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PARTISAN REVIEW
not to mere phenomena, but-it seems almost perverse-to possible
clues as to meaning, response, emotion; and the fewer clues we have,
the more are we driven to hunt for them. Nor is this comic shifting of
direction unique in modern literature. When we read Virginia Woolf's
The Waves,
we are so thoroughly immersed in the flow of psychic sen–
sation and reflection that we soon find ourselves seeking desperately for
guide-points of event; we wish to make whole again the universe of
conduct she has split into a radical duality. Reading
The Waves,
as it
keeps immersing us in depth, turns our attention to surfaces; reading
The Voyeur,
which confines itself to surfaces, turns our attention to
depth.
The Voyeur,
in any case, is not merely an "anthologized" string
of described objects; it has a plot of sorts. And no sooner is plot in
evidence than there must be a recourse to ideas, preconceptions, inflec–
tions of emotion. So that it is simply not true, as Barthes writes, that "the
work of Robbe-Grillet is susceptible to no thematic index whatever."
Robbe-Grillet might protest that we are thrusting upon
him
that very
incubus of meaning which he seeks to discard; but short of inflicting
lobotomies upon his readers, he will have to put up with the fact that
in coming to his books they inevitably bring with them an heredity.
Joyce demanded that his readers give him their future; Robbe-Grillet,
more extravagant, demands their past.
The novel itself is more interesting than the theories that surround
it. Robbe-Grillet is skillful at evoking moods of anxiety (as one might
expect in a writer distrustful of "depth") . Incidents repeat themselves
crazily in the way they do in some experimental films, thereby creating
a kind of epistemological disturbance; the chaotic mental references of
his protagonist are presented as
if
they were actual happenings or as if
they were indistinguishable from actual happenings. Though severely
limited by the writer's programmatic avoidance of emotion, the result
is a novel with moments of considerable power-but a power that is
primarily psychological.
All of which suggests that reality-in this case, the spontaneous hu–
man striving for a unity of perception and comprehension-has a way
of revenging itself upon those who go too far in violating it. And that,
for the moment, seems enough of a moral.
Irving Howe
