The vituperative turn against naturalism and the nineteenth-century novel spearheaded by Alain Robbe-Grillet and other proponents of the nouveau roman has contributed towards an insular vision of what constitutes the modern French novel. We can identify two main camps: the Flaubertians and the Sartreans. The former incorporate the nouveaux romanciers as well as ancillary figures such as Queneau, Duras and Perec, writers who in their vastly different ways strive for what a television pundit once described as the ‘heaven of pure style’. Existentialists, polemicists, women writers and many contemporary francophone writers rally to a different flag, which represents what may broadly be termed a ‘literature of ideas’. Other groups, notably the Surrealists, have practised a very French form of alternance. Proust and Céline stand together alone.

It is worth reflecting on to what extent this description of a national culture, crass and simplistic though it may be, determines the reception of its literature, both new and old. Consider a view from the outside, in this instance supplied by the American novelist John Updike:

Updike elaborates on what many would regard as a stereotypical view of French culture. His remarks conclude an essay on the early fiction of Michel Tournier, and they adumbrate the reasons for Tournier's failure to catch on in the anglo-saxon world. The surprise is not that Updike misreads Tournier—he doesn't, the essay is astute and perceptive—but that the stereotype of the national culture is so strong that it can be used to sum up an iconoclast like Tournier, who has been described by others variously as a ‘bankrupt traditionalist’ and a ‘postmodern writer’, and by himself as a ‘un naturaliste mystique’ (PP, 245).

There is no doubt that Tournier produces a ‘literature of ideas’.