If the nouveau roman (New Novel) had a driving force, it was Alain Robbe-Grillet (1922-2008). The nouveau roman was an influential - if rarely best-selling - literary movement in post-war France. A number of writers, generally but not exclusively connected to the publishers Editions de Minuit, sought appropriate ways to take fiction forward in a … Continue reading Alain Robbe-Grillet: Early fiction (part 1)
(This post is an unpublished piece I wrote over a decade ago, about the village in Fife where I grew up. A few details have since been updated, but on re-reading I can't believe I didn't mention the huge hill figure of a bear above Parkhill which was carved - the lines set alight to … Continue reading After the Factory
A confession: I'd never heard of Claude Ollier until a few weeks ago. Although I've read numerous mid-century French nouveau romanistes (Robbe-Grillet, Duras, Sarraute, Simon, Butor, Pinget) I had never come across any reference to Ollier, probably because his work had not been published by John Calder, and the few English translations of his work … Continue reading None the wiser: Claude Ollier’s “The Mise-en-Scene” (1958)
"There are no new tales, only new ways to tell." Clive Barker, in introducing Christopher Marlowe's renaissance drama Doctor Faustus, acknowledges that the challenge for the modern writer lies in the "shaping of a fresh and original interpretation of a story cast and re-cast several hundred times." The artist must drive "his imagination to new … Continue reading Killing the parents: Clive Barker’s “Hellraiser”
Into the Gyre 