Table description

[Heikki Raudaskoski]

>On Mon, 16 Oct 2006, Steven wrote:
> 	Sounds like Robbe-Grillet.
> > On Oct 16, 2006, at 5:32 PM, Ya Sam wrote:
> > a description of a poor man's table for something
> > like 20 or 30 pages. It was long ago when I heard about it,
> > and nobody still has been able to spot that novel.
> > Maybe you've heard of it?


Robbe-Grillet's "In the Labyrinth" (1959) especially consists
of such detailed geometrico-physical descriptions. At the time
R-G considered himself an "objectivist", insisting that writers
should only impersonally describe physical objects.

Umberto Eco presented an early critique of this stance in "The
Open Work" (1962): "[T]here is quite a discrepancy between what
Robbe-Grillet says he is doing in his work and what he in fact does.
In his books, things do not appear as extraneous metaphysical
entities, totally  unrelated to us; rather, they appear to have a
very particular relationship with us, to be "intentioned" by us.
They are assumed and judged, and therefore reduced to a human
dimension. Robbe-Grillet's work deals both with objects and with
the people who see them and who can no longer relate to them,
though they might yet find a new way of doing so in the future."
(Cambridge, Mass: Harvard U Press 1989. Trans. Anna Cancogni.
Pp. 151-152).


Heikki