Byzantine Blog
Probably the only vaguely interesting thing about me is that with my wife, Mary Reed, I co-author the John the Eunuch mystery series set in sixth century Constantinople. But that doesn't stop me from dwelling here on the boring minutiae of the rest of my life, present and past, along with the occasional word about writing.
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--Michel de Montaigne
Alain Robbe-Grillet
In a world where everyone in publishing cries out that readers absolutely must be grabbed by their throats in the very first sentence, if not the first word, you've got to admire a man who starts a novel by counting banana trees.
He bristled at those who try to legislate what a novel must be, who invariably try to pass off their own opinions as objective reality.
I loved the way he tweaked the literary establishment -- whether he was remarking on the sky's absence of emotion or depicting a recurring centipede which grew larger at every viewing, but was just a centipede, really, not a symbol of anything. How could you think it!
Because Robbe-Grillet pointedly eschewed so many accepted literary conventions -- particularly the tendency to stuff every aspect of a book with often dubious psychology -- he offers excellent insights into how to write cleanly, clearly, and with great effect without recourse to the usual cliches.
His novels are perhaps not easy to read, but I found them immensely rewarding. For me they held a hypnotic quality, a statement which I am sure Robbe-Grillet would not like at all.
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