SOURCE: “Internalized Reality: The Subjective Point of View,” in Narrative Consciousness: Structure and Perception in the Fiction of Kafka, Beckett, and Robbe-Grillet, University of Texas Press, 1972, pp. 134-48.

In the following essay, Szanto examines the presentation of character and narrative perspective in Robbe-Grillet's fiction. According to Szanto, “Robbe-Grillet is not telling stories as much as he is creating characters—not really creating characters, either, as much as creating an atmosphere for a character.”

There are a number of ways in which the narrator of a tale can present himself to a reader. Robbe-Grillet's first three novels, The Erasers, The Voyeur, and Jealousy are told in the third person, yet the importance of each novel lies in its capacity to produce the immediate presence of a narrator. In each novel the narrator exists at every point only within the character relevant to that particular narrative. There is no gratuitous...