Robert Pinget

Robert Pinget (Geneva, 1919 - Tours, 1997) was a novelist and playwright born in Switzerland who wrote in French and is associated with the nouveau roman. He matters because he produced a large body of experimental fiction and drama in the second half of the twentieth century while living for most of his life far from Paris.

After studying law and working for a year as a lawyer in Geneva, he moved to Paris in 1946 to study fine arts, with a focus on painting. His first book was a collection of short stories, Entre Fantoine et Agapa (1951), followed in 1952 by his first novel, Mahu o el material. His next novels were harder to place. Graal Flibuste was turned down by Raymond Queneau at Gallimard before it appeared with Éditions de Minuit in 1956. That publisher became his regular home, and his association with it is one reason critics often group him with the nouveau roman writers, although he never formed a fixed group with them.

Pinget wrote novels, plays, radio pieces and dialogues. His style relies on monologue, repetition, unfinished narratives and unreliable voices, and his themes include memory, identity and the difficulty of communicating. He formed a lasting friendship with Samuel Beckett, whom he met in 1955, and scholars have often compared their work. He became a French citizen in 1960 and settled in 1964 in Touraine, where he lived and wrote for the rest of his life in a sixteenth-century house.

His legacy lies mainly in how he pushed narrative toward fragmentation and spoken rhythm, and in his place among the authors of Éditions de Minuit. He died in Tours in 1997.