lOOKS
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the basis of her complaint against Proust) without the possibility of
any conversion back into "character" and "plot." She is against psycho–
logical
dissection,
for that assumes there is a body to dissect. She is
against a provisional psychology, against psychology as a new means
to the old end. The use of the psychological microscope must not be
intermittent, a device merely. This means a radical recasting of the
novel. Not only must the novelist not tell a story. He must not distract
the reader with gross events like a murder or a great love. The more
minute, the less sensational the event the better. Thus the 239 pages of
Martereau
consist of the ruminations of a nameless young man, an
interior decorator, about the artistic aunt and rich businessman uncle
with whom he lives, and about an older not-so-well-off man named
Martereau, concerning why and in what circumstances he feels com–
fortable with them, and why and when he feels he is succumbing to
the force of their personalities and the objects with which they surround
themselves. The aunt and uncle's project of buying a house in the
country provide the only "action" of the book, and if for a time it is
suspected that Martereau has defrauded the uncle in the matter of the
house, you can bet that in the end all suspicions are allayed. In
The
Planetarium-296
pages, and a more subtle and satisfying book-some–
thing does happen. A social-climbing young man, shamelessly trying to
gain admittance to the circle of a rich, vain, and very famous woman
writer, actually does manage to dispossess his doting gullible aunt
from her five-room apartment. But Sarraute's characters do not really
ever act. They scheme, they throb, they shudder-under the impact
of the minutiae of daily life. This is the real subject of her novels.
Since analysis is out-that is, the speaking, interpreting 'author is out–
Sarraute's novels are logically written only in the first person, even
when the interior musings use "she" and "he."
What Sarraute proposes is a novel written in continuous mono–
logue, in which dialogue between characters is a functional extension
of monologue, "real" speech a continuation of silent speech. This kind
of dialogue she calls "sub-conversation."
It
is comparable to theatrical
dialogue in that the author does not intervene or interpret, but unlike
theatrical dialogue it is not broken up or assigned to clearly separable
characters. (She has some particularly sharp and mocking words to
say about the creaky
he said's, she replied's, so-and-so declared's
with
which most novels are strewn.) Dialogue must "become vibrant and
swollen with those tiny inner movements that propel and extend it."
The novel must disavow the means of classical psychology-introspec–
tion-and proceed instead by immersion. It must plunge the reader
