The French author Alain Robbe-Grillet died today. He's one of my favorite writers even if I am only able to read his books in translation.

In a world where everyone in publishing cries out that readers absolutely must be grabbed by their throats in the very first sentence, if not the first word, you've got to admire a man who starts a novel by counting banana trees.

He bristled at those who try to legislate what a novel must be, who invariably try to pass off their own opinions as objective reality.

I loved the way he tweaked the literary establishment -- whether he was remarking on the sky's absence of emotion or depicting a recurring centipede which grew larger at every viewing, but was just a centipede, really, not a symbol of anything. How could you think it!

Because Robbe-Grillet pointedly eschewed so many accepted literary conventions -- particularly the tendency to stuff every aspect of a book with often dubious psychology -- he offers excellent insights into how to write cleanly, clearly, and with great effect without recourse to the usual cliches.

His novels are perhaps not easy to read, but I found them immensely rewarding. For me they held a hypnotic quality, a statement which I am sure Robbe-Grillet would not like at all.