''Pour un nouveau roman'' (translated as ''For a New Novel'' (US), ''Towards a New Novel'' (UK)) is a 1963 collection of theoretical writings by French author Alain Robbe-Grillet.

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Les Éditions de Minuit Les Éditions de Minuit (, ''Midnight Press'') is a French publishing house. It was founded in 1941, during the French Resistance of World War II, and is still publishing books today. History Les Éditions de Minuit was founded by writer and i ...

, the articles which constitute the book had been published between 1955 and 1963 in a number of French publications, and some were revised prior to inclusion in the book. In it, Robbe-Grillet argues (with reference to his own novels and those of such prominent modernist writers as

Proust Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel ''In Search of Lost Time'' (''À la recherche du temps perdu''; with the previous Eng ...

and

Samuel Beckett Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal and tragicomic expe ...

) that the

novel A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...

form must be re-imagined by each generation. He takes issue with the common idea that the 19th century bourgeois novel (exemplified by Balzac) is the benchmark by which all novels must be judged. After all, he argues, each new form of artistic expression was once new and strange. It is the obligation of the artist to create new and strange artworks which, in turn, create reference points to judge future artworks (and which will by necessity be useless to do so). Controversially, he argues against "several obsolete notions", such as character, story, and depth. The English translation of the collection by Richard Howard was originally published in the US by

Grove Press Grove Press is an United States of America, American Imprint (trade name), publishing imprint that was founded in 1947. Imprints include: Black Cat, Evergreen, Venus Library, and Zebra. Barney Rosset purchased the company in 1951 and turned it in ...

, and in the UK by

Calder Publishing Calder Publications is a publisher of books. Since 1949, the company has published many books on all the arts, particularly subjects such as opera and painting, the theatre and critical and philosophical theory. Calder's authors have achieve ...

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