Third Book of Roubaud's Great Chronicle

Over at The Complete Review, Michael Orthofer has favorably reviewed "Mathematics," the third installment of Jacques Roubaud's great chronicle that began with "The Great Fire of London" and continued with "The Loop." To his credit, Orthofer is astute enough to recognize the book as something other than a novel. He writes that "Mathematics" is "presented decidedly (or at least parenthetically, in the US edition) as: 'a novel', yet the first-person narrative is clearly autobiographical: it seems very much like a memoir of Roubaud's time at university, and then his military service. While creatively presented, there is little that is obviously fictional about it." In other words, it is a chronicle. Odd how many reviewers continue to do without a term (or without coining an alternative) which they so obviously need, choosing each time to describe the genre instead, usually at some length.

Jacques Roubaud's Masterpiece of Literary Nonfiction

Among the great chronicles that, for English-speaking readers, have been mislabeled as novels is Jacques Roubaud's "The Great Fire of London." Although he is an Oulipian, Rouabaud is a great admirer of the conventional, middle-brow novel, particularly in its British incarnations, so he almost certainly is under no illusion that his great avant-garde work fits into the genre. It is indeed a chronicle, but one of the most complex and artful ever composed - and one of the least-recognized masterpieces of modern literature. For many years only the first volume was available in English, but a couple of years ago Dalkey Archive brought out another, "The Loop," and will soon release a third, "Mathematics:"