The new year rolled around and I successfully updated all the parts of A Celebration of Reading (ACOR) to start the new reading list and catalog the books I read during the year. I even contemplated removing or radically modifying my Bookshelves entries since I will be donating most of the books as I move to much smaller quarters in Florida and since I have replaced so many of those books with digital versions to read on my iPad.
So I’m sitting here sipping tea and noting the imaginative, experimental books I have already read this month and contemplating a few upcoming titles that have my own bodily fluids gurgling when I realized that I had forgotten to update and extend the reading list for the embedded Experimental Fiction reading group (XFX).
Nathalie Sarraute describes tropisms as the “interior movements that precede and prepare our words and actions, at the limits of our consciousness.” They happen in an instant, and apprehending them in the rush of human interactions demands painstaking attention. Tropisms are the key to all of Sarraute’s work.
As I was reading Nathalie Sarraute’s Martereau I began to see a connection—a pattern—between her novel and a couple of other writers. Since Sarraute is one of the central practitioners of the nouveau roman, I immediately considered my favorite author, Alain Robbe-Grillet. But Sarraute’s novel was different (while still being the same) and all the attention to detail and to cerebral analysis brought Joseph McElroy to mind, especially his challenging novel, Actress In the House, or even more so his novel Women and Men that has challenged me for years and I have yet to conquer.
Two things: my favorite author has been and remains Alain Robbe-Grillet (