Alain Robbe-Grillet

Alain Robbe-Grillet (born August 18, 1922) is a French writer and filmmaker.

Related Topics:
August 18 - 1922 - French - Writer - Filmmaker

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He was born in Brest, Finistère, France, into a family of engineers and scientists. He was trained as an agricultural engineer. In 1944 the National Institute of Agronomy awarded him a diploma. Later, he worked as an agronomist in Martinique. Either at university or while in Martinique, he studied the diseases of banana trees.

Related Topics:
Brest - Finistère - France - 1944 - Martinique - Banana

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His first novel, A Regicide, was written in the early 1950's, but it was not published until 1978. His first novel to be published was The Erasers, in 1955. It resembles a detective novel, but contains within it a deeper structure based on the story of Oedipus. The detective is seeking the assassin in a murder that has not yet happened only to discover that it is his destiny to become that assassin. His writing has been described as "realist" or "phenomenological" (in the Heideggarian sense) or "a theory of pure surface." Methodical, geometric, and often reptitive descriptions of objects replace the psychology and interiority of the character. Time and plot are fractured and the resulting novel or story resembles a cubist painting.

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His next and most acclaimed novel, Jealousy, is set on a banana plantation in the tropics. It tells the non-linear story of a husband's suspicion that his wife is having an affair. While it is written in the first person, the husband never says "I" and the reader never sees or hears him. Instead one slowly pieces together the story and the emotional experience of jealousy in the repetitions of descriptions, the attention to aberrant details, and the breaks in repetitions. In this, ironically, the writing resembles the experience of psychoanalysis in which the deeper unconscious meanings are contained in the flow and disruptions of free associations. "Jalousie" means "window blind or shutter" and it is with the husbands eyes, through the jalousie, that we see the wife's lover.

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He is, with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and Claude Simon, one of the figures most associated with the trend of the nouveau roman. He along with Maurice Blanchot and other French writers are sometimes referred to as French Structuralists due to the critiques of their works by the famous structuralist Roland Barthes.

Related Topics:
Nathalie Sarraute - Michel Butor - Claude Simon - Nouveau roman

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Robbe-Grillet also wrote for the screen. He penned the screenplay for Alain Resnais' 1961 film Last Year at Marienbad. This film was a critical success; it is considered to be one of the finest French films of the 1960s. It was followed by a number of films directed by Robbe-Grillet: Trans-Europe-Express (1966), L'homme qui ment (The Man who Lies) (1968), L'Eden et après (Eden and Afterwards) (1970), Glissements progressifs du plaisir (The Slow Slidings of Pleasure) (1974), Le jeu avec le feu (Playing with Fire) (1975), and La belle captive (The Beautiful Captive) (1986).

Related Topics:
Alain Resnais - Last Year at Marienbad

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Alain Robbe-Grillet was elected a member of the Académie française on March 25, 2004, succeeding Maurice Rheims at seat #32.

Related Topics:
Académie française - March 25 - 2004 - Maurice Rheims

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He is married to Catherine Robbe-Grillet.

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