SOURCE: Watson-Williams, Helen. “Quintessential Sarraute: A Reading of L'Usage de la parole.” Essays in French Literature, no. 27 (November 1990): 40-5.

In the following essay, Watson-Williams provides a brief summary of Sarraute's L'Usage de la parole, commenting on the consistency of her thought, especially Sarraute's emphasis on the value of individual authenticity.

From the publication of Tropismes in 1939 to her recent book L'Usage de la parole,¹ translated as The Use of Speech,² Nathalie Sarraute's work has been astonishingly consistent and individual. Over some sixty years the quiet but unmistakable voice has continued to be heard and to speak memorably to those attuned to her personal view of the world we live in.

It is admittedly a highly personal view of our turbulent century, one which, as Simone de Beauvoir reproached her, deliberately excludes the rough and tumble of everyday European life³ in order to examine in the closest detail the...