11 Facts About Alain Robbe-Grillet

Alain Robbe-Grillet was born in Brest to a family of engineers and scientists.

Alain Robbe-Grillet died in 2008 in Caen after succumbing to heart problems.

Alain Robbe-Grillet's first published novel was The Erasers, which was issued by Les Editions de Minuit in 1953.

In 1963, Alain Robbe-Grillet published For a New Novel, a collection of previously published theoretical writings concerning the novel.

From 1971 to 1995, Alain Robbe-Grillet was a professor at New York University, lecturing on his own novels.

Alain Robbe-Grillet both refused to prepare and submit a welcome speech in advance, preferring to improvise his speech, as well as refusing to purchase and wear the Academie's famous green tails and sabre, which he considered outdated.

Alain Robbe-Grillet wrote his first novel A Regicide in 1949, but it was rejected by Gallimard, a major French publishing house, and only later published with minor corrections by his lifelong publisher Les Editions de Minuit in 1978.

Alain Robbe-Grillet himself argued that the novel was constructed along the lines of an absent third-person narrator.

Alain Robbe-Grillet commenced with L'Immortelle which won the coveted Louis Delluc Prize of 1962.

Subsequently, more than a decade passed before Alain Robbe-Grillet got behind the lens again, this time filming a mystery thriller on a small Greek island with Fred Ward starring as the confused Frank in Un bruit qui rend fou.

The eponymous film La Belle captive, written and directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet, was released in 1983.