Reading Order
TropismesTropismes Reading Order
Tropismes (Tropisms, 1939, revised 1957) by Nathalie Sarraute is the founding text of the nouveau roman and the first literary demonstration of the 'sub-conversation' — the layer of pre-verbal movement and sensation beneath the surface of social interaction that Sarraute spent her career exploring. The title takes its name from the biological tropism — the movement of an organism toward or away from a stimulus — as a metaphor for the almost imperceptible psychological movements that take place between people in ordinary social situations, beneath the level of conscious awareness. Tropismes consists of twenty-four short prose pieces, almost without narrative or character, observing the barely perceptible psychic movements in scenes of bourgeois life. Sarraute published the book privately in 1939; it was largely unnoticed until Robbe-Grillet's own work and the nouveau roman phenomenon of the 1950s drew attention to the earlier Sarraute, and the expanded version (1957) became a key text. Sarraute's theoretical essays, collected in L'Ère du soupçon (1956), give the clearest account of her project.
Where to start
Read Tropismes in one sitting — the twenty-four pieces are short and cumulative; their effect depends on reading them together rather than separately. Read L'Ère du soupçon (1956) immediately after for the theoretical account of the sub-conversation and the nouveau roman. Then read Portrait d'un inconnu (1948) and Martereau (1953) for the developed novelistic forms of the same project.
Complete Tropismes Book List
- 1Buy
Tropismes
Nathalie Sarraute·1957·Start here — read in one sitting; the founding text; the 1957 expanded version is the standard one - 2Buy
L'Ère du soupçon
Nathalie Sarraute·1956·The Age of Suspicion — the theoretical essays; the clearest account of what Sarraute is doing and why; read immediately after Tropismes - 3Buy
Portrait d'un inconnu
Nathalie Sarraute·1948·Portrait of a Man Unknown — the first novel; a narrator who observes a father and daughter's relationship through the sub-conversation; read after Tropismes - 4Buy
Martereau
Nathalie Sarraute·1953·The developed form of the sub-conversation in a conventional family setting; the fullest demonstration of the tropism as novelistic structure - 5Buy
Enfance
Nathalie Sarraute·1983·Childhood — the late autobiographical work; Sarraute interrogating her own memories in a double-voice dialogue; her most accessible book
Tropismes — Frequently Asked Questions
What is a tropism in Sarraute's sense?
Sarraute borrows the biological term 'tropism' — the involuntary movement of an organism toward or away from a stimulus (the turning of a plant toward light) — to describe the almost imperceptible psychological movements that take place in social interaction. When two people speak, Sarraute argues, the audible words are only the surface of a much more complex interaction: beneath the conversation, barely perceptible movements of attraction, repulsion, aggression, submission, anxiety, and desire are constantly occurring, shaping the interaction without ever being named. The tropism is this sub-verbal layer — the psychic movement that precedes and underlies social exchange.
What is the 'sub-conversation'?
The sub-conversation (sous-conversation) is Sarraute's term for the layer of psychological reality that conventional social interaction suppresses. When people speak to each other, they exchange conventional phrases and social forms; beneath these, a completely different exchange is taking place — of aggression, desire, fear, and manipulation — that the social forms simultaneously express and conceal. Sarraute's literary project is to make this sub-conversation visible, to find a prose that can capture the barely perceptible movements beneath the surface of social life. L'Ère du soupçon gives the fullest theoretical account of the sub-conversation.
How does Sarraute differ from Robbe-Grillet?
Sarraute and Robbe-Grillet are both associated with the nouveau roman, but their projects are almost opposite. Robbe-Grillet insists on the pure surface of the world — objects and spaces without psychological depth, without symbolic meaning, without emotional resonance; he refuses interiority. Sarraute insists on the radical interiority beneath the surface — the barely perceptible psychological movements that conventional psychology has missed, but that are more real than the social surface. For Robbe-Grillet, the enemy is psychological depth; for Sarraute, the enemy is the conventional psychological categories (character, motive, emotion) that have blocked access to genuine depth.
Why is Tropismes significant as a literary historical document?
Tropismes was written in 1939 — the same year as Robbe-Grillet was finishing his education — and anticipates by fifteen years the formal experiments of the nouveau roman proper. It shows that the movement's rejection of conventional novelistic conventions was not a sudden revolution of the 1950s but a continuous development from earlier sources. Sarraute cites Virginia Woolf and Dostoevsky as her predecessors; the Woolfian stream of consciousness and the Dostoevskian double are the models she is developing. Tropismes places the nouveau roman in a longer trajectory of the twentieth-century European novel's movement inward.
What is L'Ère du soupçon?
L'Ère du soupçon (The Age of Suspicion, 1956) is a collection of four essays in which Sarraute gives her theoretical account of the nouveau roman. The title essay argues that the reader's relationship to fictional characters has entered an 'age of suspicion' — the reader no longer trusts the author's construction of unified psychological characters, any more than Dostoevsky's characters trust each other. The other essays analyze the work of Virginia Woolf, the dialogue in Dostoevsky's novels, and the problem of conversation in fiction. The collection is the most important theoretical statement of the nouveau roman alongside Robbe-Grillet's Pour un nouveau roman.
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