Pinget's works to interpret, a fact which could well explain the paucity of critical studies devoted to it. The best of these, Jean Roudaut's Robert Pinget et la boussole,1 is a probing analysis of the of (la boussole) and the search for a new order and unity in Fable, Identite, and Abel et Bella, all of which were published in 1971. However, the development of such a fundamental thesis forced M. Roudaut to set aside the aesthetic and polemical dimensions of a work which, in my opinion, is notable for precisely these reasons. Pinget, like Beckett to whom he has so frequently been compared, understands that the death of God and the death of man lead inevitably to the of the writer who is in a large measure responsible for the very debacle he deplores. Unlike the other new novelists who sooner or later made their uneasy peace with a dehumanized and irrational world, Pinget has continued to question our most fondly held beliefs and to illustrate the desperate plight of the human psyche at odds with the social, political, and religious institutions of our time. In Fable, a moralizing tale which incorporates virtually all the characteristic features of the avant-garde novel and the modern prose poem, he shows how systematic anti-traditionalism can lead to a total breakdown in communication and, worse still, stifle the inner voice of the creative artist. Fable is, at one and the same time, a succinct and moving demonstration of the dilemma of the modern novelist who is master of a craft