The French avant-garde author, pioneer of the “new novel” and screenwriter of such films as Last Year at Marienbad passed away this week. As summarized by Reuters: “Alain Robbe-Grillet became a cult figure among France’s postwar intelligentsia with a genre of novel-writing that rejected conventions such as plot, characterization and emotion. It effectively launched a type of semi-philosophical fiction in which nothing much happens but a vast amount is noticed, imagined or thought.” The Guardian posted this reaction and remembrance. And from AP: “President Nicolas Sarkozy‘s office described Robbe-Grillet as ‘equally at ease in the expression of his most intimate fantasies as in the lucid and dispassionate analysis of concepts.'”