I think it’s best if people use fiction to enact perverse fantasies if said fantasies would otherwise be unethical or illegal or nonconsensual or harmful and such. To have unchanging fantasies since 12 is quite something. I don’t think 12 year old me was much bothered by matters of sex. I read some of this post in a restaurant. It certainly sounds like an entertaining novel. He looks like the kind of person to be a French guy capable of writing controversial novels. His scarf’s a darker red than mine. There do tend to be some intellectual loopdiloops involved with ‘defending’ writing that goes down this kind of route. sonic meat machine is a good name for anything. I sort of find it funny when authors write works which will obviously make many ‘mainstream’ readers get into a tizzy. The writing itself is alright, if a little too overwritten for my tastes. I suppose it seems a little less non-me that Sodom. Thank you Mr(s?) Blog.
Hullo, D-Dawg. I really do prefer my laptop to using my phone for this, ugh. Oh, well. I’ve been looking at a few of those queer zines on the archive posted yesterday – some lovely stuff there. I found a page which I think would make a great phone wallpaper but its contents are too sexy for me to socially get away with it.
At 5am the other night I was quite easily entertained. I was terribly undemanding of what was said to me, as long as it was gay. He ostensibly plans on further gay conversations with me. Oh, joy.
I watched another cold war documentary today for some history work, on Sputnik/the space race. There was this one scene where a rocket launch just totally failed and my brother and I laughed hysterically over it even though we should have probably felt more bad about it than we did. I like lying on my stomach in bed even though it’s possibly bad for my spine. Dance-wise I suppose you could do a little rhythmic foot tapping or writhing.
I mean, I’ve never been told by anyone that they want to jack off in my rectum before (I know, I know, I can’t believe it either!) but I suppose it’s not something one should 100% immediately rule out. Though I’m not without reservations.
Brussel sprouts are super bitter and not my kind of food. Bean sprouts are more manageable.
Thank you, fellow GbV fan. Do they have a name, people who like the band, the way others do? Guidees? I know that there are those who have a greater fanaticism for their music than me, but like, woah, I really have listened to a lot of them the past two weeks or so. My family remain unimpressed, tsk. They’re soooo good though!
If only grandmothers could be a little more aware and accepting of the possibility that one of their grandsons prefers boys and the absence of parental responsibility, sigh. She’s terribly traditional a woman.
I saw someone wearing Pikachu trainers today. The pinnacle of fashion, truly. Unfortunately I was not wearing my Pikachu hat as that remains at home.
I got *much* more sleep last night than I did the one before. I feel far more human today. I had a bloody great lunch, got some books(yay!), *finally* finished One Hundred Years of Solitude (consensus: meh), and now I need to go have supper. Hopefully this phone comment isn’t too botched. Already I miss WiFi. Anyway, had a great day. See *you* and the blog tomorrow!
Hey Dennis,
Just dropping in to pass on some second-hand thanks — per your suggestion, my friend Charlotte sent her manuscript to Rich at Pilot, and he’s gonna publish her! Release is pencilled in for October-ish. She’s very grateful for the helping hand, and so am I — keep your eyes peeled in the autumn, because I think it’ll be worth a read. Maybe I can even drag her to Paris for a reading — After8 stock Pilot, right?
Not much else to report. Tadhg and I are seeing the sewer freaks do their thing in a few weeks, Martin is on the setlist. One of them might come round to ogle my two Sotos books, which feels nicely samizdat-y and pre-internet. Golnoosh is making very good progress with her novel(la?), in case she hasn’t said. Alex and I need to find a paper supplier for the press. Do you have any favourite paper? I can see all the paper suppliers my company uses, but they all seem to only do really big, enterprise contracts — nothing for indie freakshows like us. I personally have a fondness for writing on really cheap, pulpy, scratchy paper. But then, I’m also a total snob around keyboards.
What’s cooking for you?
Hey. Oh, that means a lot that you don’t think my film came across that I was copying anyone. By the way, I actually have had this idea for a while, predating the genesis of this film, for a film project. It would be a pretty big undertaking so I doubt I’d have the time to work on it until summer comes around, and I have so many writing projects which I really want to prioritise. But I’m going to enter the daydreaming phase about that anyway. Cool.
Scherubel’s ‘The Book’ looks incredible. That’s another addition to my out of print book list. Just reading a segment online from your old blog post on it makes me spite the earth that it’s out of print. There’s not even one I can find for sale, even one for a ridiculous amount of money. However, there is a translation that I’m assuming is very different by Sylvia Gorelick. Do you know anything about that? I may end up purchasing that one since Scherubel’s undertaking doesn’t really look like an option, unfortunately. I love that kind of thing – books that don’t technically exist and are compiled posthumously. ‘The Book of Disquiet’ comes to mind. There’s another Mallarme book I want to read, ‘A Tomb for Anatole’ which I believe is composed of scraps of writing he put in his drawer which he wrote after his son died.
This Robbe-Grillet looks so good. I always like when writers go out with one of their wildest books – subverting the notion that you get more conservative with age.
I’ve been reading ‘The Assistant’ by Robert Walser today, my first Walser. Very intriguing indeed. I was interested by the list of figures who cited him as an influence and what his writing may possibly be like considering all of the vastly different adjectives used to describe his style.
There’s a certain quality I recognise from my heroes Denton Welch and Jane Bowles, that everything at first seems perfectly normal, conventional even, but some sort of unease creeps in, or something sort of off-kilter, a thing that’s impossible to articulate. There’s a real, genuine joy which is very infectious, but also a very crushing melancholy and cruelty. Very bipolar, stylistically. Lots of interesting stuff about power and masters and servants. I like how certain parts can be very mechanical and machine-like, and then will abruptly become so whimsical and free.
Horwath is an Austrian director (and former curator of Vienna’s film museum.) I interviewed him about HENRY FONDA FOR PRESIDENT, a 3-hour documentary on the meaning of Fonda in American culture and politics. It’s very reminiscent of Los Angeles PLAYS ITSELF.
“The Word” should have brought Huggy Bear back for a second appearance. That performance of “Her Jazz” is the most punk thing I’ve ever seen on TV.
So many assumptions that the only reason anyone would read about sexual violence is because they’re turned on by it, not because art depicting it might have insight into actual abuses of power!
Hey, Dennis! …roundly dismissed as obscene, the product of an octogenarian author possibly no longer in his right mind.: This is so lazy/reductive. I feel compelled to read it now. I’ll never understand why people are so afraid of their own imaginations. Will you and Zac be doing a Q&A after the screening on Thursday?
Ah omg i see your movie poster is up on the side did you drop a trailer yet?! Ill look it up too and id not are you pro or anti movie trailer i think its a fine line between building anticipation and spoiling the juicy bits but the whole movie should be a juicy bit of course. Hum your 27 sounds totally fine which is a blessing truly you could have said anything but that was pretty hopeful. Im now experiencing the like weight of being alone for so long and how slightly like totally burned yet icy ice cold i can feel at the same time. Ive been experiencing a sort of inner grasping feeling thats more than a bit confronting it just feels like i cant do it alone and have been so i cant tell if the help i need is coming but ive been singing screaming and dancing around town hoping it’s enough of a performance/ prayer to mean something and it feels like it is or im wasting time and deluding myself im sure ill see soon enough im sure. Its also sort of embarrassing to expect a partner but it does feel like im supposed to have one at my core but ive either run from them in the past before we could get to the glowing together or i was sadly mistaken I havent even been able to pull the strings enough to convince someone its a good idea to bet on me yet i know the cards are in my favor ill muster up more faith and trust and be back later. Whats up with you fill in the blanks of my malaise with love where i couldnt today cause its there for sure and whats for dinner tonight? Double possibly repost just to be sure i posted im sure everyone can tell i need the help lol
Cool book post. Well hey again .
Well, Tomorrow is the last day before our trip. Oh and no sadly its not Williamsburg, NY, trust me anywhere in NY is ecstasy for me. We are going to Virginia, and I just found out, also Busch Garden. I cant recall if ive mentioned this, im kind of blanking.
I picked up new cassette tapes today, one of them happened to be Lou Reed’s Magic and Loss, Ugh why did I get it? God so dismal to listen to, at first, when I was in the middle of passionately painting and did not intend to be put in that mood. I also picked up Carole King. Is she any good? I am trying to keep a sense of mystery with music, I suppose so im trying to be less greedy with the internet. I love all music though and I need mystery. There are plenty of amazing artist I have shamefully yet to fully listen to, but i’ll get there.
Im working on a painting for a future zine a friend’s friend is making. Stressful but inspiring.
Do you listen to music in the morning, or while you do house excursions in general? Ive been planning a mixtape together. So ive been listening to a lot of Portishead, Depeche Mode and New Order. Im still not certain the vibe i’m going for.
Have a great day and dont let your coffee get cold. Unless you drink it cold in the mornings.