THREE DECADES OF FRENCH

Though the proceedings of a fall 1982 conference on the French New Novela movement that despite Claude Simon's Nobel in 1985 has seen its daythis volume is still timely: first, because the remarks of Simon, Robbe-Grillet, Sarraute, and Pinget are valuable documents; and second, because these novelists' lively rationales show the sincerity behind these experiments in prose rhetoric. These authorial guides are framed by extensive critiques by some of the scholars who promoted the New Novel; Leon S. Roudiez's summation essay is especially insighful. One quibble: these proceedings deserved another copy-editing to remove the last traces of translationese. Marilyn Gaddis Rose, Comparative Literature Dept., SUNY at BinghamtonCopyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.