The Flemish writer Dani?l Robberechts (1937-1992) refused to identify his books as novels, stories, or essays, according them all equal status as, simply, writing. This liberation from genre gives his work, for all its apparent simplicity, an elusive, hypnotic quality, and no more so than in his debut, "Arriving in Avignon," which records a young man's first encounter with that labyrinthine city, and his likewise meandering relationship with a girl from his home town-and indeed virtually every woman he meets. Hesistant and cautious, unable quite to enter nor turn away, the young man seems...