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Selected Essays
‘There has, so far, not been any literary form whose power is as great as that of the novel. The novel allows us to precisely connect, through emotion or reason, the seemingly most insignificant incidents of daily life and the thoughts, intuitions and dreams which first appear most distant from everyday language.’ Michel Butor
Two years in the planning and one year of working very closely with the translator, these essays are the first new translations of Butor’s work into English for more than 50 years and most of these essays are presented here in English for the first time. Vanguard Editions received the full backing and blessing of the Michel Butor estate, which is managed by his four daughters. A much-overlooked writer in the Anglophone world, this is your chance to discover one of the seminal French writers of the late 20th century. As Gabriel Josipovici says:
'Michel Butor, known in England only as one of the group of remarkable French novelists who came to the fore in the 1950s - Claude Simon, Marguerite Duras, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Robert Pinget were the others - was also one of the great literary critics of the twentieth century, whose essays rank with those of Eliot, Blanchot and Barthes. It is truly a cause for celebration that some of these are at last appearing in English, though typical of our times that it has taken a dedicated small press to make this happen.’
Michel Butor (1926-2016) was a French poet, novelist, teacher, essayist, art critic and translator. He studied philosophy at the Sorbonne and from 1951 to 1953 was a lecturer at the University of Manchester. He was the author of four novels, including L’Emploi du temps (1956; Passing Time), which won the Prix Fénéon, and La Modification (1957; Changing Track), which won the Prix Renaudot. He also wrote several books of non-fiction, including the essays Répertoires [I–V] (1960–1982), from which these essays are taken. In 2013, he was awarded the Grand Prix by the Académie Française for his work as one of the leading exponents of the nouveau roman, although Butor himself long resisted that association.
The translator, Mathilde Merouani, is a teacher from Toulouse, France. She holds the Agrégation in English and has just finished her postgraduate studies at École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, where she wrote a Master’s dissertation on otherness and the relationship to the other in the work of Kazuo Ishiguro.
Contents:
The Critic and their Readers
Speech at the Royaumont (1959)
Answers to "Tel Quel"
The Philosophy of Furniture
The Novel as a Search
The Space of the Novel
The Use of Personal Pronouns in the Novel
Research on the Technique of the Novel
Two years in the planning and one year of working very closely with the translator, these essays are the first new translations of Butor’s work into English for more than 50 years and most of these essays are presented here in English for the first time. Vanguard Editions received the full backing and blessing of the Michel Butor estate, which is managed by his four daughters. A much-overlooked writer in the Anglophone world, this is your chance to discover one of the seminal French writers of the late 20th century. As Gabriel Josipovici says:
'Michel Butor, known in England only as one of the group of remarkable French novelists who came to the fore in the 1950s - Claude Simon, Marguerite Duras, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Robert Pinget were the others - was also one of the great literary critics of the twentieth century, whose essays rank with those of Eliot, Blanchot and Barthes. It is truly a cause for celebration that some of these are at last appearing in English, though typical of our times that it has taken a dedicated small press to make this happen.’
Michel Butor (1926-2016) was a French poet, novelist, teacher, essayist, art critic and translator. He studied philosophy at the Sorbonne and from 1951 to 1953 was a lecturer at the University of Manchester. He was the author of four novels, including L’Emploi du temps (1956; Passing Time), which won the Prix Fénéon, and La Modification (1957; Changing Track), which won the Prix Renaudot. He also wrote several books of non-fiction, including the essays Répertoires [I–V] (1960–1982), from which these essays are taken. In 2013, he was awarded the Grand Prix by the Académie Française for his work as one of the leading exponents of the nouveau roman, although Butor himself long resisted that association.
The translator, Mathilde Merouani, is a teacher from Toulouse, France. She holds the Agrégation in English and has just finished her postgraduate studies at École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, where she wrote a Master’s dissertation on otherness and the relationship to the other in the work of Kazuo Ishiguro.
Contents:
The Critic and their Readers
Speech at the Royaumont (1959)
Answers to "Tel Quel"
The Philosophy of Furniture
The Novel as a Search
The Space of the Novel
The Use of Personal Pronouns in the Novel
Research on the Technique of the Novel
85 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2022
About the author
Michel Butor
313 books77 followersMichel Marie François Butor was born in Mons-en-Barœul, a suburb of Lille. He studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, graduating in 1947. He has taught in Egypt, Manchester, Thessaloniki, the United States, and Geneva. He has won many literary awards for his work, including the Prix Apollo, the Prix Fénéon; and the Prix Renaudot.
Journalists and critics have associated his novels with the nouveau roman, but Butor himself long resisted that association. The main point of similarity is a very general one, not much beyond that; like exponents of the nouveau roman, he can be described as an experimental writer. His best-known novel, La Modification, for instance, is written entirely in the second person. In his 1967 La critique et l'invention, he famously said that even the most literal quotation is already a kind of parody because of its "trans-contextualization."
For decades, he chose to work in other forms, from essays to poetry to artist's books to unclassifiable works like Mobile. Literature, painting and travel are subjects particularly dear to Butor. Part of the fascination of his writing is the way it combines the rigorous symmetries that led Roland Barthes to praise him as an epitome of structuralism (exemplified, for instance, by the architectural scheme of Passage de Milan or the calendrical structure of L'emploi du temps) with a lyrical sensibility more akin to Baudelaire than to Robbe-Grillet.
Journalists and critics have associated his novels with the nouveau roman, but Butor himself long resisted that association. The main point of similarity is a very general one, not much beyond that; like exponents of the nouveau roman, he can be described as an experimental writer. His best-known novel, La Modification, for instance, is written entirely in the second person. In his 1967 La critique et l'invention, he famously said that even the most literal quotation is already a kind of parody because of its "trans-contextualization."
For decades, he chose to work in other forms, from essays to poetry to artist's books to unclassifiable works like Mobile. Literature, painting and travel are subjects particularly dear to Butor. Part of the fascination of his writing is the way it combines the rigorous symmetries that led Roland Barthes to praise him as an epitome of structuralism (exemplified, for instance, by the architectural scheme of Passage de Milan or the calendrical structure of L'emploi du temps) with a lyrical sensibility more akin to Baudelaire than to Robbe-Grillet.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 3, 2022
At its peak, the reconciliation of philosophy and poetry that occurs in the novel brings mathematics into play.
Michel Butor is enjoying a long overdue renaissance in English, courtesy of small independent presses (who do much of the heavy lifting in the UK literary scene).
First Pariah Press reissued the long out-of-print and brilliant novel Passing Time, Jean Stewart's 1960 translation of Butor's L'Emploi du temps, winner, in the original, of the 1957 Fénéon Prize. My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Now Richard Skinner at Vanguard Editions has commissioned, edited and published this collection of translations by Mathilde Merouani of Butor’s essays on the novel, mostly from the 1960s.
The first essay, The Novel As a Search, discusses how the very nature of fiction in the novel makes it perhaps the truest form of all, using (as in a number of the essays) Balzac’s La Comédie humaine as an example:
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.
The reference here to “laboratory” is crucial since Butor very much sees the novel as an evolving, experimental form, one that should be in dialogue with mathematics, philosophy and other art forms. He also argues for the equal importance of realism, formalism and symbolism;
Upon reaching a certain degree of reflection, we understand that realism, formalism and symbolism in the novel constitute an indivisible unity.
The novel naturally aims and must aim at its own elucidation. However, we very well know that some situations are characterised by an inability to self-reflect, and subsist only through the illusion they maintain with their subjects, and they are the ones which correspond to those works inside which this unity cannot be, those attitudes of novelists who refuse to examine the nature of their work and the validity of the forms they adopt, the kinds of forms which could not self-reflect without immediately showcasing their inadequacy, their lie, these forms which present an image of reality which blatantly contradicts the reality that gave birth to them and which is being silenced. There are impostures which the critic must denounce, because such works, despite their charm and merit, sustain and deepen the shadow, keep consciousness in its contradictions and blindness, threatening to lead it into the most fatal disorders.
Other essays consider issues such as the use of space in a novel, “the philosophy of furniture” (one area where I disagree with Butor; I don’t find detailed verbal descriptions of a room, place or person terribly helpful), the relationship between the author and their readers, and the use of personal pronouns (including narration in the third, first and second person as well as variations e.g. the French “on”, as later used by Annie Ernaux as a collective “we”).
It was interesting for me after reading these essays to discover that Butor’s 3rd novel, La modification, which won the prix Renaudot in 1957, is noticeable (per Wikipedia) for a number of features that find their echoes in the essays:
It is a fascinating collection and reasonably accessible, my only reservation being that in a novel that emphasises the need to evolve the form and to try new things, Butor is sometimes oddly categorial about the essential features of the form. I rather prefer the approach of Goldsmiths Prize winning M John Harrison: “start with a form, then undermine its confidence in itself. Ask what it's afraid of, what it's trying to hide – then write that.”
Highly worthwhile and I plan to seek out the English translation of La modification next, from a third independent publisher, Calder Press.
Michel Butor is enjoying a long overdue renaissance in English, courtesy of small independent presses (who do much of the heavy lifting in the UK literary scene).
First Pariah Press reissued the long out-of-print and brilliant novel Passing Time, Jean Stewart's 1960 translation of Butor's L'Emploi du temps, winner, in the original, of the 1957 Fénéon Prize. My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Now Richard Skinner at Vanguard Editions has commissioned, edited and published this collection of translations by Mathilde Merouani of Butor’s essays on the novel, mostly from the 1960s.
The first essay, The Novel As a Search, discusses how the very nature of fiction in the novel makes it perhaps the truest form of all, using (as in a number of the essays) Balzac’s La Comédie humaine as an example:
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.
The reference here to “laboratory” is crucial since Butor very much sees the novel as an evolving, experimental form, one that should be in dialogue with mathematics, philosophy and other art forms. He also argues for the equal importance of realism, formalism and symbolism;
Upon reaching a certain degree of reflection, we understand that realism, formalism and symbolism in the novel constitute an indivisible unity.
The novel naturally aims and must aim at its own elucidation. However, we very well know that some situations are characterised by an inability to self-reflect, and subsist only through the illusion they maintain with their subjects, and they are the ones which correspond to those works inside which this unity cannot be, those attitudes of novelists who refuse to examine the nature of their work and the validity of the forms they adopt, the kinds of forms which could not self-reflect without immediately showcasing their inadequacy, their lie, these forms which present an image of reality which blatantly contradicts the reality that gave birth to them and which is being silenced. There are impostures which the critic must denounce, because such works, despite their charm and merit, sustain and deepen the shadow, keep consciousness in its contradictions and blindness, threatening to lead it into the most fatal disorders.
Other essays consider issues such as the use of space in a novel, “the philosophy of furniture” (one area where I disagree with Butor; I don’t find detailed verbal descriptions of a room, place or person terribly helpful), the relationship between the author and their readers, and the use of personal pronouns (including narration in the third, first and second person as well as variations e.g. the French “on”, as later used by Annie Ernaux as a collective “we”).
It was interesting for me after reading these essays to discover that Butor’s 3rd novel, La modification, which won the prix Renaudot in 1957, is noticeable (per Wikipedia) for a number of features that find their echoes in the essays:
One of the most striking characteristics of the book is the very unusual use of the second-person ("Vous" – "You") to refer to the main character.
The story is remarkably concentrated as far as time and space are concerned. The entire action takes place in less than 24 hours and never leaves the train in which the main character is travelling, except during the flashbacks.
La Modification contains both realistic and fantastic elements. On the one hand, the various landscapes, the passengers, the interior of the carriage are described down to the last detail. On the other, there are many eerie episodes.
It is a fascinating collection and reasonably accessible, my only reservation being that in a novel that emphasises the need to evolve the form and to try new things, Butor is sometimes oddly categorial about the essential features of the form. I rather prefer the approach of Goldsmiths Prize winning M John Harrison: “start with a form, then undermine its confidence in itself. Ask what it's afraid of, what it's trying to hide – then write that.”
Highly worthwhile and I plan to seek out the English translation of La modification next, from a third independent publisher, Calder Press.
Displaying 1 of 1 review