BOOKS
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the narrator's uncle in a shady business deal, mayor may not have
intended to make off with a large sum of money. The narrator is
hypersensitive, doubtless a hypochondriac, and possibly paranoid.
One questions-for they are fairly shocking-whether his labora–
tory findings (implicit rather than explicit) are to be trusted other
than as guides to his own peculiarity. One would like to know, that
is,
whether Mme. Sarraute actually holds that all intimacy is es–
sentially warfare, that there is no personal reality beyond the effort
to keep one's .own ships afloat while sinking those of the enemy,
and that all of this is there as awareness in the mind of everyone.
.If
she does not hold this-and one cannot tell-the alternativ:e
seems to be that she is merely presenting a portrait of one warped
but articulate product of a soft, top-heavy culture.
What is involved here is doubtless a deliberate ambiguity, not
only an ambiguity of meaning, but of narrative authority. In an un–
certain age in which the form of the novel has sought to reflect the
character of that age,
M
artereau
provides a new twist. Here one
simply doesn't know whether or not to trust the authority of the
narrator, to give literal acceptance to a single word of the novel. It
is a keen joke and a disconcerting puzzle, thus a minor triumph.
Where it stands as literature is another and rather difficult ques–
tion. Despite the somewhat distracting over-elaboration of form,
and despite the absence of clues to the novel's actual subject, the
writing-rendered very decently into English by Maria Jolas-is
sufficiently effective to make one dubious of even the most modern
prescription for the form of the novel.
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