Dissemination

This chapter surveys the early dissemination of the nouveau roman in Britain, beginning around 1957. First, the nouveau roman’s main British publisher, Calder & Boyars, is introduced, with consideration of that publisher’s broader activities and ideals; particular attention is paid to its transnational contexts. There is mention too of the nouveau roman’s other British publishers, including Faber and Jonathan Cape. Then the different publishing formats used by Calder & Boyars for the nouveau roman are discussed, with analysis of visual presentation. The chapter then turns to the ways in which Calder & Boyars mediated the nouveau roman in promotional copy and in the search for new audiences; reference here is made to modernism, Existentialism, the notion of the literary ‘classic’, detective fiction, pulp fiction, cinema, theatre, television, and radio. The chapter concludes with two case studies that typify the nouveau roman’s complex status for British readers, first looking at Samuel Beckett’s relation to the nouveau roman, and then narrating Calder & Boyars’s ‘French Week’, in which the publisher organized a British speaking tour for Marguerite Duras, Alain Robbe-Grillet, and Nathalie Sarraute.

The ‘tedium of interest’

This chapter looks at Michel Butor’s L’Emploi du temps (1956) and Degrés (1960) alongside B. S. Johnson’s Trawl (1966), Alan Sheridan’s Vacation (1972), and Eva Figes’s B (1972). All five works are seen to be novels of the ‘project’, a concept that is introduced at the start of the chapter. In particular, these examples of the project-novel are understood through Sianne Ngai’s notion of the category of the ‘interesting’. As a consequence, Butor, Johnson, Sheridan, and Figes are all shown to challenge conventional periodizations of midcentury innovative prose fiction, specifically by troubling received accounts of the postmodern novel.

Robbe-Grillet in Other Worlds

This chapter shows how the narrative form and obsessive focus on objects of Alain Robbe-Grillet’s early fiction—his chosisme—was adopted in three novels published in Britain in the 1960s. In Brian W. Aldiss’s Report on Probability A (1968), Christine Brooke-Rose’s Out (1964), and Denis Williams’s The Third Temptation (1968), Robbe-Grillet’s literary innovations become a means of reflecting on the end of empire. First, Robbe-Grillet’s broader reception within the context of the end of empire is surveyed. Then the three novels in question are analysed in turn. The chapter concludes by considering how new literary forms and new world-historical forms might line up in the work of Aldiss, Brooke-Rose, and Williams.

Translation and transition

This chapter looks at the translation of the nouveau roman into English. The modernist precedent in the field of translation is considered. Then the nouveau roman’s various English translators are discussed. The chapter’s main focus is the work of Nathalie Sarraute, which was translated into English by Maria Jolas. Jolas’s central role in the modernist little magazine, transition, is introduced, and her postwar activities are also presented. In particular, the chapter looks at Jolas’s translations of two novels of what is named Sarraute’s ‘aesthetic turn’, Entre la vie et la mort (1968), and Vous les entendez? (1972). Jolas’s translations are shown to emphasize both inter- and intralingualism, as well as a deeper untranslatability that undergirds all translation. The chapter ends by contrasting Jolas’s translations from French with those of Barbara Wright and Samuel Beckett.

Introduction

The Introduction begins by detailing the emergence of the nouveau roman in its own place and time, looking at the political and cultural history of postwar France. The publisher Les Éditions de Minuit—the main sponsor of the nouveau roman—is introduced, and the earliest articulations of the nouveau roman are presented. Then, the works and signature styles of six writers are briefly surveyed, namely Michel Butor, Marguerite Duras, Robert Pinget, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Nathalie Sarraute, and Claude Simon. The ends of the nouveau roman and the rise of Tel Quel are considered. Then the particular force of the nouveau roman in the British literary field is introduced, with modernism and the end of empire as key determinants. Finally, each of the book’s chapters is summarized.

New Realism and ‘the times at hand’

The chapter opens by considering the contested definitions of realism that often characterize discussions of the novel in the postwar British literary field. The Snow Circle—C. P. Snow, Pamela Hansford Johnson, and William Cooper—is then introduced. Hansford Johnson’s and Cooper’s attacks on the nouveau roman are shown to rehearse the Snovian critique of modernism, as well as to replicate its elisions regarding its own valuation of an opposing realism. Then novels by Rayner Heppenstall (The Connecting Door, and The Woodshed (both 1962)) and Muriel Spark (The Mandelbaum Gate (1965)) are contrasted. Both writers explicitly engage with the nouveau roman in their novels, and value it positively as a form of realism. However, Heppenstall is shown to remain within the frame of reference set down by European high modernism, while Spark sees the nouveau roman as exemplifying something new. The chapter concludes by showing how Spark’s understanding of the nouveau roman’s realism is echoed in the critical statements of a number of other writers, most revealingly B. S. Johnson.

Conclusion

The conclusion opens by giving two final, but contrasting examples of novelists of the 1960s–70s who register the impact of the nouveau roman: Gabriel Josipovici and Ann Quin. The power of the nouveau roman as an idea rather than a set of writers or texts is stressed. Then the influence of the nouveau roman in the 2000s is briefly surveyed, with an emphasis on Alain Robbe-Grillet’s importance in the visual arts. Accounts of the nouveau roman are then considered from a number of contemporary novelists, namely Deborah Levy, Tom McCarthy, Ian McEwan, Zadie Smith, and Lars Iyer. The book ends by looking at the nouveau roman’s persisting claims to newness.

Reception

In surveying the reception of the nouveau roman in Britain from its initial emergence in the late 1950s, this chapter begins by looking at the various names given to the phenomenon of the nouveau roman, and their significations. The predominance of Alain Robbe-Grillet and his notion of chosisme is considered. Then a number of vituperative conservative critiques are discussed. Existentialism, the nouvelle vague, and modernism are shown to be major points of reference in the reception of the nouveau roman. The chapter concludes with two codas. The first considers the edges of a reception history of the nouveau roman in Britain by looking to creative responses from the cinema (Tony Richardson, Peter Brook), visual media (Martin Vaughn-James, Ian Hamilton Finlay), life-writing (W. G. Sebald), and music (Harrison Birtwistle). The second looks at the adoption of the nouveau roman in British academe, and the rise of Theory.