Jealousy & In The Labyrinth (1994) - Plot & Excerpts
this is on jealousy, a later later later later... addition: is it possible to read this one book too many times? does it render all other novels or anti-novels or experimental novels less than enjoyable in comparison? as much, that is not at all, as for me a beautiful woman or vista or world does defeat aesthetic appreciation of other times. this is not a best seller. r-g himself claims it is a 'long seller', that it has steady sales for years and years. i would like it to be fast and best and long selling, would like other authors to write like this, but maybe it is emotion and subject and perception that most authors find as too surreal, too empty of humans, impassive and emotionless, objective verging on dull, and just not holding attention of writer, let alone reader... so i will read it again, promote it again in my review, even myself try to write something like this...this is on jealousy, 4th time:well i do not know if this is actually only the 4th time: have read this, kept at waimea, every February on vacation read it again, so the question is more how many times have I been here? many times. decided to stop counting the books, but as the town library is still closed for renovations... I brought some long texts from home. this place is kind of home as well. so I have read them and a few books from my mom, on hawai'ian culture, then read this again...4 times? sounds like I like it. very much, as effusive previous reviews note my enthusiasm. do not know if first read for class. know I loved it first, second, third, etc. times. have read a lot of philosophy since first read, have read a lot of other fiction, read a lot of Robbe-Grillet. so this is now a relatively educated read. and a good read. in some ways, have thought of this as graphics work, or mental movie, telling the story in images. do not know if my friends who like graphics would like it, though, as nothing much seems to happen. it is very much to the how the story is told, rather than what the story is. like the hollow of the narrator's perception, like the way his mind deliberately goes from image to image, perhaps spurred by what he does not want to see, how his view goes towards certainty such as counting the banana trees, watching the worker looking in the water- but in the latter case, wondering what he sees, how it is too muddy, then too swift to see anything. then there is his obsessive watching his wife writing or reading a letter. there is the seating plan set by his wife that seems to isolate him. there is the car arriving, his wife bending into the window, his wife bending near to pour a drink for Franck, there is the book they have read that seems like a literary for the infidelity imagined, there are so many distractions he tries to understand just so he does not think, does not inhabit, his jealousy. there are the wooden slats in the windows, the jalousies, that characterize his blinded uncertainty. there is of course, the centipede on the wall that Franck crushes, the stain this husband tries so hard to efface... as far as the sound goes I have to insist the accompanying intro is mistaken: it is very important, everything from the crackle of her brushing her hair similar to hissing of the lamp, to the sound of a truck on the highway he cannot see, to the noise some bird or other creatures such as the insistent cicadas... the noise increases in meaninglessness even as it increases in meaning for the narrator... I love this book, I can only repeat, almost mechanically, that how the story is told is what the story is told... is on in the labyrinth:so i read this after many years, prepared to be disappointed… and i like it even more. i have read many lit classics, i have read modernists, postmodernists, since this book. i read more as i read more. i am incredibly affected by this style. i am further convinced that sometimes style is content. it is how this story is told that is what the story is told: a mental movie told in precise, overlapping, jump cut, cubist, multi-perspective, repeated, near-repeated, recurring visual motifs. there is a plot, but one others might render as short story or short novella. i am fascinated, i am frustrated- because i wish i could do this, could write this! i up the rating. i try to understand why i so enjoy this but cannot read beckett. i break my rule and add another by the same author as favourite but there is no need for apology.i try to understand how it is so different from usual literature:it is the precise, dispassionate, description of images that make up the story. these images are held together as if a montage, rewarding close inspection, in clarity unstained by the usual lit word characterizations of human emotions, metaphors, that nudge the reader to preferred reading, to competent reading, to the author’s obvious intent. there is freedom in reading, building, understanding, this story. or, rather, there is freedom that is not freedom. the story becomes not the plot, the characters, the theme, but the human life as rendered by images. dialog is cryptic, evasive, suggestive. order of the plot, of act, of dream, follows duration of consciousness and not clock and calendar. situation, geography, society, is all inferred by reader and remains unimportant- though this is no allegory, no borrowed fable, nothing but these images of progress through the labyrinth.labyrinths are thought of as mazes, deferring or thwarting passage or escape, but this is not always the case. labyrinths are also meditative patterns walked in some old european churches. walk the pattern with close attention. it is worth it.this is on in the labyrinth: 3rd timeso, i am sitting by the pool on a beautiful day, without my watch- and decide to just follow however long it takes me to read this book, again. why now? because it happens to interest me, and more so than books out of the town library. as reading it, i realized one reason why i find it easier to read than beckett: the images, as it is mostly description, are rendered simple, clear, however often repeated. even as it is apparent this man, this perspective, is feverish and/or dying, the language never wavers or becomes complex. it does not ask me to inhabit but only to observe. much easier for me. think maybe i will try his later works again.this is on jealousy:i could reread this forever, i am so impressed- not at all disappointed since so many years ago. i have read yes but more importantly lived, and so this document- i cannot call it a novel, which sounds too simple, nor text, which sounds too arid. this is a document from the unnamed eye who describes everything we see, a viewpoint easily shifting through time, repetition, close inspection, abstract stage directions, description, detail, obsession- the mind’s eye, the embodied eye, of a virulently jealous husband on his tropical plantation. it does not matter if his suspicions are true, it is more important that what he cannot count, measure, describe, may be the thoughts of betrayal that infect every sight.i think there is some error in barthes’ introductory essay- mainly eliding the importance of the soundtrack as his emotions intensifies- and i cannot judge whether this is necessary to appreciate these novels, because i remember them, i have now some idea who heidegger is, who is barthes. but this is judged robbe-grillet’s masterworks for a reason.i will probably read these again after many more years. again.review: http://www.michaelkamakana.com/favori...
This review is just for In The Labyrinth, and it's brilliant. The story can be loosely described as a solider delivering a box at the end of the war. However, the narrative is all broken up into small segments. The story weaves through these small segments like a ribbon through beads on a necklace, going back through some, knotting around others, so that the reader is never really sure of the truth of what actually happened. Each segment also changes slightly as it's revisited, and we're never sure whether it's due to the soldier's fever, or simply a technique Robbe-Grillet is using as a comment on the mutability of memory- a technique he used in the film L'Annee Derniere a Marienbad.Each of these segments are also in different areas of the town (and one major one is in the picture on the wall) and so kind of feel like small building blocks of the geography that then keep getting rearranged as you read. This fluidity is also true of the characters- some repeat themselves, some you're not sure of whether they are all the same person.The story itself feels very filmic, and you see jump-cuts, fades and overlapping pieces of film as you read, in a good way. Amazing.Jealousy... I'm not so sure about it right now, but needs a reread.
What do You think about Jealousy & In The Labyrinth (1994)?
.obsession.obsession.obsession.Jealousy: Robbe-Grillet has created an impeccably accurate and precise portrait of jealousy. The obsessive repetition and attention to insubstantial details. Absorbs us completely into its black hole and reminds us of the dark and mad places it so easily transports us--a place where every sound and move is fraught with significance. The boredom (to the reader) in the obsession with detail also a facet--->self-absorption and selfishness of jealousy. Almost genius in its crafting. In the Labyrinth: Repetition, garbled chronology, and minute attention to detail are standards of Robbe-Grillet's fiction, and are here utilized to create the sometimes nauseating feverish haze and obsession of an ailing soldier. The hallucinatory heights that illness can bring one, insensate and determined, heightened awareness of paticulars (tunneled vision).
—aya
I chose to read this one as it has two titles in one. I hadn't previously read Robbe-Grillet but had a feeling I would love him. There is now possibly a permanent dip in the couch from where I plopped myself down to read this and didn't get up until I finished.The first in the book is Jealousy, a novel told from the perspective of an unnamed narrator who never refers to himself in the first person. He spends the majority of his time spying on his wife who only is referred to here as "A...", which is about as unsettling as the second Mrs. de Winter not having a name despite the fact it's her story in Rebecca. The narrator here is convinced his wife is having an affair with their neighbor, Franck, and watches them from the house. Much of time it's hard to discern between reality and the narrator's obsessiveness which is such a delicious twist I could hardly stand it.In the Labyrinth is the second novel of the book and good, though not quite as yummy to me as Jealousy. This story is about a wounded soldier wandering wartime streets in effort to deliver an important package. The streets are the labyrinth of the title and Robbe-Grillet manages to capture the maze-like feeling in his descriptions. Almost Kafaesque. Also delicious.
—El
What a fascinating way to write a novel. He comes as close as it seems possible to writing an objective description of a situation. The characters reveal no more interiority than the landscape or the house in which the story takes place. Everything that happens, all the "jealousy," has to be constructed by the reader. Certainly some novels can be consumed as passively as a TV show or movie, but this author writes in such a way as to demand something more of a reader. Totally worth it from my perspective just for the intellectual engagement it demands.
—Ron
