In preparing the special focus on French novelist and filmmaker Alain Robbe-Grillet published in our Summer issue, we approached writer Michel Houellebecq, who many would say has taken up Robbe-Grillet’s mantle as the foremost literary provocateur in France today. His response, received only after that issue went to press, follows. —Eds.

EVEN THOUGH ALAIN ROBBE-GRILLET’S BOOKS profoundly and radically bored me right from the start, I devoted hours, perhaps even days of effort trying to read them. I proceeded as one does in such situations: I skipped ahead fifty pages to see if things got better