The Primary Image/Les Gommes (1953)

in almost every work by Alain Robbe-Grillet is the automaton. He's so anti-consciousness or anti-privileging consciousness. My favorite work by him is the short story with the children on the beach. From Cliches (Remember that's a false cognate. It's "snapshots" en francais). Pure Philip Glass when Philip Glass was over there, probably sitting on the beach with Nadia Boulanger. There is a photo of that, I believe. Of Glass as a young man wearing a sweater sitting next to her.

I'm reading The Erasers, which is a sort of philosophical dereglement of the detective novel.

It's early Robbe-Grillet. 1953.

I wonder whether this strange take on an investigative novel was the inspiration for Marguerite Duras's similarly inventive novel centered on a murder and featuring a pixilated detective.

But she didn't go where he's going.

Why would she? Her mainframe is completely different.

I actually prefer her mainframe, her lush indulgence of grammar as an alternative source of the erotic impulse, although sometimes I'm in the mood for Robbe-Grillet's stiff, astute, and decidedly formal approach to perception.