In his first novel, Les Gommes, Robbe-Grillet deliberately exploits the potency of the Oedipus myth, while simultaneously undermining its pretensions to significance. Once the myth is planted in the text, a sculpture of a Greek chariot becomes fraught with meaning: station announcements become oracular, and snippets of news in the newspaper take on Delphic profundity. It is not only the central figure, Wallas, who is trapped, but readers too are caught in the snare of words. Readers determined to make sense of the latent symbolism of the Tarot cards, of the rue de Corinthe, the picture of Thebes, and so on, are likely to make of the novel a reworking of the Oedipus myth. But the fact that the image of the Sphinx, seen in a canal, is only a momentary configuration of bits of paper and orange peel should give us pause…. [The] inclusion of a report...