5 JUNE 1971, Page 25

Waugh victims

Sir: It is time that someone stood up to Mr Auberon Waugh who gets away with it each week with impunity whilst his helpless victims have no redress.

He regularly assails writers of dream sequences, flashbacks, the confusion of hallucination and real experience and so on. True, there can be too much of it and in the hands of a poor writer the results arc boring or incomprehensible. But these experiments with time are not a British invention although James Joyce may have been an influence. They are today the tools of trade of a group of brilliant French writers who have all at some time or other obtained inter- national literary prizes — Prix Meclicis. Prix de Mai, Prix des Critiques (sic), Prix Fcmina and recently the Nobel Prize for Samuel Beckett, but not, incident- ally, the kiss of death from the Academie Goncourt.

If Mr Waugh is looking for a reason for the decline of the novel he might read Alain Robbe- Grillers apologia for the 'nouveau roman' which I shall be happy to send to him (or to you, sir) either in the original or in translation.

I also recommend his reading the latest publication from Les editions de Mmuit. Robbe-Grillet's Projet pool' one Revolution q New York.

1 he experience could so unnerve Mr Waugh that he might write a favourable review one day, the dear old fuddyduddy.

Geo. E. Assinder Windywalls, Little Hallingbury, nr Bishop's Stortford, Herts