Auster, Robbe Grillet, Perec all are on the fringes of
crime/noir, playing with the genre, playing with the themes,
the characters, l¹atmosph貥, the style (above all)....all very
worthwhile...check it all out...very rewarding no matter what
and it unclogs the neurons in ways thousands of other
crime/noir stories won¹t...even if it is simply meandering
Œwith the drift¹...even if many other Œserious¹ crime/noir
stories are fully inscribed in the genre and even biting
examples...
And, given the context, I coudn¹t miss noticing and playing
Œfondly¹ with your name... Klute!!!
Steve Novak aka le Montois de D鴲oit
Cinefrog@comcast.net
On 1/30/08 6:37 PM, "Shannon Clute" <
clute@noircast.net> wrote:
> Hi Mark,
>
> I'm a big fan of Auster, and was glad to see you
mention the NY Trilogy
> here. As you pointed out, he takes conventions of
detective fiction
> and makes something very new of them. The
investigation is into
> meaning itself, how it can (or can't) be constructed
in narrative, and
> how the meaning we find (or fail to find) is tied to
metaphysical
> concerns. There are two other authors, both French,
who seem to have
> heavily influenced this vein of Auster's work: Alain
Robbe-Grillet, and
> Georges Perec. Robbe-Grillet's THE ERASERS is a book
you might really
> enjoy, and is readily available in English. If it
were avaiable in a
> good a translation, you would probably love Perec's
LA DISPARITION. I
> loved it so much I wrote my entire dissertation on
it. It's a roughly
> 300 page mystery without the letter "e." Some see it
as a gimmick, but
> I think it's a deeply metaphysical work, about the
relationship between
> transcendent knowledge and mortality. It exists in
one very bad
> translation as A VOID (couldn't be called THE
DISAPPEARANCE since "e"
> is off limits), but word was, a couple of years
back, that a new
> translation was forthcoming.
>
> Best,
>
> Shannon Clute
>
>
>
>
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