Alain Robbe-Grillet is internationally hailed as the chief spokesman for the noveau roman and one of the great novelists of the twentieth century. The Erasers, his first novel, reads like a detective story but is primarily concerned with weaving and then probing a complete mixture of fact and fantasy. The narrative spans the twenty-four-hour period following a series of eight murders in eight days, presumably the work of a terrorist group. After the ninth murder, the investigation is turned over to a police agent, who may in fact be the assassin.
Both an engrossing mystery and a sinister deconstruction of reality, The Erasers intrigues and unnerves with equal force as it pull us along to its ominous conclusion.
Robbe-Grillet's first experiment... In an odd twist of fate, Alain Robbe-Grillet died the same week that I finally finished reading his debut novel, The Erasers. I don't ascribe any importance to that, it was just odd.
The Erasers reminds me of Black Sabbath's Black Sabbath or The Stooges The Stooges or Metallica's Kill `Em All or Public Enemy's Yo! Bum Rush the Show. There is something great here, it isn't perfected yet, but there is hint of something amazing to come. This grand experiment will yield a Paranoid or a Fun House or a Master of Puppets or a It Takes A Nation of Millions....
In many ways, The Erasers is the most `conventional' of Robbe-Grillet's novels if for no other reason than it was his first stab at the New Novel. On the surface, the story can even be perceived as a more intricate form of crime fiction. In a small seaside town, Daniel Dupont, a professor, becomes the ninth victim in nine days of an unknown assassin. Theories abound as to the murder's true identity: a terrorist group unhappy with the professor's political leanings or a long lost bastard child. Arriving in town the day after the murder is one Detective Wallas who has been sent to investigate the murder. And so it begins...
Over a 24-hour period, Robbe-Grillet has us following Wallas, wandering down blind alleys, retracing steps, replaying scenes over and over again, as he would in Jealousy and In the Labyrinth. We are introduced to the assassin, or are we? We meet many witnesses, but have they actually seen anything? Soon we are forced to ask a disturbing question: Is Wallas in fact the assassin? Is he investigating himself much like Gian Maria Volontè's police inspector in the classic Elio Petri film, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion.
The twisting labyrinthine plot - what would become Robbe-Grillet's hallmark - draws you into the story, taking it to a psychological level that most crime novels (and lesser authors) are unable to achieve. You are forced to consider the possibility that Wallace has a dark side to his character that even his own brain will not reveal to the reader (something RG used even more effectively in The Voyeur). Only by `tailing' Wallas do we start to see the pieces of the disjointed puzzle pulled together and ultimately the grim, inevitable outcome.
In The Erasers, Robbe-Grillet has not completely abandoned traditional use of character and plot. There is a storyline here, but it is condensed into a frenetic series of meetings, arguments, subterfuge, and yes, murders. We are left with dead ends, miscues, faulty memories, and cryptic messages that the confound the reader as much as Wallas. It is this aspect that can turn someone away; the plot is not laid out as a simple series of events and an impatient readers quickly shut down. But compared to Robbe-Grillet's later novels, The Erasers is a great entry point to his writing, the rabbit-hole if you will.
As I said, I don't consider The Erasers to be Robbe-Grillet's finest work. He is a young sprite, playing with new ideas. He wouldn't hit his stride until Jealousy and In the Labyrinth. But my god, what a hell of a debut. And still more infinitely fascinating and perfectly executed than the endless train of `meta-novels' unleashed in years after by lesser writers. It stands in the shadows of Robbe-Grillet's later work, but still exists as one of the great experiments in novel writing. And more importantly, the story is still intriguing, fascinating, and addictive.
A mystery with none of the usual suspects... Although his first novel and written when Robbe-Grillet was still quite young, *The Erasers* has most of the stylistic and thematic elements that characterize his later and greater work. Which is to say, *The Erasers* is a good deal more conventional a text than one might expect from one of the leading practitioners and theorists of the "New Novel." What you have here is a novel that reads something like a David Lynch movie--there is a discernible storyline--beginning, middle, and end in the old-school sense--but like a splintered mirror, the shards reflect a picture back upon itself in what seem an infinite number of possible explanatory scenarios.
In *The Erasers* a "special agent" named Wallas arrives in an unnamed town to investigate a murder linked to a series of similar assassinations believed to be carried out by a terrorist group intent on disrupting the nation's political and economic stability. But that's only one theory why Professor Daniel Dupont was shot to death in his study. Another theory is that he committed suicide. Another is that he isn't dead at all since no one--including the cynical local police commissioner--has seen the body, which has supposedly been lost in a labyrinthine bureaucracy. What witnesses exist are entirely unreliable. Wallas himself apparently looks a good deal like a stranger believed to be the killer. And the city with its frustrating layout of look-a-like streets and canals that seem to duplicate and double-back on each other becomes a maze through which Wallas wanders as exhausted physically as he is mentally.
Robbe-Grillet always a master of atmospheric foreboding provides plenty of it in this "existential" thriller. The story has that disturbing fever-dream quality about it where trivial phrases and incidents repeat themselves so obsessively in contexts and combinations so unexpected that they eventually take on an enigmatic significance that begs for interpretation and eludes it at the same time. Is Wallas really a dupe of the agency he supposedly works for? Does such an agency even exist? Is he the murderer? These are the kinds of questions *The Erasers* forces the reader to ask and you're still asking them after reading the final page. The mystery is too big for one man to figure out; the world cannot be understood ultimately by any single mind even with the "help" of others--there are too many variables, too many unpredictable testimonies, too many hidden agendas, too many "suspects."
Missing the dark, S-M tinged eroticism that would later become his trademark, as well as earn him a certain degree of notoriety, especially in his films, *The Erasers* is not quite as exciting--or as stylistically innovative--as the novels in which Robbe-Grillet fully developed his theories and vision. But it's an interesting avant-garde literary thriller that still retains enough conventional mystery elements to make it enjoyable even for the intelligent, if somewhat less adventuresome, reader.
Like being a little drunk, this book was fun though disorienting I can see why some would dislike the style of this novel. For one, it is (purposely) written in a dry, deceivingly impersonal way. The scenes and even the sentences are fragmented. But that's what this story is all about-taking the fragments and putting them back together. Can also be read as a very fragmented version of the Oedipus story-in fact I think reading it as such will add much understanding to the otherwise confusing tale. I loved reading this book. This was one of the few books that I enjoyed the style of the writing more than the story and characters. I found it delightfully confusing. Like being a little drunk, this book was fun though disorienting. Besides the fragments, there are flashbacks, same scenes described by multiple characters, scenes in which you are not sure if the information is accurate. It was very dreamlike to me. Though you know before most what happened to Dupont, it is still mysterious how it all unfolds. As I said, I loved the style of writing even more than the story. This was my first encounter with Robbe-Grillet and I will actively seek out more of his books.
not your typical mystery novel While this is billed as "a pure detective tale or as a complex, many leveled novel," those who are expecting a whodunit will be disappointed. There is certainly a crime: for the eight days preceding the opening of the book a murder has been committed in some part of the country at the same time every day, presumably by the same terrorist group. Now economist Daniel Dupont has been murdered, or has he? Wallas is sent from the Bureau to solve the crime---or is he really the assassin? The book has action and even an ending, but there the similarity with the mystery novel ends. It is more like the British television series "The Prisoner" that aired in the 70's.
The action goes back and forth between flashbacks, characters, and ruminations. The same scene is described over and over from the viewpoint of different characters...or is it an imagined event? One character climbing a stairs dissolves into another character climbing a different stairs (or is it) dissolves into another (or is it) character obsessing about how he will climb the same set of stairs. The sound of a buzzer dissolves into the sound of a woman's voice. Another character plans a detailed suicide, but it is only in the imagination of the local police inspector, who realizes there are social limitations to who can be accused of a murder and is determined to report a believable suicide. And is it the hero staring into the canal or the bartender staring into the fishtank?
In the end we are left to sort out the fantasies from actual happenings and possible motivations. The author gives cryptic clues: a picture of lightning striking a tower as two figures fall out of it resembling a tarot card, and the mutterings of a drunk who spouts riddles about Oedipus "What animal is parricide in the morning, incestuous at noon, and blind at night?" Who is betrayed, and who is a position to betray? And what about the theory of the inspector's assistant that an illigitimate son has committed murder to collect the inheritance?
If you like 'The Prisoner', you will like this. If you want a mystery novel with predictable dialogue and action, pick up Agatha Christie or Mickey Spillane.
Buy This Book! I read this many years ago after borrowing it from a friend and had to buy it now to own it and re-read it. My friend read it for a class and came to love it. He told me about and I found the plot intriquing. It's more than that. It's fascinating! Robbe-Grillet writes in such an unusual style which you soon grab on to, and then it pulls you in. As another reviewer said, take nothing for granted. Everything is important. If you like trite stories with no plot aside from the "been there done that" type, then don't buy this. You'll probably hate it. But if you enjoy being captivated by a story, and want a story and plot line to take you somewhere, this is it. This is a story which requires you to think. The story and the plot fold in and on themselves and becomes tangled, but then unfolds and reveals the brilliant mind of the author. A literary masterpiece!
Anything Goes Trivia
Trevor
Megaton Man
