Inventing the real world

Alain Robbe-Grillet uses techniques from film to make his novels, and adapts novel techniques to construct and then shatter his film narratives. Both forms of art are indebted to painters' and printmakers' visual perceptions of their material and their use of space and spatial relationships to construct artistic illusions. In this book of interpretation and critical analysis, several works are discussed in detail: Les Gommes (The Erasers), La Jalousie (Jealousy), L'Immortelle (The Immortal One, film), L'Homme qui Ment (The Man Who Lies, film), Dans le Labyrinthe (In the Labyrinth), Djinn, and the collage-novel that uses the work of several visual artists and work written for other purposes as generators for the subjective descriptions - Topologie d'une Cite Fantome (Topology of a Phantom City). His critical writing and lecturing is explicated and put within the context of contemporary philosophical and critical theory. His first autobiography/romanesque, Le Miroir qui Revient (Ghosts in the Mirror), adds to an understanding of the internal-aesthetic process that drives his creative work. Over all, Alain Robbe-Grillet is an amused commentator on the world and on artistic creation, often humorous in his descriptions and narrative movements. He demands his readers' and viewers' attention and expects them to recognize his parodies and inventions.