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Fable
A love story or rather the story of a betrayal
120 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1971
1 person is currently reading
291 people want to read
About the author
Robert Pinget
68 books41 followersRobert Pinget was a Swiss-born French novelist and playwright associated with the nouveau roman movement.
After completing his law studies and working as a lawyer for a year, he moved to Paris in 1946 to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
In 1951, he published his first novel Entre Fantoine et Agapa. After publishing two other novels, but then having his fourth rejected by Gallimard, Pinget was recommended by Alain Robbe-Grillet and Samuel Beckett to Jérôme Lindon, head of Éditions de Minuit, where he subsequently published Graal flibuste in 1956. Éditions de Minuit became his main publisher.
Scholars and critics have often associated his work with that of his friend Samuel Beckett, who he met in 1955.
(from Wikipedia)
After completing his law studies and working as a lawyer for a year, he moved to Paris in 1946 to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
In 1951, he published his first novel Entre Fantoine et Agapa. After publishing two other novels, but then having his fourth rejected by Gallimard, Pinget was recommended by Alain Robbe-Grillet and Samuel Beckett to Jérôme Lindon, head of Éditions de Minuit, where he subsequently published Graal flibuste in 1956. Éditions de Minuit became his main publisher.
Scholars and critics have often associated his work with that of his friend Samuel Beckett, who he met in 1955.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 3, 2019
Didn't understand it. Don't care.
March 13, 2019
Extraordinarily beautiful and haunting prose poem where each and every sentence deserves pondering.
Read
February 27, 2009Woah, this deceptively short book is making my head spin. I thought it would be a slight diversion from Gormenghast but it's dense and full of bad stream-of-conscious translation jargon, though often the prose is beautiful. Still, it is the sort of book one must pay utmost attention to, and I am often reading while being totally distracted, which I find to be the best way to read. Like Gunslinger, it is poetry and I enjoy some of it but I am having difficulty simply understanding what is going on. And I come here for help and no one's even reviewed it! I may have to dump this one.
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Well I finished "reading" this, though don't ask me what it was about. I eagerly await someone else's thoughts, and a brief summary would also be much appreciated.
"The author now disapproves of the sometimes blasphemous tone of this book." - note on last page.
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Well I finished "reading" this, though don't ask me what it was about. I eagerly await someone else's thoughts, and a brief summary would also be much appreciated.
"The author now disapproves of the sometimes blasphemous tone of this book." - note on last page.
July 31, 2022
A man named Mielle stays the night in an old familiar barn where he reminisces on various images after a cataclysm destroys the town, carrying with him a knapsack full of old photos and receipts. He obsesses over memories of invading barbarians eating a dead boy by the lake, exiles leaving the ruins of their home, a threadbare instrument and its music, Narcissus staring at his reflection in the water, Delphiniums, a priestess-poetess who likes looking at Christ’s circumcised statute a little too much and keeps some smutty photos by her bed, and an aromatic herb garden. At some point, he meets with a gypsy and his family who he invites to stay at his barn, and blinds himself in despair, then later under a different name and on the verge of death develops plans to renovate his home. Towards the end, he discovers a gypsy in the barn who occupies the same spot he was in at the beginning of the novel. Is he really the gypsy and he only imagined himself inviting the gypsy? What is one to make of all this?
In many ways, I am bringing more order to the narrative than really exists. This novel is a messy hodge-podge of images, which includes lines within the book that acknowledges its own chaotic lack of structure:
“Was thinking about that hodge-podge transformed by the magic of successive revelations, they were pretty precarious (13).”
There really is no obvious coherent structure. The book is an incoherent mess, a hodge-podge of images that eschews a sense of time or meaning, but it strives for this quality on purpose. Robert Pinget belongs to a movement of writers known as nouveau roman that attempted to write novels that avoided and challenged the characteristics of the traditional novel.
Some paragraphs almost give us a foothold to gain a sense of what is going on such as the temptation that these bizarre images are reflections and memories of the main character. However, as the quote above describes any temporary sense of meaning is precarious. The main character also assumes various roles throughout the novel, leaving open his identity, and what is happening. Which description of him is the version of him that the reader is supposed to recognize as the authentic character? Which one is merely a fantasy of the “real” character?
We never know what is reality and what is imagination. Another example would be the repeating image of the barbarians. Are those barbarians eating the boy at the lake meant to be a dream-like nightmare that is haunting the character’s subconscious or did actual barbarians invade the town after a cataclysm? When exactly did this happen? Did it happen at all or some sort of mental symbolism? Likewise, the repeated image of Narcissus at the lake who at some point kills himself connects to the image of the dead boy at the lake being eaten by the barbarians. This book is more difficult than stream-of-consciousness as it attempts to “dissolve” time, reality and imagination, and even to some extent only has the faintest hint of a character who himself becomes part of the dream-like images. The only thing really holding the book together is the repetition of images that appear over and over again, are sometimes combined, and sometimes varied and transformed.
The goal seems to be to write a book with no sense of present, past, future, any sense of what is real and what is imaginary. I can’t say I particularly liked this book as it was a little too disjointed for my tastes.
In many ways, I am bringing more order to the narrative than really exists. This novel is a messy hodge-podge of images, which includes lines within the book that acknowledges its own chaotic lack of structure:
“Was thinking about that hodge-podge transformed by the magic of successive revelations, they were pretty precarious (13).”
There really is no obvious coherent structure. The book is an incoherent mess, a hodge-podge of images that eschews a sense of time or meaning, but it strives for this quality on purpose. Robert Pinget belongs to a movement of writers known as nouveau roman that attempted to write novels that avoided and challenged the characteristics of the traditional novel.
Some paragraphs almost give us a foothold to gain a sense of what is going on such as the temptation that these bizarre images are reflections and memories of the main character. However, as the quote above describes any temporary sense of meaning is precarious. The main character also assumes various roles throughout the novel, leaving open his identity, and what is happening. Which description of him is the version of him that the reader is supposed to recognize as the authentic character? Which one is merely a fantasy of the “real” character?
We never know what is reality and what is imagination. Another example would be the repeating image of the barbarians. Are those barbarians eating the boy at the lake meant to be a dream-like nightmare that is haunting the character’s subconscious or did actual barbarians invade the town after a cataclysm? When exactly did this happen? Did it happen at all or some sort of mental symbolism? Likewise, the repeated image of Narcissus at the lake who at some point kills himself connects to the image of the dead boy at the lake being eaten by the barbarians. This book is more difficult than stream-of-consciousness as it attempts to “dissolve” time, reality and imagination, and even to some extent only has the faintest hint of a character who himself becomes part of the dream-like images. The only thing really holding the book together is the repetition of images that appear over and over again, are sometimes combined, and sometimes varied and transformed.
The goal seems to be to write a book with no sense of present, past, future, any sense of what is real and what is imaginary. I can’t say I particularly liked this book as it was a little too disjointed for my tastes.
January 11, 2025
It was aight. I’m just coming outta surgery so I’ve had a decent amount of time to read, but while I was reading this my meds kicked in and I gotta say I really zoned out. It was pretty cool, but idk it might’ve not been the best Pinget to start with, and maybe my perception of it will change as I read the rest of his work.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews