“Everything is contaminated. It seems, though, that the favorite domain of tragedy is the narrative complication, the romanesque. From all mistresses-turned-nuns to all detective-gangsters, by way of all tormented criminals, all pure-souled prostitutes, all the just men constrained by conscience to injustice, all the sadists driven by love, all the madmen pursued by logic, a good ‘character’ in a novel must aboce all be double. The plot will be ‘human’ in proportion to its ambiguity. Finally, the whole book will be true in proportion to its contradictions.”
(Alain Robbe-Grillet, For a New Novel (trans. Richard Howard), p.62)