The Mookse and the Gripes discussion

Michel Butor (1926-2016) was a French poet, novelist, teacher, essayist, art critic and translator. He was an experimental writer, associated with the nouveau roman.

He published 4 novels, before switching to the other genres:

Passage de Milan (Les Editions de Minuit, 1954)

L'Emploi du temps (Les Editions de Minuit, 1956). Passing Time trans. Jean Stewart (Simon & Schuster, 1960; Faber and Faber, 1961; Pariah Press, 2021). The original won the 1956 Prix Fénéon

La Modification (Les Editions de Minuit, 1957). Trans. Jean Stewart as Second Thoughts (Faber and Faber, 1958), A Change of Heart (Simon & Schuster, 1959) and Changing Track (Calder, 2017; revised). The original won the 1957 Prix Renaudot

Degrés (Gallimard, 1960). Degrees, trans. Richard Howard (Simon & Schuster, 1961; Methuen, 1962; Dalkey Archive, 2005).

I will add some more thoughts later, but I have recently discovered Butor via some re-prints from three small presses - and he is rapidly becoming one of my favourite authors.

Has anyone else read him (well WG Sebald and Mathias Enard clearly have)

I know the author. I actually had a copy of Degrees when I was a lot younger. Students would occasionally have his books but whether it was for reading or fashion, I don't know much about the author and I can't remember much about the book except it was about students, which means I bought him to try him out and started the book but never finished it. There was so much experimental stuff out there at the time.

He's become one of my favourites over the past year as well! After reading those two, I tried Mobile, an experimental collage-like novel, and it was also surprisingly engaging, warm, funny and moving. I found a cheap copy of 6 810 000 litres d'eau par seconde (translated into English as Niagara, but that translation is likely very difficult to find now) and hope to try that in the original French next.

As a general comment, I'm not sure it's possible to draw a strict line between his 'novels' and 'mixed genre' works. Both Mobile and Niagara were marketed as novels in their English translations.

Sam, I thought you meant you know the author personally! I quickly realized that’s not what you meant, but I was about to be impressed. :)

Especially as he died in 2016.

WndyJW wrote: "Sam, I thought you meant you know the author personally! I quickly realized that’s not what you meant, but I was about to be impressed. :)"

I didn't mean to give that impression, just that I knew of the author. I also sound like I was negative about him in my post. Not at all. I just didn't find he was what I wanted to read at the time. We would go to the bookstore and buy at least a half a dozen books apiece. At least half of those would go unread because they weren't exactly what we wanted. I am glad there is a revival of interest.

Sam and Michel could have been friends before Michel died; who wouldn’t want to be friend with Sam if they could?

I rather like a quote he made towards the end of his life

La littérature, c’est l’expérimentation sur le langage

And this from his essays, in Mathilde Merouani's translation, on the nature of truth in the novel (and I think a reason I find historical fiction problematic):

Let us imagine that we discover that someone, in the 19th century, wrote a letter in which he states that he knew Pere Goriot very well, that the latter was not at all the way Balzac portrayed him, that, for instance, on such and such page, there are glaring inaccuracies. It would of course be of no importance to us.

Pere Goriot is who Balzac says he is (and is what we can infer from what Balzac writes); I can be of the opinion that Balzac is mistaken in the conclusions he draws about his own character, that the latter escapes him, but in order to justify my point of view, I will need to rely on the very sentences in his text; I cannot summon other witnesses.

While the true story can always rely and base itself on exterior evidence, the novel must be enough to generate what it relates. This is why the novel is the ultimate phenomenological field, the ultimate space in which to study in what way reality appears to us or may appear to us; this is why the novel is the laboratory of the narrative.

WndyJW wrote: "Sam and Michel could have been friends before Michel died; who wouldn’t want to be friend with Sam if they could?"

Barely 5:00 AM here and just seeing Wndy's post made laugh so bloody had, I may have woke the neighbors.

Glad you started your day with a laugh, Sam.

Excellent reviews, Paul, your enthusiasm for Butor is contagious. How exciting to discover a new author that you enjoy so much, I’m happy for you. The older we get and the more we read this doesn’t often happen with an author with an already existing body of work.

Is there one novel that you think is the best to start with?

Changing Track of the 2 I have read I would recommend more to others although I preferred Passing Time

Why would you recommend the book you didn’t prefer? Is Passing Time too avant-garde?

Because some people seem to find it rather dull. And generally Changing Track is regarded as his best / most famous novel.

I wouldn't describe Passing Time as particularly avant-garde, but I'd recommend some comfort with or interest in neurotic, obsessive, unreliable narrators that don't have particularly healthy attitudes towards women. Both novels feature narrators like that and it's clear that Butor is criticizing these aspects. And he really brings to his writing a lot of subtle humour and warmth as well as an erudite fascination with art, history and architecture.

I'm about halfway through the experimental 'stereophonic' text 6 810 000 litres d'eau par seconde and I've been reading along with Elinor Miller's translation, Niagara. The French is beautiful, a cross between prose poetry and radio drama, with a great deal of thought put into its rhythms, resonances and multiplicities of meanings, but the translation is fairly clunky and honestly comes across to me as a machine translation at times, unfortunately.

She did become a close friend and collaborator of his after meeting in 1977, some years after this translation.

I love neurotic, obsessive, unreliable narrators, and if they have skewed ideas about women I’m not bothered since the author is criticizing those attitudes. If my TBR wasn’t toppling I would be much more interested in this author, but he’ll have to wait awhile.

For folks wondering what Butor to start with, I found this quote from the Critical Survey of Long Fiction:

"For the general reader, and for many specialists as well, Degrees is the least satisfying and least satisfactory of Butor’s novels, Changing Track the most apparently accessible, Passing Time the most intricate and intellectually satisfying, and Passage de Milan somewhere between the latter two."

So, Paul, you enjoyed the intellectually satisfying novel, but think the rest of us would enjoy the most accessible novel? 🤨

WndyJW wrote: "So, Paul, you enjoyed the intellectually satisfying novel, but think the rest of us would enjoy the most accessible novel? 🤨"

Yes basically. In a sense that an author's least accessible book isn't usually a good gateway drug.

Okay. I though you were calling us philistines.

So I've been reading more and more Butor and thought I'd share a ranking of what I've read, split into three sections of five, which Butor might appreciate. Since he's written/contributed to well over a thousand books, I've probably reached an end to my personal journey, happily on the high note of Letters from the Antipodes.

Favourites
1. Mobile (tied)
1. Passing Time (tied)
3. Changing Track (aka Second Thoughts or A Change of Heart)
4. 6 810 000 litres d'eau par seconde (translated as Niagara)
5. Letters from the Antipodes (an extract from Boomerang)

Enjoyable with caveats
6. Degrees
7. Passage de Milan (French-only)
8. Intervalle (French-only)
9. Vanité (French-only)
10. Réseau aérien (French-only)

Probably skippable
11. Histoire Extraordinaire: Essay on a Dream of Baudelaire's
12. The Spirit of Mediterranean Places
13. Essais sur le roman (the recent Selected Essays translates most of these)
14. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Ape
15. Description of San Marco

Mobile hadn't particularly appealed from a description but sounds I should give it a try

Except - doesn't seem easy to get hold off in English edition (similarly Niagara) - seem to be at collector like prices

Yeah, absolutely give it a try. He really succeeds there with his quilting/quotation technique that he spent much of his subsequent career exploring. It's a shame there aren't any affordable copies of Mobile online at the moment. When copies of the Dalkey edition do show up, they should be reasonably priced.

Niagara, on the other hand, seems to be genuinely rare, and honestly I was disappointed with the English translation of that one and wouldn't bother trying to track it down.