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Title: Snapshots by Alain Robbe-Grillet, Bruce Morrissette ISBN: 0-8101-1328-7 Publisher: Northwestern University Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00

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Average Customer Rating: 3.75 (4 reviews)

Rating: 4
Summary: Nouveau Roman
Comment: It seems that when this book came out that it was very radical. It was very visually oriented. It was like looking at paintings. This is not Robbe-Grillet's best book, but it distills what was so great about him. When I was a younger writer, this stuff was a big influence. It was very existential, minimal, and bare. I think that some of this style is better suited for film.

Rating: 4
Summary: Reread classic
Comment: Having just read Peter Nadas' "A Lovely Tale of Photography", I had to reread Robbe-Grillet's "Shapshots". Why? Because they both tell stories based on visual description. The traits they have in common, the points at which they diverge are a fascinating comparison.

I don't mean to imply you must have read Nadas to enjoy Robbe-Grillet. Robbe-Grillet is very consistent in his objective observer technique - the senses which are most subjective - taste, smell and touch are all but absent in Snapshots. Some of the shapshots such as The Dressmaker's Dummy tend to require mental gymnastics to visualize the scene precisely as described. Others such as The Way Back are easier to visualize and provide an implied plot line.

This short book is well worth the time to read - either for enjoyment or for a reminder of what was avante-garde 50 years ago.

Rating: 2
Summary: Fairly weak performance
Comment: I count myself among Robbe-Grillet's admirers, but this collection of six early stories really isn't the ideal place to begin if you're unfamiliar with his work. Robbe-Grillet's method is, in part, to replace psychological analysis (a hallmark of French literature) with objective visual description. His work is often hauntingly ambiguous precisely because the author refuses to impose, at least overtly, any kind of meaning on his narrative, or allow us to enter his characters' minds. He simply writes scenes--and let the reader make of it what he will.

In "Snapshots," though, the author generally comes up empty. I just don't know what to think of these stories, which present the reader with a simple sequence of events, elaborately detailed, and then stop. One can pick them apart and find more to them than might be immediately clear, but there isn't much here worth dwelling on. "The Secret Room" is probably the best of an undistinguished lot.

Perhaps the author needed to write these little exercises before he could go on to bigger and better things. I'd advise the interested reader to skip the stories and go straight to the novels, in which Robbe-Grillet's peculiar talent displays itself more fully.