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From books by John Hawkes and Nathalie Sarraute to contemporary writers Lance Olsen and Steve Aylett, these stories have shattered preconceived notions about novels and recast the bits into fresh forms.

Calder’s refined literary palate — sometimes at odds with his admittedly uneven commercial acumen — led him to bring out books by Eugène Ionesco, Marguerite Duras, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Claude Simon, William S. Burroughs and Nathalie Sarraute in Britain.

The book is also a descendant of the nouveau roman, taking formal cues from and shaping its particular version of narrative play in the mold of the enigmatic novels of writers like Alain Robbe-Grillet, Michel Butor and Nathalie Sarraute.

As for its application to the novel, the very thing she stumped for, she didn’t really like the models she held up: “I thought I liked William Burroughs and Nathalie Sarraute and Robbe-Grillet, but I didn’t. I actually didn’t.”

During her Paris summers she acquired a deeper knowledge of the work of Godard, Bresson, Genet, Lévi-Strauss, Robbe-Grillet, Nathalie Sarraute—the people she would write about in “Against Interpretation.”