The Erasers

It's one of the best detective stories ever written but not for the careless reader. Read it with care twice and you'll see there are NO plot holes. On first reading nothing but plot holes. And - this not a spoiler - every detail is a clue, so pay attention.

The Erasers is one of the most convoluted, complex, knotty novels a reader could possibly encounter, a novel that can be approached from multiple perspectives and on multiple levels, everything from an intricate detective mystery to a meditation on the circularity of time, from the phenomenology of perception to the story of Oedipus, to name several. For the purpose of this review, I will focus on one aspect of The Erasers I have not seen from scholars, literary critics or reviewers - the prevalence of ugliness in the city where the novel is set.With its winding streets and system of canals, the novel's city has been likened to Amsterdam, but any likeness to this beautiful, charming Dutch city ends there. The cold Northern European industrial city we encounter in The Erasers is ugly and creepy, lacking any trace of charm or warmth. The main character, special agent Wallas, who travels to the city to solve a murder, repeatedly reflects on this lack of aesthetic attraction and beauty. For example, we read, " . . . a city completely barren of appeal for an art lover . . . ", and then again, " . . . a huge stone building ornamented with scrolls and scallops, fortunately few in number - in short, of rather somber ugliness." From Wallas's multiple observations, this unnamed city's stark ugliness brings to my mind Golconda by the surrealist Rene Magritte, a painting of a cityscape raining men in black suits and bowlers, painted in the same year as the publication of The Erasers.This unattractiveness also extends to the people inhabiting the city. Two men described in some detail are both fat and flabby and move in a stiff and mechanical way: first, the manager of the café, portrayed as follows: "A fat man is standing here, the manager . . . greenish, his features blurred, liverish, and fleshy in his aquarium.", and second, Laurent, the chief commissioner: "He is a short, plump man with a pink face and a bald skull . . . his overfed body shakes from fits of laughter."Tom, one of the condemned prisoners, from Jean-Paul Sartre's story The Wall is such a flabby, fat man. Also, Antoine Roquentin, the main character in Sartre's novel Nausea, describes shaking hands with another fat man: "Then there was his hand like a fat white worm in my own hand. I dropped it almost immediately and the arm fell back flabbily."So, why do I highlight this? Because I have the sense both Robbe-Grillet and Sartre (who had a great influence on Robbe-Grillet) saw flab and fat as repulsive and ugly, a counter to the possibility of freedom and spontaneity and fluidity we can experience in our human embodiment.In contradistinction, Wallas is a tall, calm young man with regular features and who walks with an elastic, confident gate. But at every turn Wallas encounters ugliness, even in an automat where there is a sign reading: `Please Hurry. Thank you', And this sign is repeated many times on the white walls of the automat. How nauseating! Not surprisingly, Wallas eats too fast, resulting in an upset stomach. Shortly thereafter he returns to a familiar dirty café and he continues to feel ill.Here are few more direct quotes on what Wallas sees in this city:* "Mouth open, the man is staring into space, one elbow on the table propping up his bloated head."* "Once again, Wallas is walking toward the bridge. Ahead of him, under a snowy sky, extends the Rue de Brabant - and its grim housefronts."* "From another angle, the man assumes an almost coarse expression that has something vulgar, self-satisfied, rather repugnant about it."True, Wallas encounters one saleswoman who is upbeat and slightly provocative, but the other people he encounters, to the extent these men and woman are described, are drab and shabby and decidedly unattractive. An entire city of unsightly sights and repellent people. Is it too much of a stretch to interpret the pistol Wallas shoots at the end of the novel as, in part, a reaction to overbearing ugliness? Perhaps in the same way the pistol shots in Albert Camus's The Stranger (a work Alain Robbe-Grillet counts as one of his prime influences) are a reaction to the searing heat and glare from the sun and the young Arab's knife blade?Rather than providing a definitive answer, this raises another question: Are we as readers so coarse and dull and deadened by the modern mechanized world that we accept the ugly as the norm? Does this acceptance account for the fact that all the essays and reviews I have read on this novel do not draw attention to the ugliness Wallas confronts?

I read this many years ago after borrowing it from a friend and had to buy it now to own it and re-read it. My friend read it for a class and came to love it. He told me about and I found the plot intriquing. It's more than that. It's fascinating! Robbe-Grillet writes in such an unusual style which you soon grab on to, and then it pulls you in. As another reviewer said, take nothing for granted. Everything is important. If you like trite stories with no plot aside from the "been there done that" type, then don't buy this. You'll probably hate it. But if you enjoy being captivated by a story, and want a story and plot line to take you somewhere, this is it. This is a story which requires you to think. The story and the plot fold in and on themselves and becomes tangled, but then unfolds and reveals the brilliant mind of the author. A literary masterpiece!

Loved it.

While this is billed as "a pure detective tale or as a complex, many leveled novel," those who are expecting a whodunit will be disappointed. There is certainly a crime: for the eight days preceding the opening of the book a murder has been committed in some part of the country at the same time every day, presumably by the same terrorist group. Now economist Daniel Dupont has been murdered, or has he? Wallas is sent from the Bureau to solve the crime---or is he really the assassin? The book has action and even an ending, but there the similarity with the mystery novel ends. It is more like the British television series "The Prisoner" that aired in the 70's.The action goes back and forth between flashbacks, characters, and ruminations. The same scene is described over and over from the viewpoint of different characters...or is it an imagined event? One character climbing a stairs dissolves into another character climbing a different stairs (or is it) dissolves into another (or is it) character obsessing about how he will climb the same set of stairs. The sound of a buzzer dissolves into the sound of a woman's voice. Another character plans a detailed suicide, but it is only in the imagination of the local police inspector, who realizes there are social limitations to who can be accused of a murder and is determined to report a believable suicide. And is it the hero staring into the canal or the bartender staring into the fishtank?In the end we are left to sort out the fantasies from actual happenings and possible motivations. The author gives cryptic clues: a picture of lightning striking a tower as two figures fall out of it resembling a tarot card, and the mutterings of a drunk who spouts riddles about Oedipus "What animal is parricide in the morning, incestuous at noon, and blind at night?" Who is betrayed, and who is a position to betray? And what about the theory of the inspector's assistant that an illigitimate son has committed murder to collect the inheritance?If you like 'The Prisoner', you will like this. If you want a mystery novel with predictable dialogue and action, pick up Agatha Christie or Mickey Spillane.

Perfect condition and wonderful edition. Very intriguing novel by the author of one of the best movies ever made "Last Year in Marienbad"