BOOKS
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quite na tura ll y pretend to CrItiCiSm , about the very na ture o f the
tran sla tor as wri ter. And o nce I ra ise tha t ques tio n I aga in ra ise the
ques tio n of the reader as translato r, finding myse lf back in the content
o f As turias's nove l, perplexed by the comp licatio n o f Bioy's.
RONALD CHRIST
NATHALIE SARRAUTE
NATHALIE SARRAUTE. By Gretchen Rous Besser.
Twayne
Publish–
ers.
$11.95.
T his is the first Eng lish language critical study o f the highly
regarded French a uthor Na tha lie Sa rra ute. It o ffers a fin e survey of
Sarra ute's novels and plays a nd a so lid explica tio n of her theory o f
fi cti on , but the criti ca l ideas on which the s tudy is based a re full o f the
modern pie ties : the illusion tha t the modern novel is more " se lf–
consc io us" than the nineteenth and tha t it a lone has a monopo ly on
" rea lity," and the o bsess ive need to asse rt its innova tion and superior–
ity to the pas t. T he use o f the wo rd " rea lity" shows the author 's
dependence on the vocabula ry she rejec ts; so too her dependence on
critica l dicho tomies (objec tive/ subjec tive, rea llimaginary) tha t she
cla ims Sa rra ute's novels deny. Backed into a corner by these contradic–
tions, the author fin a ll y asserts the existence o f " universa l themes" - a
phrase tha t wo uld make Sarra ute cringe.
The effect o f the study then is to transpose Sarraute's novels back
into a nine teenth-century mode of understa nding . Ana lyses identify the
rela tion be tween characters ("The terms 'a unt,' 'uncle,' 'cousin ' se ldom
occur within the text," she writes o f
Martereau,
"They are used here for
the sake o f convenience .") and tell us wha t episodes a re " real " and
wha t fa ntas ized by certa in cha rac ters. But this regress ion to nineteenth–
century ca tegories is unavo ida ble in mos t instances, since Sarra ute's
works a re themse lves based o n the nineteenth-century belief in the
separa tion be tween appea rance a nd rea lity. Whether reality is made up
