‘Drama[s] of exact observation’: Spark and the Nouveau Roman

Abstract

Concentrating on the development of her fiction during the decade spanning 1960 to 1970, this chapter traces the evolving relationship between Spark’s novels and the style and ethos of the nouveau roman. It focuses in particular on Spark’s inventive appropriation of what she termed ‘the drama of exact observation,’ as derived from the meticulous, externalised narration characteristic of the work of one of the key practitioners of the nouveau roman, Alain Robbe-Grillet. Although critical analysis of Spark’s relationship with the anti-novel has largely been restricted to a small selection of overtly experimental novels written by the author during the early 1970s, this chapter demonstrates that the nouveau roman also served as a crucial influence on earlier works including 1960’s subversive social satire, The Ballad of Peckham Rye, as well the uncharacteristically expansive sociopolitical novel, The Mandelbaum Gate, published in 1965. Both texts, the chapter argues, reveal Spark actively interrogating the alternatively humorous and horrifying possibilities of the nouveau roman as a mode of writing. The chapter culminates with a discussion of The Driver’s Seat as Spark’s Spark’s most direct – and self-reflexive – encounter with the anti-novel.