Nathalie Sarraute

I can't stand Nathalie Sarraute or any of the new French novelists, including Alain Robbet Grillet. I get the sense that I'm reading a novel by "T.S. Eliot" and the "objective correlative" crew when I read those books. I must admit though that cinematically, these writers come out incredibly aesthetic. I don't know why characters have to be represented as objects, possessing repetitive and destructive habits, having no choice, driven by sheer notions of status and group identity. These characters must be so scared inside, so damned scared of revealing themselves. They must have done something so terrible such that only the facade matters. Around themselves, they've literally created a fictional identity they call themselves which is much more permanent than their real selves, made of mere fantasies, relating themselves to art rather than life, they are lifeless vampires. I suppose this is how many Europeans were at that point. I really don't know, but I don't buy the idea that these are internal landscapes that the characters are living and reliving... memories, landscapes of memories. These authors have been so hardened, are so full of contempt for the world, that they can only make relentless fun of it. But the only difference between the author we has stepped out of the repetitive pattern of life and the character is that the author has simply become a spectator who does nothing, but watch.