Jealousy and In The Labyrinth Read Online Free PDF Page B

the January 1959 number of La Revue de Paris under the title "Le Cas de Robbe-Grillet," Denise Bourdet describes her visit to the young writer. She accounts "in the author's manner" for the precise details of construction, arrangement, dimension, and movement which define the site, the apartment house, the hallway, the elevator — in a word, the entire distance covered to the door of Robbe-Grillet's apartment, or more exactly to the door mat on which she wipes her feet, accidentally kicking it against the door, making a noise which announces her arrival and immediately provokes the appearance of Robbe-Grillet in his red sweater. One can imagine a game in which the players would have to guess which passage of this account is by the author and which by the imitator, so cleverly done is this exercise in Robbe-Grillet's style.
    Are we to conclude that any gifted author can write like Robbe-Grillet, that his style is the model of a "genre," as the acting of Madeleine Renaud or Maurice Escande can serve as a model for a student graduating from the Conservatory? In other words, is Robbe-Grillet's style a method, or is it the valid, the irreplaceable and sole mode of expression suitable to the author's enterprise? To answer, let us reread his novel Jealousy . The action, or the absence of action, takes place in a tropical climate, in a bungalow overlooking banana plantations, a stream on whose bank the natives are slowly shifting the tree trunks intended to rebuild a bridge, and a road leading to the town.
    Five characters animate the narrative. First of all the narrator himself, or rather — since at no moment does he appear in the first person — his gaze, both impassive and tense, which takes the reader among the locales of an observation sometimes direct and sometimes reconstructed in the narrator's memory. The second and third characters are the narrator's wife, called A, and a neighbor, a planter named Franck who is seen alternately on the veranda, sitting at table in the white-walled dining room, at the wheel of his car. Christiane, Franck's wife, appears only in conversational references; she stays at home, taking care of her child. The houseboy, a mechanized character who obey's A's orders, brings the lamp, serves and clears the table, asks questions but does not wait to hear answers. Nothing happens. In the evening, in the silence and the darkness, the noise of the crickets or the cries of nocturnal beasts of prey can be heard — cries which express nothing but "the existence, the position, and the movements of each animal."
    A and Franck are sitting in comfortable armchairs, their arms resting on the arms of the chairs, their hands parallel, motionless. Conversation? The narrator suggests one or two themes — commentaries by A and Franck on a novel with an African decor; the account of motor trouble. One day Franck announces a plan to go to town to buy a truck and visit certain agents: A will accompany him, to make several purchases. A and Franck have left in the car for town, 50 kilometers from the plantation, at six one morning. They were scheduled to return around midnight. Motor trouble has kept them from doing so, and they have spent the night at a hotel. Upon their return, they have offered no details. The next day, or perhaps two weeks or a month earlier — the narrator no longer knows — A and Franck are sitting at table. A notices a centipede on the white wall of the dining room. Franck gets up, wads his napkin and squashes the insect. The black stain remains on the wall, a few stumps of its limbs Utter the tile floor. A watches, her clenched fist closes over her knife. The horror inspired by the insect, Franck's sadistic gesture, the motionless presence of the two observers — everything contributes to giving this incident the scope of a symbolic prefiguration. We are beholding the gesture of murder. Who has been killed? Who will be the killer?
    But the observer turns to his task: he sees what his gaze