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The Erasers

by Alain Robbe-Grillet, Richard Howard (Translator)

3.83 of 5 stars 3.83 · rating details · 534 ratings · 48 reviews

Alain Robbe-Grillet is internationally hailed as the chief spokesman for the noveau roman and one of the great novelists of the twentieth century. The Erasers, his first novel, reads like a detective story but is primarily concerned with weaving and then probing a complete mixture of fact and fantasy. The narrative spans the twenty-four-hour period following a series of ei...more

Paperback, 256 pages

Published January 21st 1994 by Grove Press (first published 1953)

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Jul 31, 2007 Richard rated it 5 of 5 stars

The only time I was ever smart was reading this book in grad school. I cracked it, and the rest of my class thought I was nuts. Then, good ol' Dicky Dillard said, "Even Harold Bloom didn't get it at first."

I've since gone back to being dumb.

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Mar 27, 2008 Tosh rated it 4 of 5 stars

Allain Robbe-Grillet is one of those writers one either gets or not gets. Care or not care. I care, but do i get? I don't know, but I do enjoy his writings and it brings me back to a time when you can get experimental fiction published by a big publishing house at your local bookstore. Things are a tad different these days...

So what we have here is a thriller of sorts. The subjectivity erased out of the narration. An interesting read, and everyone should read Robbe-Grillet at least once.

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Sep 17, 2007 Nathan rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: People who think Watson & Holmes were the same person.

Shelves: fiction

I had to read this book in graduate school. It made me feel like a failure as a human being, but I could tell how brilliant it was. Kind of like if Einstein started a conversation with you while you were drunk and tried to explain this new theory he'd been working on, and he did it in German, and oh yeah, you're drunk. Gibberish, and maybe he's not really Einstein, but a serial killer. But you can tell he's either brilliant or mad or both. That's The Erasers. Keyser Soze, drunk, talking astrophy...more

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Aug 24, 2011 Schuyler rated it 3 of 5 stars

I would have loved this novel when I was 18, what with its classical (Sophocles) and modern (Kafka, Beckett, Joyce, and Borges) touchstones and its allusions to philosophical and theoretical paradigms. But I'm not 18, and, while I can appreciate what Robbe-Grillet is after with this tale of detection, I can't fully enjoy it. When I was 18, intellectual puzzles, like this one, were enough for me. I would have named "Last Year at Marienbad" one of my favorite movies that year. I liked the feeling...more

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Jul 22, 2009 Bruce rated it 5 of 5 stars

This novel was published in 1964. The narration begins in the present tense, immediately drawing the reader into the novel. During the early part of the work, the story seems to be about a murder attempt gone awry. There is a cimatographic element here, too, since often the same scene repeats itself from another character’s point of view, as in James Joyce’s Ulysses. Differing interpretations of the same events, some attributable to deliberate misinformation, seem the order of the day.

The tone...more This novel was published in 1964. The narration begins in the present tense, immediately drawing the reader into the novel. During the early part of the work, the story seems to be about a murder attempt gone awry. There is a cimatographic element here, too, since often the same scene repeats itself from another character’s point of view, as in James Joyce’s Ulysses. Differing interpretations of the same events, some attributable to deliberate misinformation, seem the order of the day.

The tone and ambiance of the work seems at the beginning to be very mechanical, regimented, as if a clock is ticking in the background. The language is crisp and descriptive, at times being merely a list of observations without interpretation. Robbe-Grillet’s writing reminds me of the paintings of Rene Magritte. And then the author begins repeating incidents, even phrases and sentences being the same but with different characters. This is becoming a house of mirrors.

And now the very identity of Wallas, the detective and protagonist, begins to come into doubt. Is he a policeman or the murderer? Has there in fact even been a murder? Why do witnesses keep confusing him with the alleged murderer? Puzzles, puzzles…

Next, dream sequences seem to be inserted into the middle of the narrative, dreams of different characters, not marked off from the primary narrative. But what is primary? And are they dreams? And then, similarly, conjectures, imaginings, reveries, all mixed together. Robbe-Grillet inserts extended passages of apparent minutiae - how a tomato has been cut, how food is arranged on a plate, descriptions of items in store windows - have these any relevance at all?? The city itself seems to be distorted; mapped out on an apparently strict rectilinear pattern, streets seem sometimes inexplicably to loop back on themselves, a walker finding himself without explanation back where he began, in an Alice-in-Wonderland of disorientation. The farther along the story progresses (if the term “progresses” can even apply!), the less linear it becomes, turning into an apparently endless series of intertwined and imbedded loops, layered and woven together.

At the end, the detective, waiting at the setting where another murder may be about to occur, (ah, I shan’t spoil it for you!). The epilogue spirals down as if into a whirlpool, a mind-dizzying spin that concludes this fascinating tour-de-force exploring the boundaries of subjectivity and objectivity, reality and imagination. Wow!
(less)

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Jun 30, 2011 Bob rated it 5 of 5 stars

Robbe-Grillet's first, I think, and a bit more conventional than "Jalousie" and others, though his obsessive objectivism is often manifest - the exact number of times the cafe proprietor moves his cloth around the table to shine it, the exact number of inches the chair sits from the table, and so on.

Set in 1950s Belgium, the story is almost an anti-whodunit about a ring of political assassins - you are told right at the outset who commits a shooting on whom, but the endless layering of speculati...more

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Nov 30, 2011 Dan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Superficially an anthem of misinformation, paranoia, and doubt, the true merit of Robbe-Grillet's "The Erasers" resides in its fatalistic undertones adopted from the myth of Oedipus. Every characater is equally clueless in this murder mystery where even time itself is up for debate. This ambiguitity gives creedence to the nouveau roman objectiveness for which Robbe-Grillet is famous. When so much is unclear, it makes sense for characters to obsess about the most insignificant minutia, grasping f...more

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Dec 20, 2009 Bettie rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Post onto Clare

Recommended to Bettie by: Moxysox

Shelves: winter20092010, published-1964, france, mystery-thriller, books-with-a-passport

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Mar 02, 2012 Zybahn rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literature-modern, mystery

For my full review, please visit Casual Debris.

Perhaps the most notable member of the group of experimental authors practicing the tenets of the Nouveau Roman (New Novel), Alain Robbe-Grillet's first novel is a fascinating, fun and frustrating murder mystery. It deals with a detective by the name of Wallas who is sent to an unnamed town to investigate the murder of Economics Professor Daniel Dupont. The murder is believed to be linked to a series of eight other murders occurring across the count...more For my full review, please visit Casual Debris.

Perhaps the most notable member of the group of experimental authors practicing the tenets of the Nouveau Roman (New Novel), Alain Robbe-Grillet's first novel is a fascinating, fun and frustrating murder mystery. It deals with a detective by the name of Wallas who is sent to an unnamed town to investigate the murder of Economics Professor Daniel Dupont. The murder is believed to be linked to a series of eight other murders occurring across the country over the past eight days, each at precisely 7:30 P.M. What's different about this particular murder is that there is no body, and moreover, unknown to Wallas but revealed early to the reader, is that Dupont is in fact not dead.

There are many wonderful aspects to this novel. The setting itself is incredibly well designed, and the nameless town becomes a familiar geography. Characters are colourful, at times comical and often pathetic, like the detective Wallas who is cursed with poor phrenological features which he suspects are linked to his constant failings, while he roams the streets almost at a loss as to how to investigate. The premise that his career is to be judged on the merits of whether or not he can solve a murder that never happened is masterful tragic irony. His fate is perfectly summed up by the fact that he regularly pauses in his investigations to search for a pencil eraser that he remembers well but that may not even exist. Erasers are plentiful throughout the novel, from the pencil erasers to more subtle suggestions, such as pervasive forgetfulness, changing or replacing facts and even actual events, along with the conspiracies that these nine murders were part of a series of hits conducted by hit-men, or "erasers."

The novel contains a number of recurring elements, from notions of duality to the idea that everything and everyone is mirrored. Wallas has an uncanny resemblance to the main suspect in this case, and is constantly being mistaken for that other, shadowy individual. People and objects have their twins and their alternates, as do events which are constantly repeating themselves. It is almost as though the novel is only one link from a never-ending cycle. The bar that opens and closes the novel is described as an aquarium, so that all its inhabitants are fish living in a glass bowl, swimming around in eternal circles.(less)

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Sep 20, 2010 Nate D rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: noir, france

Robbe-Grillet in noir-est noir form for his first published novel. Even in a story of detection and murder, of course, his prose is highly subjective and filled with ambiguous repetition of detail. These tendencies were mostly early in their arc of development at this point, though, meaning the clearest plotting of anything I've read from him, but also less of that rarefied aesthetic atmosphere that continually permeated his work thereafter. It reads like Robbe-Grillet, but doesn't entirely feel...more

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Mar 09, 2008 Ken rated it 5 of 5 stars

In an odd twist of fate, Alain Robbe-Grillet died the same week that I finally finished reading his debut novel, The Erasers. I don’t ascribe any importance to that, it was just odd.

The Erasers reminds me of Black Sabbath's Black Sabbath or The Stooges The Stooges or Metallica's Kill 'Em All or Public Enemy's Yo! Bum Rush the Show. There is something great here, it isn't perfected yet, but there is hint of something amazing to come. This grand experiment will yield a Paranoid or a Fun House or...more

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Nov 25, 2011 Sergei_kalinin rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Классика "нового романа"; по-своему очень любопытная книга, но читалась как-то тяжело, потому такая оценка :)

Специфика книги в том, что сюжет (детективный!) и персонажи в ней - далеко не самое главное :) /там и главного героя-то нет - они меняются по ходу книги/ Главное - стиль!

Что интересно: действие разворачивается вне времени и пространства... Город-лабиринт, по которому плутают герои, улицы описываются занудно и подробно, но при этом составить его карту решительно невозможно... Часы одного и...more

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Jun 19, 2008 Marissa rated it 1 of 5 stars

The premise of the book is simple and gripping enough, but its satirical overtones take over soon enough to keep the reader from being too emotionally invested, and thus disappointed when the mystery takes on new literary territories. At turns, this book is amazingly unique (the allusions to Oedipus, for example, are very cool) and dull (one questions the use of overly cliched stock characters). Inspite of this uneveness, however, this is my favoirite of the Detective Novels I've read this summe...more

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Feb 10, 2012 Sean Masterson rated it 5 of 5 stars

I am a literary Francophile, I like French food too, and this book is why. I even listen to bad 60s French pop music now. Its awful.

Robbe-Grillet voiced a disdain for literary realism and wrote a scathing manifesto of the avant garde in his book Pour un Nouveau Roman. The Erasers is his first attempt at the Nouveau Roman. Though he would later consider it a failure, I think it is compelling rejection of literary complacency.

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Sep 18, 2012 Laura Cowan rated it 5 of 5 stars

The novel as a labyrinth. Absolutely love it. Though when I went around as an undergrad declaring my undying love for Robbe-Grillet, I was embarrassingly unaware of the repeat appearances of underage prostitutes, sado-masochism and other not quite so intellectually focused themes in, what, ALL his other novels? lol. Still, a wonderful book for those of us who like cerebral mysteries and experimental lit.

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Feb 14, 2010 Sonia rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ces trois petites étoiles me gênent un peu. En effet, d'un côté, je sais qu'il s'agit d'un texte important, qui mériterait sans doute mieux; de l'autre, si je suis honnête,j'avouerai que je n'y ai rien compris.
Il y est question de gommes (que le personnage achète avec frénésie) et d'Oedipe. Je ne peux pas en dire plus.

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Jan 08, 2010 KeTURah added it

repetition, repetition, repetition.

i finally read this book - after being guilt ridden for years for lying about reading it during my Modern Novel class in college.

I actually liked it. the end was surprising and ironic. i wish i had read it during class so that i could have discussed it with other people.

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Apr 05, 2012 Jacek Ambroziak rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book is one of the earliest A R-G books and, like The Voyeur, easier to read than say "Into the Labyrinth".
Highly recommended for someone curious about Robbe-Grillet to be the introduction to this author's works.
I am getting ready to re-read it.

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Dec 14, 2009 Alika Yarnell rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, surreal, mind-bending

This book reminded me a little of a David Lynch movie—specifically, Blue Velvet. Not so much in terms of theme or plot (although both involve detectives), but style. Robbe-Grillet describes seemingly mundane objects and scenes with intense details, much in the way that Lynch zooms in with extreme close-ups. The effect is peculiar and eerie and leaves much for the observer to conclude for him/herself.

Overall, I think I like Djinn a bit better than The Erasers, but the latter is definitely worth t...more

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Aug 08, 2011 Marc rated it 3 of 5 stars

Not bad, though definitely takes some getting used to the jumping around of perspectives. Some claim that it's an attempt to reclaim ossified language in order to re-establish our control over nature. Eh.

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Sep 30, 2011 Katrinka rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

3.5 to 4, but I'll give the book the benefit of the doubt. This is not your typical detective story; very French new wave (OK, after all, Robbe-Grillet wrote the screenplay for Last Year at Marienbad), and thoroughly enjoyable.

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May 21, 2008 dead letter office rated it 1 of 5 stars

i hate crap like this. the author constructs a detective novel-like plot and then proceeds to weave in all kind of confusion and inconsistency in order to make it into serious, postmodern literature. the critics evidently bought all the shit he was selling, because this guy is supposed to be a big deal. if paul auster was french (which he probably wishes he was in the instants of insecurity when he momentarily doubts that new york is at the precise center of the literary universe) and had been...more

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Jan 23, 2010 Sharon rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: in-french

Perhaps I should not have read this on my own. Did not understand it. Did not like it. Too many gimmicks and not enough story.

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Oct 04, 2012 Juliana Gray rated it 3 of 5 stars

Not as good as The Voyeur or Jealousy, but this book still shows Robbe-Grillet's talents at manipulating point of view and the reader's perceptions.

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Jul 27, 2011 Asyoulikeit rated it 2 of 5 stars

not bad prose but as i get closer to the end i coudn't care less about everything and that's not good for a small novel

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Aug 28, 2009 Charlene rated it 2 of 5 stars

I'm not much of a mystery fan. I suppose this plot is supposed to be somewhat special.

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Jan 06, 2010 Gabriel rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: shadow-man

Robbe-Grillet would go on to much more drastically erase the subjectivity from his fiction (in the psychological/James Wood/f.i.d. sense, anyway), but this first novel contains some extensive passages "in character." As a result, it is more wholly a "novel" in the traditional generic sense of the term. And, keeping himself within these boundaries, exploring what are still the novel's unique strengths, gives Robbe-Grillet extraordinary power to effect the kind of bizarre flickers that are his pro...more

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May 22, 2010 Iniville rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: surrealist, fiction

This book played like a movie in my head while I was reading it.

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Aug 18, 2009 Anselm rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Diamond Sea is not an Alain Robbe-Grillet

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Aug 23, 2010 Adam rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: prose, 1900-1969

Alain Robbe-Grillet's [i:]The Erasers[/i:] is the rare novel written very much with academia and literary theory in mind that still rings true. It's not [i:]Jealousy[/i:], but it's still excellent and evocative and unique. It's too much to get into right now, but I might write more extensively about it later.

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About Alain Robbe-Grillet

Alain Robbe-Grillet was a French writer and filmmaker. He was along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and Claude Simon one of the figures most associated with the trend of the Nouveau Roman. Alain Robbe-Grillet was elected a member of the Académie française on March 25, 2004, succeeding Maurice Rheims at seat #32.

He was married to Catherine Robbe-Grillet (née Rstakian) .

Alain Robbe-Grillet was...more Alain Robbe-Grillet was a French writer and filmmaker. He was along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and Claude Simon one of the figures most associated with the trend of the Nouveau Roman. Alain Robbe-Grillet was elected a member of the Académie française on March 25, 2004, succeeding Maurice Rheims at seat #32.

He was married to Catherine Robbe-Grillet (née Rstakian) .

Alain Robbe-Grillet was born in Brest (Finistère, France) into a family of engineers and scientists. He was trained as an agricultural engineer. In the years 1943-44 Robbe-Grillet participated in service du travail obligatoire in Nuremberg where he worked as a machinist. The initial few months were seen by Robbe-Grillet as something of a holiday, since in between the very rudimentary training he was given to operate the machinery he had free time to go to the theatre and the opera. In 1945, Robbe-Grillet completed his diploma at the National Institute of Agronomy. Later, his work as an agronomist took him to Martinique, French Guinea,Guadeloupe and Morocco.

His first novel The Erasers (Les Gommes) was published in 1953, after which he dedicated himself full-time to his new occupation. His early work was praised by eminent critics such as Roland Barthes and Maurice Blanchot. Around the time of his second novel he became a literary advisor for Les Editions de Minuit and occupied this position from 1955 until 1985. After publishing four novels, in 1961 he worked with Alain Renais, writing the script for Last Year at Marienbad (L'Année Dernière à Marienbad), and subsequently wrote and directed his own films. In 1963, Robbe-Grillet published For a New Novel (Pour un Nouveau Roman), a collection of previous published theoretical writings concerning the novel. From 1966 to 1968 he was a member of the High Committee for the Defense and Expansion of French (Haut comité pour la défense et l´expansion de la langue française). In addition Robbe-Grillet also led the Centre for Sociology of Literature (Centre de sociologie de la littérature) at the university of Bruxelles from 1980 to 1988. From 1971 to 1995 Robbe-Grillet was a professor at New York University, lecturing on his own novels.

In 2004 Robbe-Grillet was elected to the Académie française, but was never actually formally received by the Académie because of disputes regarding the Académie's reception procedures. Robbe-Grillet both refused to prepare and submit a welcome speech in advance, preferring to improvise his speech, as well as refusing to purchase and wear the Académie's famous green tails (habit vert) and sabre, which he considered as out-dated.

He died in Caen after succumbing to heart problems

Style

His writing style has been described as "realist" or "phenomenological" (in the Heideggerian sense) or "a theory of pure surface." Methodical, geometric, and often repetitive descriptions of objects replace the psychology and interiority of the character. Instead, one slowly pieces together the story and the emotional experience of jealousy in the repetition of descriptions, the attention to odd details, and the breaks in repetitions. Ironically, this method resembles the experience of psychoanalysis in which the deeper unconscious meanings are contained in the flow and disruptions of free associations. Timelines and plots are fractured and the resulting novel resembles the literary equivalent of a cubist painting. Yet his work is ultimately characterised by its ability to mean many things to many different people[2].

Novels

Robbe-Grillet wrote his first novel A Regicide (Un Régicide) in 1949, but it was rejected by Gallimard, a major French publishing house, and only later published with 'minor corrections' by his life-long publisher Les Editions de Minuit in 1978. His fi(less)

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