In his first novel in almost seven years [Topology of a Phantom City], Alain Robbe-Grillet, spokesman and practitioner of the new novel (nouveau roman), conjures up the destroyed city of Vanadium. Using old and new tools "the city once more rears up …"—a city of both old and startlingly new forms. An archeologist (David G.? the narrator? the reader?) digs through abandoned rooms and endless corridors, "unrecognizable fragments of what were palatial homes, public buildings … houses of prostitution…." (p. 11)

Topology begins with a section entitled "Incipit" (Latin, "It begins") and ends with a "Coda." Except for similar moves in The Erasers …, with its Prologue and Epilogue, and in Jealousy …, where, on the first page, we find "titles" for the eight sections, this is Robbe-Grillet's first novel whose text is stopped again and again with individually named chapters. Apropos of archeology, however, we are not given chapters but, instead...