(Posted 9-11-00)
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News Service Contact: Natasha Ashe, 336-334-5371

 UNCG PROFESSOR PUBLISHES NEW BOOK ON ALAIN ROBBE-GRILLET

GREENSBORO —"Understanding Alain Robbe-Grillet", written by Dr. Roch C. Smith, professor of French at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, was recently published by the University of South Carolina Press.

Based on six years of research and several interviews with the French author, Smith's book offers the first examination in English of the entire body of Robbe-Grillet's fiction, including his autobiographical trilogy completed in 1994.

Emerging in the 1950s as an articulate and provocative spokesman for the "new novel," Robbe-Grillet has remained one of the world's leading practitioners of experimental narrative, according to Smith's latest book. He continues to reinvent the genre in ways that challenge the conventions of traditional realism, much of the time bewildering readers and critics with his subversion of narrative structure and of such staples of traditional story-telling as character, plot and chronology.

In his introduction to the French writer, whose works include "The Erasers", "Project for a Revolution in New York" and the autobiographical "Ghosts in the Mirror", Smith suggests that despite the initial shock often felt on a first encounter with Robbe-Grillet, reading his work can be great fun for someone willing to tolerate ambiguity and become an interactive traveler through his narrative mazes. With this exploration of Robbe-Grillet's novels, short stories and autobiographies, Smith offers a guide for the adventuresome reader to the writer's labyrinthine and playful word.

"Understanding Alain Robbe-Grillet," is Smith's fourth book. He has written books on "André Malraux" and "Gaston Bachelard" and is the co-author of a volume of Robbe-Grillet's films. A UNCG faculty member since 1970, Smith has served as associate vice chancellor for academic affairs, associate dean of arts and sciences and head of the department of Romance Languages. He received his B.A. and M.A.T. degrees in Spanish at the University of Florida and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in French at Emory University.