Robbe-Grillet and Johnson share the same literary heritage. The "crise du réel" that is common to the novels of Joyce, Kafka, Faulkner, and Beckett is also at the center of their works. Absolute, unquestionable values and certainties no longer exist. Everything is subject to doubt. The rational, stable bourgeois world of Balzac has crumbled…. Robbe-Grillet discusses the author's position in this world of changing realities and explains at length his theories on the role of the new novel in a series of essays assembled in Pour un Nouveau Roman. Uwe Johnson states his views on literature in a short essay entitled, "Berlin, Border of the Divided World." He shows the difficulties that he encounters in conveying to the reader the truth and complexity of a simple, observable incident: a man getting off a train that has just crossed the border dividing the Eastern and Western sections of Berlin. In addition, interviews and above all their own works are ample proof that both writers are aware of the opaqueness and complexity of our world and yet are equally dedicated to giving expression to it. (pp. 185-86)

[The] search for truth and reality and their concern not to betray it create some basic affinities between these authors.

Some of these similarities emerge in a comparison of their views regarding the author's position in a text. The absence of the omniscient author eliminates psychological analysis of characters or any other kind of interpretations or conclusions regarding the story itself…. The observable phenomena appear to be the only things that one can rely on in one's quest for truth…. The works of both writers abound in factual information and detailed descriptions. (p. 186)

However, the present function of descriptions differs radically from the one it had in previous realistic or naturalistic texts. In the light of the uncertainty of modern reality, descriptions can no longer serve to reveal or express an already existing reality or an established, unquestionable truth. Their present function is to create reality, this unknown that both novelists are in search of….

Johnson insists in his theoretical essay that the author ought to admit "that he invents what he tells"…. He himself follows his own advice literally in two of his novels. In The Third Book about Achim he lets the author make it clear that all is invented. And at the end of Two Views the narrator assures one of the main characters of the novel, "it is made up" when she insists that in telling her story, he invents it.

The reader finds himself in a position very similar to that of the author. He no longer is in the passive role of an observer, but is actively involved in the creation of the text….

Quite rightly the novels of Robbe-Grillet as well as those of Johnson have been compared to puzzles and detective stories…. However, unlike the traditional puzzle or detective story no answers or solutions are given in their works. The open ending is characteristic and a logical conclusion of the modern novel. Even the most detailed material evidence leads only to suppositions and hypotheses about reality. (p. 187)

The doubts that prompted the modern quest for reality also make its success virtually an impossibility. Not only truth and reality, but also the very elements that constitute and create it are subjected to doubt [according to Robbe-Grillet]. (p. 188)

"Berlin, Border of the Divided World" is in itself an illustration of this [principle]…. Uwe Johnson sets out to describe in a Berlin Interurban Station, "A man, one among many, [who] steps out of a train that has just pulled in, crosses the platform, heads toward the street exit"…. But instead of carrying out this simple Balzacian exercise he demonstrates the complexity and uncertainty of truth-finding. Everything from the kinds of phenomena observed, to the choice of information to be considered and the language to be used in describing and ordering them is constantly subjected to doubt by the existence of alternate points of view…. [Facts] alone do not suffice. The writer is warned by Johnson not to run the danger of "presenting the merely factual as reality"…. For truth is to be sought in the juxtaposition of two ways of truth-finding. Refering to the story in "Berlin, Border of the Divided World", Johnson states:

So long as a literary text of this kind is concerned with truth, its subject must be checked against two contradictory tendencies of truth-finding….

In Speculations about Jakob a number of hypotheses regarding the death of the protagonist are put forth by various people who knew him best. In The Third Book about Achim the contradictory stories and opinions concerning the life of the cyclist abound. Karsch considers them all in order to arrive at the presumptive truth of Achim's life. (pp. 188-89)

The designation "roman de l'absence" fits both the novels of Robbe-Grillet and of Johnson. The reality that they have tried to express is felt only in its absence. (p. 189)

Johnson's first novel is an … obvious example of a "roman de l'absence". As the facts and hypotheses about Jakob's death multiply, the apparently true cause of his death emerges. As the story develops the absence of a political reality [in either the East or the West which is] acceptable to Jakob grows into the subject of the novel, overshadowing everything else….

Robbe-Grillet's and Johnson's common literary heritage based on a "crise du réel" and characterized by their "passion de décrire" is reinforced by their mutual experience of the absence of this very reality that they are in search of. Through precision and objectivity of description they have created in their works a world analogous to modern reality. (p. 190)

However, the general similarities that resulted from their efforts to find new ways of expressing modern reality, the relationship between man and the world built on uncertainties, prove insufficient to create a close identity when one takes into account the kind of reality that each one sought. To examine these differences is to trace Robbe-Grillet's development from mimesis to "l'aventure de l'écriture" and Johnson's from mimesis to historico-political investigation….

There is no doubt in Johnson's mind as to the object of his quest: to describe with precision "the border: the distance: the difference" … separating East and West, in Germany in particular and in the whole world in general. For the truth is to be found in the confrontation of these two existing realities, in the distance that divides them. (p. 191)

The reality that the main characters of Johnson's novels are searching for is of a utopian nature, the kind that would permit the individual not to compromise his moral integrity and not betray his standards of truth and justice. The nostalgia for this utopia is summed up in the question, "Where is this moral Switzerland to which we can emigrate?" It is at the same time a cry of despair that is heard in Johnson's entire work, and in Jahrestage in particular.

The absence of this utopian reality is vaguely expressed in the words "border", "difference", "distance," and concretely symbolized in the actual presence of the Wall dividing Berlin…. The concreteness of the situation in no way simplifies Johnson's efforts of truth-finding. On the contrary, the doubts that, for example in "Berlin, Border of the Divided World" assailed the author in the selection and description of details also hinder his means of expression. "There is no uniform language to express the mixture of independent phenomena that converge at such a border station"…. Identical words and gestures no longer have the same meaning in the two Germanies. Set in this concrete socio-political framework, truth remains just as elusive and hypothetical, reality just as unattainable. Johnson knows the object of his quest: to define the border, the distance, the difference; but not the truth that expresses them. (pp. 192-93)

Everything in the work of Robbe-Grillet is subjugated to form, whereas in Johnson everything serves his quest for truth. For example, in both writers the importance of objects and minute descriptions of events cannot be contested. Yet these surface descriptions serve different functions for the two novelists. It is not the description of an object itself that is of foremost interest to Robbe-Grillet, but the movement that such a description engenders….

In Johnson the detailed descriptions of objects or observable phenomena form the basis, "the conceptual stage" … of truth-finding. On the accuracy and objectivity of these descriptions rests the credibility of the projected hypotheses. (p. 193)

[In Johnson content] determines the choice of form. (p. 194)

[And Johnson makes it clear that although] every work requires a different stylistic approach, the changes have always served the same purpose: to define "the border, the distance, the difference". Johnson's remark concerning treatment of time characterizes his attitude toward all stylistic innovations:

In the standing feud about the treatment of time: conventional versus more recent methods, he [the author] can only choose whichever is the more precise, because precision is part of his job….

This concern for precision is at the basis of Johnson's quest for truth and it intensifies with each work. While the stylistic approaches to the same problem have been changing from novel to novel, the amount of factual historico-political information in them has been gradually increasing. (p. 196)

In Johnson's work the reality of a literary text has gradually become more and more inseparable from actually existing everyday conditions. This development is by no means accidental. Johnson wants his quest for truth to be a practical investigation of our socio-political reality. Johnson makes no secret of how far he is from "art for art's sake"….

The question that inevitably arises is whether one still can speak of the results of such truth-finding as novels. Johnson is the first to have had misgivings. He hesitated to call The Third Book about Achim a novel….

Jahrestage avoids any kind of genre designation. Johnson actually believes that his quest for truth that involves two contradicting politico-cultural systems, necessitates a completely new kind of literary art form….

Conceivably in Jahrestage Johnson has attained a new literary genre that manages to express the uncertainty and complexity of modern reality at the same time as the historical facts of Germany in the 30's and the United States in the late 1960's are absorbed and transformed in Gesine's consciousness. This complex interaction of concrete realities separated by time, place and political belief does succeed in suggesting a truth that lies outside any of these boundaries. (p. 197)

[In] Jahrestage Johnson does succeed in conveying some kind of "totality of modern reality". However, the balance between factual information and created reality is extremely delicate. The line between literature and reportage is very thinly drawn. Johnson himself has been from the very beginning aware of being constantly in "danger of presenting the merely factual as reality" … and consequently of failing to create a poetic reality that transcends the factual. The steadily increasing historico-political references have not as yet destroyed this balance. Jahrestage is definitely more than just a reportage. At the same time, not even Johnson calls it a novel. (p. 198)

Ira Kuhn, "Speculations about Games and Reality: Robbe-Grillet and Uwe Johnson," in Fiction, Form, Experience: The French Novel from Naturalism to the Present, edited by Grant E. Kaiser (Les Éditions France-Québec Inc., copyright, 1976), Éditions France-Québec, 1976, pp. 185-98.∗